Be Amazed, and Grow.

What are the essential ingredients for growth? Spiritual and emotional growth. Apart from food and environment, what resources ensure people develop well and grow into the men and women God planned us to be?

While community, purpose and satisfying work are important things that build emotionally robust people, I regularly need a good hit of amazement. Psychologists say that the three key elements of life growth for humans are food, work, and wonder. Thank God for that!

So when was the last time you felt amazed? Really impressed and surprised by life?

I have a place I go that I’ve been visiting since I was about five years old, and every time I go there I’m impressed. It hasn’t really changed in decades. It can’t, it’s the Tongararo National Park, and in the last few years since smartphones gave us cameras I must have taken dozens and dozens of the same picture! Looking out from Mount Ruapehu to Mt Ngarahoe, and all the beautiful King Country to the west. I take that pic every time because somehow I can’t resist capturing the wonder. But of course the pictures never really amaze me later. They just remind me of the moment I was blown away when I looked out over creation, again.

So if you’re feeling like growing, may I suggest three things for starters

Get outside, somewhere, anywhere that gives you a thrill. And let God in creation amaze you. Genesis 1:31
Read the Bible, slowly and prayerfully. And let God amaze you with wisdom. Matthew 7:28
Watch a really gifted person doing their thing. A musician, an artist, a mechanic… and let God impress you with humanity’s intelligent design.

A wonderful thing about mission radio is how many people contact us, amazed by what they’ve heard and experienced. The wonder of God’s grace and love is so well known in many Western lives. But still today, millions from Africa to Asia find the life-giving truths of God new and amazing. Let’s not become weary in our own spiritual and emotional growth, nor that of millions of others. Let Jesus amaze you, then pass it on.

Be encouraged

Matt

WOW!