“Well, I’m feeling a little better today. It seems like this cold has been hanging on forever, but little by little I seem to be getting better.”
Have you ever noticed that some things just take time, but if you hang in there and keep doing the right things, eventually you get there? It’s a day by day process. In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul speaks about the development of our inner man that way. He says, “Therefore, we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.”
Day by day – that’s a phrase that indicates a process.
In other words, spiritual renewal doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not a windfall from heaven, where all of a sudden you’re a spiritually mature person. It’s a gradual process of walking with the Lord DAY BY DAY.
When our kids were little, we had a place on a door jam where we measured the progress of their growth. A mark was made to record their height, and then six months later another mark was drawn to see if they had grown. Now sometimes the growth was only slight; but at other times the growth was dramatic. On a few occasions, however, the kids would try to measure themselves the very next day or week to see if they had grown, and the response was always disappointment. Because you see, physical growth doesn’t happen all at once – it’s a process happening day by day. Then over a period of time you look back and say, “My, how you’ve grown!” Spiritual growth is like that, too. It’s a process – “the inner man is renewed day by day.”
Hey – Don’t get discouraged about your spiritual growth. Just keep walking with the Lord. You’ll grow!