PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

How do we grow in grace? Isn't grace something that God extends to us? If so, then why are we told to grow in it?What does God want us to do? These are important questions to be answered. I have had reason to think about them lately, and I would love to share with you what came to me.

Growing in grace does not mean gaining more grace from God. He gave His only Son so that all who believed on Him should be saved-how much more grace could there possibly be than that? Rather, as we grow in our understanding of what Jesus did, we grow in our appreciation of the grace we have been given. We grow in love, and we find much more reason to follow our Lord wherever He leads us.

I picture growing in grace this way:

Once when a little boy went for a walk with his father, he heard a huge sound.Looking up, he saw overhead a great silver bird. He asked his dad what it was, and his father explained that it was an airplane which carried lots of people over long distances through the sky. The little boy was instantly in awe. Nothing could hold his interest like watching planes fly. From that day onward, he would stop whatever he was doing just to watch a plane pass overhead. When he was a little older and could read, he began to get books on planes-the history of planes, the development of planes and flight, everything he could read on the subject. By the time he was 12, he could tell you all the parts of any airplane engine you would care to name. His room became full to bursting with models and diagrams and pictures of planes. Flight maps and schematics decorated his walls and even his ceiling, and yet even when he was a growing teenager, a plane passing overhead never failed to arrest his attention and bring a look of pure joy to his eyes.

After the boy finished school, he decided it would be his greatest desire to become a pilot, and that is what he did. He thought his heart would burst for joy the first time he soloed in a small plane. The first time he flew a jet was like nothing he could even describe. Through his life, his training and his career he learned more than he ever thought possible about planes; but with each new level of knowledge came the realization that there was so much more that could be known, that there would not be enough time in his life to learn it all. He had a succesful career, raised a happy family, and had a son and grandson of his own. One day, long after he had retired, he took his little grandson out for a walk. A large silver bird flew overhead, and the little boy said ``Grandpa! What is that?''``That,'' said the man, ``is an airplane!'' Any passerby would have seen two upturned faces transfixed with joy. For as much as the man learned, he had never lost that first love of seeing those magnificent silver birds floating gracefully so high up in the sky-if anything, all his knowledge had increased his appreciation of the sight a thousand fold.

When we grow in grace, it should be the same for us: the more we learn about God, the more we will appreciate all He has done, and the more we will realize how little we know about what it took for Him to do it. We will grow in appreciation and love and awe of our wonderful heavenly Father and Brother. And our first love will not be diminished but enhanced. We hope you will grow in grace through this issue.

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