Living things grow. It’s true for every organic life form, but it’s also true of us spiritually. When we are born again in Christ, we are set on a trajectory of spiritual growth. The Holy Spirit is in us to empower this transformational process by which God grows us up into the likeness of His Son, and that growth fleshes itself in all different kinds of ways.

It means that we continually grow in the fruit of the Spirit as our character is developed. It means we continually pursue purity and godliness in our lifestyle. It means we share the gospel more and more freely with others. It means our priorities shift from safety and comfort to the priorities of the kingdom of God. It means we hold more and more loosely to the material things of the world as we pursue the imperishable things of heaven.

Yes, living things grow. And as soon as living things stop growing, they start dying. That’s a pretty thin line when you think about it – that either you are growing spiritually or you are dying spiritually. 

Here’s how Jesus articulated the thinness between those things in today’s scripture::

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned” (John 15:5-6).

Because of abiding in Christ, we are either bearing fruit or we are withering away. Growing or dying. And there is one principle that applies to both – spiritual growth and spiritual death:

You are always, always, always growing an appetite.

To explain a little further, you probably didn’t drink coffee in the mornings as an eight-year-old. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t really start drinking coffee until my early thirties. And when I started, I didn’t like it. At all. But because I felt like I was too old to have a Coke at 7 am, I kept drinking it. And as I did, my appetite for it grew.

Lots of things are like that – including spiritual things. Perhaps when you first picked up the Bible or tried to really have a time of sustained prayer, or memorized Scripture, you found it incredibly difficult. Even distasteful. But you took a disciplined approach – and your appetite grew over time. 

You desire things that you once did not desire, and then you have the capacity for things that you did not have the capacity for.

Unfortunately, it works that way with sin as well. Today, you might look at someone in your life who has fallen hard and deep into a sinful pattern and think to yourself, “I’d never be where that person is.“ Yet that person did not get there overnight. Likely, their appetite grew. And grew. And grew. They stretched and stretched until they wound up entangled in sin.

So, we must be careful with the observations we make about others, for the same can easily happen to us.

Bottom line: We are always growing an appetite, either for sin or for godliness, and that appetite is grown by the choices we make every day.

So, what is your trajectory? What kind of appetite are you feeding?

Written by Michael Kelley, Guest Contributor

To read more of Michael’s writing, check out his daily blog, Forward Progress http://michaelkelley.co/