Before you can grow in your relationship with Christ, you must be confident in your relationship with Christ. According to II Corinthians 13:5, we are to “examine” and “prove” our lives, to be certain we are not “disqualified,” and to be certain that we have been saved. We learned that feelings and past experiences are not trustworthy. Rather, we know that we are saved because we see God at work transforming our lives.

So, what’s next? This may seem simple and obvious, but in order to grow in your relationship with God you must get to know the Word of God. We often tell new believers that they need to begin their Christian life by reading the Gospel according to John. We tell them that by getting to know the book of John, they will get to know Jesus. We know that new believers who get into the Word will grow spiritually. However, what is true of new believers is also true of we who have been saved a long time.

To continue our spiritual growth, we must continue to daily read, study and meditate on God’s Word. If you are not daily in the Word, your spiritual life is a stagnant pool covered with the muck and scum of the world. You need what Ephesians 5:26 calls “the washing of water by the word.”

When you are in the Word daily, the living water of the Holy Spirit flows through your life and washes away the fleshly crud. When was the last time you really did a deep dive into the Word of God? We are going to focus our attention in the coming days of our necessity to be disciplined in the Word. Are you disciplined?