As I have tried to suggest in this article, spiritual growth is accompanied with a growth in consciousness/awareness of God’s presence in our world and in us. It compels us to look at others and creation in a different manner. When we come to see God’s Spirit in others and in all the forms of life on our planet, we know that we have made progress in our spiritual development.

As I have also suggested in this Bulletin and in my sermons, the purpose and tasks presented to us by life are meant to help us develop as spiritual beings. This requires that (1) we see ourselves as spiritual as well as physical beings, and (2) we see that the purpose of life is to bring about this spiritual development. We just naturally grow as physical beings, albeit there are things that can facilitate our healthy, physical growth.

The same is not true about our spiritual nature. We have to work at spiritual growth by first increasing our awareness of God’s presence in creation and then engaging in acts that will increase our spiritual nature.

God became a human being in the Person of Jesus to help us understand what we must do to develop our spiritual nature. Jesus showed us what we must do and how we must think in order to encourage this spiritual growth. The call to holiness is a call to spiritual growth.

Why do we need to spiritually grow? In order to become the persons that God intended when He created us. We can only have a relationship with God when we spiritually grow – when we increase our awareness of His presence and when we begin to see ourselves and creation as God sees them.

The way that we were created requires that we engage in those things that can bring about spiritual growth. It is through our spiritual nature that we have a relationship with God. It is also through our spiritual nature that we can participate in the fullness of life.