Help Me Grow

I Asked the Lord that I Might Grow
By: Arthur Pink

"Make Your ways known to me, Lord; teach me Your paths. Guide me in Your truth and teach me. Psalm 25:4-5

There are two ways of learning of Divine things. The one is to acquire a letter knowledge of them from the Bible, the other is to be given an actual experience of them in the soul, under the Spirit's teaching.

Many suppose that by spending a few minutes in a concordance, they can discover what humility is; that by studying certain passages of Scriptures, they may obtain an increase of faith; or that by reading and re-reading a certain chapter, they may secure more love.

But that is not the way those graces are experimentally developed. Humility is learned by a daily smarting under the plague of the heart, and having its innumerable abominations exposed to our view. Repentance is learned by feeling the load of guilt, and the heavy burden of conscious defilement, bowing down the soul. Faith is learned by increasing discoveries of unbelief and infidelity. Love is learned by a personal sense of the undeserved goodness of God to the vilest of the vile. Patience cannot be learned from books—it is acquired in the furnace of affliction! It is thus with all the spiritual graces of the Christian.

Ah, my reader, we beg the Lord to teach us—but the fact is, that we do not like His method of teaching us! Fiery trials, storms of afflictions, the dashing of our carnal hopes—are indeed painful to flesh and blood; yet it is by them that the heart is purified.

We say that we wish to live to God's glory—but fail to remember that we can do so only as SELF is denied and the Cross be taken up. God's ways of teaching His children are, like all His ways, entirely different from ours!"

Lord thank you for helping me grow over the years and especially over the past few months. My prayer is that I grow into the trusting, humble, patient, loving, and God seeking man you want me to be. I pray that I can be the leader that you want me to be in every aspect of life (Job, Future Family, Friends, etc). Thank you for the variety of ways you have taught and showed me your love and direction for my life. Forgive me for ever lacking trust or being inpatient and trying to do things on my own. Forgive me for ever seeking self glory and being prideful and forgetting that without you I have nothing. Forgive me for ever doubting you in times of trials and wondering why. I thank you for this new season in life I am about to enter in which I have looked forward to for some time now as you know, and whatever this new season brings... I pray that I bring glory to you and apply all that you have taught me over the years. I pray this all in Jesus name, Amen.