I bought a watch last year to measure my steps and heartrate. I’m a generally a little resistant to trends and therefore usually late to them, but I felt like measuring my physical exertion would result in more of it, thus I bought a watch. Even so, I refused to spend more than $25 on the watch in case I decided I hated wearing it. As it turns out, I never stop wearing the watch. Or checking the data on the app. Or analyzing the data. I quickly discovered that more important than steps or calories or heartrate is the sleep tracker. I sleep very little anyway, but now I sleep even less because I obsess about it. I can’t seem to help it. The power to track my progress, even the lack of it, gives me a sense of control. It’s feigned control, but still. I love my $25 watch.
I’ve been thinking about that tracking mechanism and how widely available it is to us. Besides the health-related things, we can track or measure our growth in an astonishing number of ways. With the ever-increasing development of apps, we can chart things like weight loss or the number of books we’ve read (right down to the page number), the hours we’ve spent listening to music or podcasts, how many miles we’ve put on our running shoes, how quickly our babies are growing or if our kids are progressing with reading and math. Think about the acquisition of knowledge. With a simple swipe or tap, we can ask Siri or Alexa anything we want and get a somewhat satisfying answer. Throw in Amazon Prime delivery, instant streaming, and grocery delivery with item-by-item shopping updates, and we are primed for a life that expects instantaneous and measurable everything.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against things like two-day delivery or groceries that show up on my front porch two hours after I’ve ordered them. I mean, I never take off that $25 watch. But, sometimes, I think about how thoroughly at odds the Christian life is with an instantaneous, trackable world. If there’s anything we can’t measure, it’s spiritual growth. If there’s anything that can’t be ordered and shipped in two hours, it’s maturity in Christ. If there’s anything that frustrates us more by its non-linear nature, it’s sanctification.
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I was thumbing through an old journal the other day, trying to remember the kind of thoughts I had as a college senior on the cusp of both graduation and marriage. I felt the familiar tug of war in the neat script in the stack of spiral bound books. Most of my entries reflect an ongoing Romans 7 kind of internal reckoning: Why do I do the things I don’t want to do? Why can’t I be singularly focused on Christ? My sin is ever before me!
I flipped through the pages until my eyes caught these words:
“Tonight I felt as though my sin was magnified a hundred times over. How sinful and weak I am—and therefore inadequate to give anything at all to this church…In my negligence I have sinned greatly and if God were to chart my growth, I would be so far behind that I’d never catch up.”
I parsed the previous entry for a subtext and discovered that I’d just begun attending my fiancé’s church where I felt disastrously behind in comparison with the level of spiritual maturity I witnessed there. Though I don’t really remember feeling that way at the time, I do remember how I felt listening to the preaching at that church. The phrase “like drinking from a fire hose” had never seemed more apt. I wanted to grow but didn’t know how, felt I was behind but didn’t know exactly what it took to catch up. What I really wanted was a trackable plan with measurable results. I was frustrated that sanctification didn’t work that way, and yet I knew that somehow I’d be cheating if it did.
Not much has changed in the past two decades, really. Yesterday’s journal entry looks eerily similar to that of February 2, 2003, and yet, I’ve learned to be hopeful about such wrestling. I used to think that sanctification could be drawn in an upward, perfectly angled line. Gradual progression, no stalls, no steps backwards. Spiritual growth is forward pressing, but if you were to put it down on paper, it would probably look more like the scribbles in my kindergartner’s drawing pad than the graph I want to construct in my head. Sanctification and growth in Christ aren’t commodities to be ordered, goals to be tracked, or files to be downloaded. No, spiritual growth looks more like a crop that grows over time or a child that grows into an adult. Gradual. Slow. So slow you can’t see it happening in real time. Only after years of digging into Scripture, years of living life within the body of Christ, years of hard-fought prayer—only after years of this can we begin to see the effect of change in our lives. Years. That’s not the kind of wait time we’re prepared to agree to when it comes to investments on this earth. But it is the time we need to put off our old selves and put on Christ.
Purity. Patience. Discernment. Compassion. Love. Forgiveness. The Lord’s sanctifying work in our lives will produce a harvest of fruitfulness. We will grow. We will have victory over sin. We will become more like Jesus. God promised to complete the work He began in us when He saved us, and if He promised it, He will accomplish it.[1] But not on our timeline and not in ways that we can measure or track for optimal results. No, faithfulness grows slowly. And in the daily perseverance of drawing near to the Lord for growth, we learn to trust Him with the results. And trust is, perhaps, the point. We’re to take hold of God’s means for growth, but He is the one to bring about the growth itself. There is no app for the most important things in life. But there is a faithful God who brings about His good purposes in our lives at just the right time.
He is making you new, Christian, even when you can’t see it. The very wrestling you do as you long to see growth is evidence of His work in you. He will make everything beautiful in its time.
“Not that I have already obtained [the resurrection] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way…”
Philippians 3:12-15
If there’s anything we can’t measure, it’s spiritual growth. If there’s anything that frustrates us more by its non-linear nature, it’s sanctification. Share on X
[1] See Philippians 1:6, 2:12-13
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
