Grow

How are you in your relationship with Jesus? Are you growing right now, or are you stagnant?

Grow

This week's devotions are written by my son, Bryant Forshee, Lead Student Pastor for Cross Church, Springdale, AR campus.

- Pastor Danny

"Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

(2 Peter 3:18, NLT)

Currently, two coworkers and I are training for a marathon. Yes, you read that correctly: we are training to run 26.2 miles and endure a lot of suffering in the process. Some of you might think we are crazy, while others of you might be excited for us. For my part, I am PUMPED! I am thrilled to participate in this marathon because my two training partners have never completed a marathon before. With no prior experience, we have our training plan and our race day, and we are off to the races, training and running.

We started our training plan recently and running on day one was horrible. Even for me, I was thinking to myself, "We only ran 2.5 miles, and this was tough. How are we going to get to 26.2?" It then dawned on me, reminding me of the other training plans I have done for marathons: we progress from 2.5 miles to 26.2 miles by gradually increasing our strength and cardio day by day. What our plan requires is that we do two maintenance runs and a long run on the weekend. The maintenance runs allow us to increase our pace and build experience by covering a lot of miles. The long runs will enable us to build our lung capacity and endurance by running distances of up to 26.2 miles. I am really excited to get back to that marathon shape, and even more so to grow with the guys who I will be running with!

What about you and your relationship with Jesus? Are you growing right now, or are you stagnant? If you have a relationship with Jesus, where are you growing in your relationship with Him? Are you praying? Reading? Serving? Leading in worship? Evangelizing? Meditating? Memorizing? What are you doing in your relationship with Jesus to grow closer with Him?

Our verse for the day encourages us and even tells us we "must" grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Just take that sentence in effect: you have the capacity to GROW in grace and knowledge of King Jesus. The verse begs the question: are you growing? Do you have a spiritual marathon running plan where you are intentionally stretching and growing the spiritual muscles of your faith?

Here's my challenge for you today: ask yourself:
"Where am I growing in my walk with Jesus?"
"Where do I want to grow in my walk with Jesus?"
"How am I going to get there in my walk with Jesus?"

As you ask yourself these questions, allow the Holy Spirit to enlighten you and show you in what areas you need to grow. You can grow in your relationship with Jesus, and you can grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. The question is: Will you?

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Podcast of the Week

How One Man Can Change the World, with Fred Eppright

Pastor Danny welcomes to the show Fred Eppright of the Baptist Haiti Mission and the IMPACTcares Foundation to give an update on the ongoing work in Haiti as well as on his work in Ukraine. Fred, his son Matt, and their partners at the BHM are doing truly powerful, invaluable work. We think you will be blessed to hear about what they are doing and perhaps be interested in partnering with them in their ministry. Learn more about the BHM at: https://bhm.org

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