Test Your Growth

“This, therefore, seems to me to be a very good test of our whole Christian position.  Is our spiritual knowledge greater today than it was a year ago? Looking back across let us say ten years in the Christian life, can you say that your spiritual knowledge is greater than it was?  I am not asking whether you have a greater knowledge of the letter of the Scripture, as you may have an increasing knowledge of Shakespeare; I am not asking if you have memorized a large number of biblical verses.  I am asking whether your spiritual knowledge and understanding have grown?  Is your grasp of truth more profound?  Do you really feel that you are being led ever onwards, as it were from chamber to chamber in a great mansion, and discovering fresh treasures of wisdom and knowledge?  That is the test. ...

“Do we day by day pray to God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, to enlighten the eyes of our understanding?  It should be our constant daily prayer.  We should always preface our reading of the Word by praying for this enlightenment.  The constant desire of our lives should be that we might ‘grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord.’ ... The fact is that we are but tyros, we are babes, we are merely at the very beginning.  We must press on unto perfection.  Are we interested in Christian doctrine?  Do we really see the importance of it, or do we find it rather boring and dull?   Do we always seek some excitement, something to entertain us?  Do we realize that, having been saved and called and place in Christ, what God desires is that we should grow in our understanding of truth and of doctrine, that we should become more concerned about this than about anything else, that the ‘eyes of our understanding,’ our comprehension, may be enlightened to that end.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God’s Ultimate Promise: An Exposition of Ephesians 1, pp.368-369.