In this video, Dr. H.B. Charles Jr. displays the surprising way God cultivates real, lasting growth in the Christian life.
It is very real that some Christians, new believers and seasoned saints can get discouraged along the way because they feel like they are doing the right things, doing what they should do, but they don’t see real evidence of change or growth or development in their spiritual walk.
Permit me to respond to that reality with a brief analogy. The Chinese bamboo tree is planted and watered and nurtured and cultivated, but nothing happens the first year. That process continues and nothing happens the second year, the third year, or the fourth year. But in the fifth year, the Chinese bamboo tree can grow up to ninety feet in a matter of five or six weeks. The question is, did it grow to ninety feet in six weeks or five years? And of course, the answer is five years. If there was not the consistent cultivation, there would not be the sudden growth.
You don’t know what God is going to use in your life to spark growth, development and change. The times that I have really, really tried to take seriously working out, it has kind of got short circuited because I check the scale every day to see. I will go for a walk and then see if I’ve lost some weight. And it doesn’t work like that. It takes a lot of consistency over time before you start seeing the change that you want to see.
Again, life and faith are seasonal. There are seasons of the soul. Galatians 6:9 says, “Do not grow weary in doing good for in due season, you’ll reap the harvest if you don’t give up.” And the beauty of that verse among other things is that it says that the child of God, the follower of Jesus Christ, the believer actually operates from five seasons while the rest of the world only has four. The world has winter, spring, summer, and fall, but we have what the Bible calls a “due season,” God’s appointed time. He has not forgotten about you. If you don’t give up, the harvest will come if you don’t lose heart.”