There is a version of the Christian life that consists mainly of showing up. You attend services, tick the boxes, say the right things, and carry a general sense that your faith is in reasonable shape. And then there are seasons when you realise, often with a jolt, that showing up has not been the same thing as growing. That the distance between where you are and where you sense God is calling you to be is larger than you thought.
If you are in that realisation right now, this article is for you. And if you are not in that realisation but you have the wisdom to want more than a static faith, this article is also for you.
Spiritual growth is not automatic. The Bible is explicit about this. Hebrews 6:1 says press on to maturity. The instruction implies that maturity is not something that simply accumulates with time, the way wrinkles do. You can be a Christian for fifty years and still be feeding on milk rather than solid food, as the writer to the Hebrews lamented about his own audience (Hebrews 5:12 to 14). Spiritual growth requires intention, practice, community, and above all the grace of a God who is as committed to your growth as you are, and far more capable of producing it.
This article is built around ten specific, deeply practical ways to grow spiritually and draw closer to God. It draws on authoritative theological sources, specific biblical passages, the wisdom of experienced faith leaders, and the consistent testimony of Christians across centuries who have walked this road before you. Each way is accompanied by rich reflection, a scripture anchor, and a concrete practice you can begin today.
Do not try to implement all ten at once. Read through the whole article first. Then identify the two or three that speak most directly to where you are right now. Start there. Go deep rather than wide. And trust that the same God who grew the faith of Paul and Peter and Augustine and Rees Howells and countless millions of unnamed, ordinary believers can grow yours too.
Spiritual growth is not the accumulation of religious activity. It is the deepening of a relationship with a living God who is actively at work in you.
FIRST: WHAT SPIRITUAL GROWTH ACTUALLY IS
Understanding Spiritual Growth Before You Pursue It
Before we look at how to grow spiritually, we need to be clear about what we are actually talking about. Because spiritual growth is one of those phrases that gets used so often it can become almost meaningless. People use it to mean everything from reading the Bible more frequently to having more intense emotional experiences in worship. And while both of those things may be related to spiritual growth, neither of them is the same as spiritual growth itself.
GotQuestions.org, one of the most widely referenced Christian theology sites in the world, defines spiritual maturity clearly: it is achieved through becoming more like Jesus Christ. After salvation, every Christian begins the process of spiritual growth, with the intent to become spiritually mature. According to Paul, it is an ongoing process that will never fully end in this life. You can read their full article at GotQuestions.org: What Is Spiritual Maturity?.
Becoming more like Jesus. That is the goal. Not having more knowledge about Jesus, though knowledge matters. Not performing more religious activities in the name of Jesus, though practice matters. Actually becoming more like him in character, in response to suffering, in love for people, in obedience to the Father, in surrender, in prayer, in the fruit that a life genuinely connected to him produces.
Paul expresses the same goal with striking personal honesty in Philippians 3:12 to 14: not that I have already obtained this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal.
Press on. Strain toward. These are not passive postures. They describe intentional, energetic, forward-facing effort. And they come from the most spiritually mature person in the New Testament outside of Jesus himself. If Paul was still pressing on, still straining forward, still not considering himself to have fully arrived, then every one of us has room to grow.
Dr. Stan Ponz of Make It Clear Ministries makes a point that is worth carrying with you: maturity is not about age. You can be a Christian for fifty years and still not be mature. It is not about appearance or achievement either. God does not want us to grow old in Christ. He wants us to grow up in Christ. Read his full reflection on the five signs of spiritual maturity at Make It Clear: The Five Signs of Spiritual Maturity.
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SIGNS OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH
How to Know If You Are Actually Growing Spiritually
Before we look at the ways to grow, it helps to know what growth actually looks like when it is happening. Because spiritual growth is not always dramatic. It is often subtle, slow, and visible only in retrospect. But there are consistent biblical markers that indicate a life that is genuinely moving toward Christlikeness.
1. Your love for God and people is deepening
Jesus named this as the greatest commandment for a reason: love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37 to 39). Growing love for God and growing love for people are the primary indicators that growth is real. If your faith is becoming more theological but not more loving, something is off.
2. The fruit of the Spirit is becoming more visible
Paul describes the evidence of spiritual maturity in Galatians 5:22 and 23 as the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Seedword Christian notes that as believers grow, these qualities become increasingly evident in their character. They respond to situations with patience instead of frustration, kindness instead of anger, and faithfulness instead of inconsistency. Read their full piece at Seedword Christian: Signs of Spiritual Growth in the Bible.
3. You respond to pressure differently
One of the most reliable indicators of spiritual growth is how you respond when life is hard. For the Gospel writes that a mature Christian has natural feelings just like anyone else, but those feelings follow faith, they do not lead it. Can you receive trials with something that resembles James 1:2’s genuine joy, not because the trial is pleasant but because you know what it is producing? Read their full analysis at For the Gospel: Signs of Christian Maturity.
4. You are growing in humility, not just knowledge
Biblical knowledge without humility tends to produce pride rather than Christlikeness. Paul warned the Corinthians that knowledge puffs up, while love builds up (1 Corinthians 8:1). A maturing Christian becomes increasingly aware of how much they do not know, increasingly quick to admit error, and increasingly slow to position themselves as the spiritual police of those around them.
5. Sin is losing its grip
Growth does not mean sinlessness. It means the habitual, flippant practice of sin is decreasing, and the awareness of sin and genuine desire to be free of it is increasing. For the Gospel notes that the pattern of holiness grows, while the casual, untroubled practice of sin shrinks in a maturing Christian. This is not achieved by willpower but by sustained connection to the Holy Spirit and the ongoing work of grace.
6. Your stability under doctrinal pressure is increasing
Core Christianity points out that the spiritually immature change their views with every new book or blog post they read. As Paul says in Ephesians 4:14, spiritual children are tossed back and forth by waves and blown around by every wind of teaching. Maturity brings a settled, rooted confidence in the essentials of the faith that is not rattled by every challenge. Read Core Christianity’s full article at Core Christianity: Signs of Spiritual Immaturity.
7. You are increasingly other-centred
A sign of genuine growth is the gradual, sometimes painfully slow shift from a self-centred orientation to an other-centred one. The person who grows spiritually becomes more genuinely interested in the people around them, more willing to serve without recognition, more able to rejoice in others’ success without feeling diminished by it.
You cannot measure spiritual growth only by what you know. The deepest measure is always how you love.
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THE TEN WAYS: A DEEP GUIDE
10 Powerful Ways to Grow Spiritually and Get Closer to God
Way 01
Deepen Your Prayer Life
Not more religious performance, but genuine conversation with a Person
Prayer is the most fundamental practice of spiritual growth because it is the practice that most directly addresses the nature of the problem. The problem is not that we know too little about God. It is that we are not close enough to him. And closeness with God, as with any person, is built in conversation. Not in one-sided monologue, not in the presentation of a prayer list, but in genuine, two-way exchange where we speak and we listen and we allow ourselves to be changed by the encounter.
The New Testament uses the image of prayer as a posture more than a practice. Pray without ceasing, Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Not pray once a day at a set time, but carry an orientation of prayerfulness through the entire texture of the day. This does not mean constant formal prayer. It means living with an ongoing awareness of God’s presence and an ongoing willingness to bring whatever is happening in the moment before him.
Most people’s prayer lives stall because they stay at the level of petition. They bring their requests, they thank God for the answers, and the conversation stays at that level for years. The growth in prayer that produces spiritual transformation tends to happen when prayer moves into adoration, into honest confession, into listening, into simply being in God’s presence without an agenda. It is in these dimensions of prayer that we begin to be actually changed rather than simply serviced.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:6 and 7
Medi-Share’s spiritual growth blog notes that prayer is our direct line of communication with God and the place where we build intimacy, seek guidance, and find strength. They encourage moving beyond just asking for things to spend time listening, worshipping, and simply being in his presence, making prayer a constant conversation throughout the day. Read their full reflection at Medi-Share: 7 Signs of Spiritual Maturity.
Try this:Start a prayer journal this week. Not just a list of requests, but a record of the conversation: what you brought, what you sensed God saying, what you noticed shifting in you as you prayed. Return to it daily and watch the conversation deepen over time.
Way 02
Engage Scripture as a Living Word
Reading the Bible is not a discipline. It is a relationship.
The Bible is the primary way God has chosen to reveal himself to his people. But there is a significant difference between reading the Bible and engaging it. Many Christians read the Bible the way they read a textbook or a novel: for information, for story, for a general sense of what it says. The kind of engagement with Scripture that produces genuine spiritual growth is different in quality. It is slower, more deliberate, and more personal.
The practice that has produced the most fruit in Christian history is sometimes called lectio divina, sacred reading. It involves reading a short passage slowly, several times if necessary, not to extract information but to allow a word or phrase to settle in you and address your specific situation. It is the posture described in Joshua 1:8: this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. Meditate means to mull over, to turn around in the mind, to let it work on you rather than rushing past it.
The other dimension of engaging Scripture that many Christians underuse is the practice of memorisation. When the Word is in your memory, it becomes immediately available in the moments when you most need it: in a moment of temptation, in a conversation that catches you off guard, in a season of suffering when you need something more solid than a feeling to stand on. Psalm 119:11 says: I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. The hiding is intentional. The heart is the whole interior life. The effect is moral and spiritual strength that comes from having the Word close enough to speak in the moment.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” — 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17
Try this:Choose one passage of Scripture this month, perhaps ten to fifteen verses, and commit to memorising it. Read it aloud each morning. Write it out by hand. Let it accompany you through the day. By the end of the month you will find that it has moved from your head to your heart in a way that simply reading it rarely achieves.
Way 03
Commit to a Local Church Community
Growth happens in relationship, not in isolation
One of the most pervasive myths about spiritual growth in the modern world is that it can happen in isolation. That a person can grow deep in their faith alone, through podcasts and personal devotions, without the inconvenience of actual community. This is not what the New Testament teaches. Not even close.
The writers of the New Testament assumed that the Christian life was lived in community. The letters of Paul are addressed to churches, not individuals. The commands they contain, bear one another’s burdens, forgive one another, spur one another on toward love and good deeds, are by their grammatical structure commands that require other people to obey them. You cannot bear one another’s burdens alone.
Community is also where the particular kind of growth that cannot happen in isolation occurs: the growth that comes from being known, from being challenged by people who love you, from learning to love people who are genuinely different from you, from experiencing the friction that produces character. As iron sharpens iron, one person sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17). The sharpening requires contact. It requires proximity. It requires the occasional spark.
Core Christianity’s article on spiritual maturity makes the point directly: the means God has generously given us to grow in faith include personal Bible study and prayer, but especially fellowship in the local church under the preached word. The local church is not peripheral to spiritual growth. It is one of the primary arenas in which God produces it. Read their piece at Core Christianity: Signs of Spiritual Immaturity.
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.” — Hebrews 10:24 and 25
Try this:If you are not currently connected to a local church community, make finding one your primary spiritual priority this month. If you are connected but attending without belonging, take one step toward deeper involvement this week: join a small group, volunteer for something, invite someone for coffee after a service.
Way 04
Surrender Your Will Daily
The spiritual life is not about adding more. It is about releasing more.
One of the most counterintuitive truths about spiritual growth is that it is not primarily additive. We tend to think of growth as accumulation: more knowledge, more practice, more religious activity. But the most transformative growth in the Christian life tends to happen in the direction of subtraction. Letting go. Surrendering. Releasing the grip on the things that have been running our lives rather than God.
Jesus described this process in Matthew 16:24: if anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. The denial of self is not self-hatred. It is the refusal to let the ego, the preferences, the self-protective instincts, and the appetites be the governing center of your life. It is the willingness to say to God, daily, in the specific situations of the actual day: not my will but yours.
This is not a once-for-all transaction. It is a daily practice, sometimes a moment-by-moment one. The same person who surrendered fully to God in a prayer meeting on Sunday will find themselves, by Tuesday afternoon, having quietly reoccupied the throne of their own life in a dozen small ways. The spiritual life is the ongoing practice of noticing that has happened and returning to the posture of surrender.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.” — Romans 12:1
Paul’s language here is deliberate. A living sacrifice is one that keeps climbing off the altar. The practice of spiritual growth involves learning to stay there not through self-effort but through a daily, renewed offering of the self to the God who is worth the offering.
Try this:Begin each morning this week with a simple, specific prayer of surrender before you check your phone or engage with the day’s agenda. Name the specific areas where you know you tend to take back control: a relationship, a financial decision, a professional situation, a fear. Hand them to God one by one and ask for the grace to leave them there.
Way 05
Walk in Step With the Holy Spirit
The third person of the Trinity is your most important growth partner
One of the most underutilised resources available to every Christian is the Holy Spirit. He is not a supplementary spiritual tool for advanced believers or a theological abstraction reserved for certain traditions. He is the primary agent of transformation in the Christian life. Jesus himself said it was better for his disciples that he go away, because then the Spirit would come and be with them and in them forever (John 16:7).
The Holy Spirit’s role in spiritual growth is comprehensive. He convicts us of sin (John 16:8), which means he alerts us to the specific areas where we are not yet living in conformity with the character of Christ. He teaches us (John 14:26), which means that when we read Scripture and something comes alive in a way it did not before, that is not only our intellect working. He guides us into truth (John 16:13), which means the spiritual discernment that comes with maturity is not self-generated wisdom but Spirit-given perception.
GotQuestions notes that Galatians 5:16 tells us we are to walk by the Spirit. The Greek word for walk actually means to walk with a purpose in view. Later in the same chapter, Paul uses a different Greek word for walk that has the idea of taking things step by step, one step at a time, learning to walk under the instruction of another. Being filled with the Spirit means walking under the Spirit’s control. And as we submit more fully to that control, the fruit of the Spirit increases naturally. Read the full piece at GotQuestions.org: Spiritual Maturity.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” — Galatians 5:22 and 23
The fruit of the Spirit is not the fruit of effort. It is what naturally grows in a life that is genuinely connected to the vine. You cannot manufacture patience by trying harder. You cannot generate love by willing it into existence. But a person who is walking in step with the Spirit will find, over time, that these qualities begin to appear in situations where their natural response would have been something very different. This is the Spirit at work. This is growth.
Try this:This week, at the beginning of each day, ask the Holy Spirit specifically to lead you, convict you where needed, and produce his fruit in you through the circumstances of that day. Then pay attention. Notice when a response that would have been natural for you six months ago does not come as naturally now. That noticing is the beginning of recognising his work.
Way 06
Practice Genuine Confession and Accountability
You cannot grow past what you refuse to name
Confession is one of the most avoided and most transformative practices in the Christian life. We avoid it because it requires vulnerability, honesty about the things we have done and the things we are, and the willingness to bring our actual self before God and sometimes before another trusted person rather than the version we have curated.
But the Bible is emphatic about its importance. 1 John 1:9 promises that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. The purification is comprehensive. But it requires the confession. The light of God’s grace only reaches the things that are brought into the light.
James 5:16 takes confession a step further: confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The healing that comes from confessing to another trusted person is different in character from the healing that comes from private confession alone. There is something about being known in our failure and received with grace that penetrates more deeply than the intellectual acknowledgment of forgiveness. This is why the practice of accountability relationships, structured and intentional mutual honesty with another Christian, has been one of the most consistently effective tools for sustained spiritual growth across the history of the church.
“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” — James 5:16
For the Gospel writes that Christian maturity is reflected in the heart of Psalm 51:17: the kind of brokenness and contrite response that the Lord will not despise. Nobody is called to perfection, but every Christian is called to progression. And progression requires the honesty to name where you are not yet where you want to be. Read their full article at For the Gospel: Signs of Christian Maturity.
Try this:Identify one person in your life who is trustworthy, spiritually serious, and safe enough to be genuinely honest with. Ask them if they would be willing to meet regularly, perhaps monthly, for mutual accountability and prayer. Come to the first meeting prepared to be honest about one specific area of your life where you know you need to grow.
Way 07
Serve Others from the Overflow
Growth that stays inside eventually stagnates
There is a principle in Scripture that is both counterintuitive and consistently proven: the person who gives away what they have tends to receive more of it, not less. The person who serves others from whatever they have in a season of personal poverty, whether financial, emotional, or spiritual, tends to find that the act of serving opens something in them that passive receiving does not.
Jesus made this explicit in John 15:8: this is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit. Fruit, in the agricultural metaphor, is not produced for the tree’s own benefit. It is produced to feed others. A tree that produces fruit is demonstrating the health of its root system. And the production of fruit, the serving of others, the giving of what you have, is itself evidence of and catalyst for spiritual health.
Service also has a particular role in the formation of humility, which is one of the non-negotiable marks of spiritual maturity. The person who regularly puts themselves in the position of serving others, especially those who cannot repay them, is the person who is having pride quietly and persistently dismantled. Jesus washing his disciples’ feet was not a symbolic gesture. It was a demonstration that greatness in the kingdom of God is measured by willingness to go lower.
Think Eternity founder Matt Brown writes that everything you do in life flows from everything you are in Christ. True spiritual maturity comes through a variety of experiences that touch your mind, heart, hands, and relationships. Service engages the hands and the heart in ways that intellectual study alone never can. Read more at Think Eternity: Signs of Maturity in Christ.
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” — 1 Peter 4:10
Try this:Identify one act of service you can begin this week that is below your perceived station. Something that does not earn you recognition or fit your gifting in an obvious way. Perhaps cleaning something no one notices, helping someone who cannot repay you, or serving in a role at church that is unglamorous and essential. Do it for a month and notice what it does to your interior.
Way 08
Embrace Suffering as Formation
The trials you are trying to escape may be the classroom you most need
This is the way that almost no one chooses and that God uses most often. The New Testament is remarkably consistent about the role of suffering in spiritual formation. Not because God is cruel or because suffering is good in itself, but because certain things that are essential to Christlike character cannot be grown any other way.
James 1:2 to 4 is almost shockingly direct: consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. The maturity described here, complete, not lacking anything, is specifically the product of perseverance, and perseverance is specifically the product of tested faith. There is no shortcut through this process.
Paul adds another dimension in Romans 5:3 to 5: we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. The sequence is important. Suffering is not random. It is the beginning of a process that ends in the specific kind of hope that does not put us to shame because the love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Dr. Stan Ponz at Make It Clear Ministries puts it memorably: a mature person is positive under pressure. Not because the pressure is pleasant, but because they have learned to see it through the lens of James 1:2 to 4. Even if they are full of Bible knowledge, they can still be grumpy under pressure. The mark of maturity is being under stress and still being joyful. His full article is at Make It Clear: Five Signs of Spiritual Maturity.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” — James 1:2 and 3
Try this:Identify the current trial or source of pressure in your life that you have been trying to escape or manage. Spend ten minutes with Romans 5:3 to 5 and James 1:2 to 4, reading them slowly. Ask God specifically what he is forming in you through this season, and what it would look like to cooperate with that formation rather than resist it.
Way 09
Cultivate Spiritual Disciplines as Sustainable Habits
The practices that open you to grace are worth building for the long term
The classic Christian spiritual disciplines, prayer, Scripture reading, fasting, solitude, worship, simplicity, and generosity, are sometimes treated as extraordinary practices reserved for especially serious Christians or certain seasons of heightened devotion. But the writers who have thought most carefully about spiritual formation understand them differently. They are ordinary, sustainable habits that create the conditions in which God works.
Dallas Willard, one of the most important writers on spiritual formation of the past century, described the spiritual disciplines as training for godliness rather than trying for godliness. There is a significant difference. Trying is the exertion of willpower in the moment when the decision is demanded. Training is the preparation that happens before the moment arrives, so that when it does, the response flows from formed character rather than desperate effort. An athlete does not win a race through willpower on race day alone. They win through the months of training that shaped their body before race day.
The disciplines work in the same way. The person who has established a daily habit of prayer does not have to muster the motivation to pray in the moment of crisis. The person who has practiced fasting has developed a capacity to say no to one appetite that carries over into other areas. The person who has cultivated the habit of Sabbath rest has built a rhythm of trust into the structure of their week that speaks constantly to their soul.
Hill Cities ministry notes that spiritual maturity involves keeping tools like a Bible or a prayer journal close at hand, whether on a desk, nightstand, or in a bag. Having them nearby makes it easier to pause and reflect. Even integrating prayer into everyday tasks, talking to God while walking, cooking, or commuting, can help you stay grounded no matter how packed your day gets. Read their piece at Hill Cities: Signs of Spiritual Maturity in Men.
“Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” — 1 Timothy 4:7 and 8
Try this:Choose one spiritual discipline you have been treating as occasional and commit to practising it daily for thirty days. Make it small enough to be sustainable. Five minutes of Scripture meditation each morning. A weekly fast from one meal. A monthly day of solitude. Start small. Let the habit build before you expand it.
Way 10
Share Your Faith and Make Disciples
You do not fully own what you have never given away
The final way to grow spiritually is one that many Christians associate with evangelism rather than personal growth. And it is certainly that. But it is also one of the most effective instruments of personal spiritual deepening available. When you are required to articulate your faith, to explain what you believe and why, to give a reason for the hope within you (1 Peter 3:15), you discover with uncomfortable clarity what you actually believe versus what you have always assumed you believed.
Making disciples is the explicit final commission Jesus left with his followers in Matthew 28:19 and 20. It is not a special calling for gifted teachers or professional ministers. It is the basic description of what a growing Christian does: they pass on what they are receiving. They invest in others. They reproduce the life they are living in people around them.
And the extraordinary thing is that the process of making disciples consistently produces deeper growth in the disciple-maker than in the people being discipled. You cannot teach what you do not know. You cannot model what you have not lived. And the requirement of modelling and teaching pushes you, gently and persistently, toward the standard you are holding out for others.
Pastors.com notes that true spiritual maturity comes through a variety of experiences that touch your mind, heart, hands, and relationships. God uses all five purposes of the church, worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and evangelism, to grow you into maturity. Churches that focus only on information transfer are what Rick Warren calls classroom churches. They often neglect the relational and experiential growth that full maturity requires. Read their full resource at Pastors.com: The Five Marks of Spiritual Maturity.
“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” — 2 Timothy 2:2
Try this:Identify one person in your life who is earlier in their faith journey than you, whether a new believer, someone seeking, or someone who has drifted. Invite them to meet with you regularly, not to have all the answers, but to share what you are learning and to pray together. Do this for three months and notice what it does to the depth of your own faith.
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OVERCOMING SPIRITUAL STAGNATION
What to Do When Growth Has Stopped
Most Christians experience seasons of spiritual stagnation. Seasons where the Bible feels dry, prayer feels like speaking to a ceiling, the community that used to feel life-giving now feels merely obligatory, and the sense of God’s nearness that once felt natural feels distant and unreliable. These seasons are real, they are common, and they are not evidence that God has left or that your faith was false. They are often evidence that God is inviting you into a deeper kind of trust, and that the spiritual habits that carried you this far need to be renewed or augmented.
Diagnose Before You Prescribe
The first step in overcoming stagnation is honest diagnosis. Not all stagnation looks the same or comes from the same source. Some stagnation is the result of unconfessed sin that has created a practical barrier between you and God. Some is the result of busyness that has crowded out the practices that feed the spirit. Some is the natural fallow season that all growing things experience. And some is what the mystics called the dark night of the soul, a season where God withdraws the felt sense of his presence precisely to deepen the faith that does not depend on feeling.
Ask yourself honestly: what changed when the growth stopped? Did you stop engaging with community? Did a particular sin take root and go unaddressed? Did a disappointment with God go unprocessed? Did the busyness of a new season crowd out the practices that had been sustaining you? The answer to that question often points directly to where the renewal needs to begin.
Return to the Basics
When growth has stalled, the instinct is often to look for something new, a new book, a new conference, a new program. But more often what is needed is not something new. It is a renewed commitment to the basics that have always worked: honest prayer, slow engagement with Scripture, genuine community, and service. These practices are not exciting in the way a new spiritual experience might be. But they are the ordinary means of grace that God has consistently used throughout history to grow his people. Return to them with fresh seriousness and sustained patience.
Let the Stagnation Itself Become a Prayer
One of the most transformative things you can do in a season of spiritual stagnation is to bring the stagnation itself before God. Not to perform the experience of seeking but to honestly describe the dryness, the distance, the absence of feeling, and to ask God to move. This is the prayer of Psalm 42: as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?
The thirst described in Psalm 42 is not the thirst of someone who does not believe. It is the thirst of someone who believes and aches for more than the current experience is delivering. That ache is not a problem. It is a gift. It is the evidence that the desire for God is real, and desire is always the beginning of seeking, and seeking is always the beginning of finding.
→ Further reading on overcoming stagnation:GotQuestions.org: How Can I Increase in Spiritual Maturity?
→ Further reading:Medi-Share: 7 Signs of Spiritual Maturity
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Questions People Ask About Spiritual Growth
How long does it take to grow spiritually?
Spiritual growth has no fixed timeline and cannot be rushed into or forced into a schedule. GotQuestions.org notes that according to Paul it is an ongoing process that will never fully end in this life. What matters more than speed is direction: are you consistently moving toward Christlikeness, even slowly? A person growing slowly and steadily for decades will be more spiritually mature than a person who has intense bursts of growth followed by long seasons of neglect. Consistency over time is the engine of transformation.
What is the difference between spiritual growth and religious activity?
Religious activity is the performance of faith-related practices: attending services, reading the Bible, praying at set times, giving money to the church. These practices matter and they create the conditions for growth. But they are not the same as growth itself. Spiritual growth is the actual transformation of character to become more like Christ. A person can attend church faithfully for thirty years without becoming more patient, more loving, or more humble. Growth is not measured by activity but by the fruit it produces in how you love, how you respond to difficulty, and how you relate to the people around you.
Is it possible to grow spiritually without going to church?
Technically possible in extreme circumstances, but deeply inadvisable and clearly contrary to the New Testament pattern. The commands of the New Testament about bearing one another’s burdens, forgiving one another, spurring one another on, and confessing to one another all require other people. The author of Hebrews explicitly says not to give up meeting together (Hebrews 10:25). The local church, for all its imperfections, is one of the primary arenas in which the kind of growth that community produces, the growth that comes from friction, from accountability, from being known and knowing others, takes place. Podcasts and personal devotions are valuable. They cannot replace embodied, committed community.
What does the Holy Spirit’s role in spiritual growth actually look like practically?
The Holy Spirit works in at least four specific ways in the growth of a believer. He convicts of sin, which means he creates the discomfort that leads to repentance and change. He illuminates Scripture, which means he makes the Word come alive in specific application to your specific situation. He intercedes in prayer, taking our inarticulate longings and presenting them to the Father in ways we cannot (Romans 8:26). And he produces fruit, which is the gradual emergence of Christlike character in the person who is staying in relationship with him. His work is not dramatic in every instance. Much of it is quiet, slow, and recognisable only in retrospect as you look back and see how much has changed.
How do I know if I am spiritually mature or just theologically knowledgeable?
The distinction is important and the Bible is clear about it. Theological knowledge puffs up, Paul says, while love builds up (1 Corinthians 8:1). The person who is theologically knowledgeable but spiritually immature tends to be quick to correct others, slow to serve, proud of their doctrinal accuracy, and not noticeably more patient, loving, or humble than they were before they acquired the knowledge. The spiritually mature person, by contrast, may know less theology but demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit, receives correction with openness rather than defensiveness, serves without needing recognition, and has a quality of presence that affects the people around them. Ask yourself honestly: has what I know changed how I love?
What are the most common reasons Christians stop growing spiritually?
Core Christianity and other sources identify several consistent patterns. Unconfessed sin creates a practical barrier to growth that knowledge and activity cannot overcome. Isolation from community removes the accountability and sharpening that relationship provides. Consuming without contributing, receiving teaching and blessing without serving others, creates a stagnant pool rather than a flowing river. Comfort-seeking that avoids the trials in which character is formed. And what might be called knowledge without obedience, reading and hearing the Word without allowing it to change behaviour, which Jesus described as building on sand rather than rock.
→ Further reading:For the Gospel: Signs of Christian Maturity
→ Further reading:Think Eternity: Signs of Maturity in Christ
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A Final Word: Growth Is a Grace, Not an Achievement
Everything in this article has been about what you can do to grow spiritually. And the ten ways described here are real, effective, and worth committing to with sustained seriousness. But it would be a serious distortion to leave the impression that spiritual growth is fundamentally your achievement.
Philippians 2:12 and 13 hold the two sides of the truth in perfect tension: work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. You work. And God works. And God’s working is prior to yours, more fundamental than yours, and more effective than yours. You do not grow yourself. You create the conditions, through the practices described in this article, in which God grows you.
Peter says it most clearly in 2 Peter 1:3: his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. All things. Already granted. The resources for spiritual growth are not things you must acquire. They are things that have already been given to everyone who is in Christ. Your task is not to generate growth but to receive it, to cooperate with it, to clear away whatever is blocking it, and to stay close to the One who is doing the growing.
You are not growing toward a God who is waiting impatiently for you to arrive. You are growing into a life that was already planned and prepared for you before the world was made (Ephesians 2:10). Every step of growth is a step into something that was always intended. Every movement toward Christlikeness is a movement toward the version of yourself that God has had in mind since before you were born.
Keep pressing on. Keep straining forward. Keep returning to the practices that open you to grace. And trust the God who began a good work in you to be faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6). He is. He always is.
A Prayer for Spiritual Growth
Father, I want to grow. Not just in knowledge about you but in genuine likeness to you. Not just in religious activity but in the character of Christ. Not just in the seasons when growth is easy but in the long, slow, sometimes invisible seasons when the root system is deepening underground. I bring you the specific areas where I know I am not yet who I want to be. The impatience, the pride, the fear, the habits that have not yet yielded to your grace. I am not pretending these are small things. I am bringing them to you honestly and asking you to do in me what I cannot do in myself. Fill me with your Spirit. Lead me to the practices that will open me to your transforming work. Bring the right people into my life to sharpen and challenge and encourage me. And give me the grace to stay the course in the seasons when the growth is not visible, trusting that you are working even when I cannot feel it. I press on toward the goal. And I trust you to be faithful to complete what you have begun. Amen.