Do you ever think your everyday spiritual life shows little progress in growing spiritually?
When our girls were little, we could see their daily and even moment-to-moment physical development progress and changes, but our now 42- year-old son Joey (who has special needs) was different. His progression was gradual, often making it hard to identify. Yet, when others didn’t see him for a while, they easily recognized his growth. In our spiritual lives, we’d love to have the fast progression that everyone notices. Realistically, our learning is slow but hopefully steady!
I’d like to think we first:
1. Profess our faith.
2. Process all that means to our mind, heart, and life.
3. Make progress with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
As parents of one adult son with special needs and two adult daughters living what we’d call a typical life, we realize that they have grown up, made progress, and moved forward well, not perfectly, as none of us have, but well. While we have all moved forward in our faith, we have also realized that it has sustained us through many ups and downs in our personal and spiritual lives. Our frustration, at times, has been that we aren’t progressing in our spiritual growth as quickly or deeply as we hope. And there are many, perhaps the ones reading this right now, that have never taken that step of faith to let God be in charge—to surrender to His will. Without God, we don’t know how we’d have made it through 42 years of caring for our son.
If you have hesitated, not thought about, not cared about, or just plain didn’t want to ask Jesus to be your all in all and help in every situation, we would love for you to sit quietly for a moment and contemplate that decision.
Then, if you might be ready to have the Lord be your Savior as well as Lord, please pray with us,
“Lord, Jesus, I recognize that I’ve sinned against You and that you have provided (by your death on the cross and resurrection to life) a new life for me when I put my faith in you; and I want to do that now. Thank You for saving me from my sin, giving me a new and eternal life in and with You forever. Thank you for helping me to understand the daily and moment-to-moment process of growing in Your will and Your ways. Help me to make the progress that will strengthen me to serve You all the days of my Life.”
If you prayed to receive the Lord, we pray that you will recognize when He helps you in decisions so that you can thank Him. We know He helps all of us who know and serve Him and want to process (by reading and studying His word and attending church) all that we are learning from Him. As we do that, may we begin to see the progress of change in our thoughts, our actions, and how we serve others and Him. We know we can’t do this alone, but through His Holy Spirit, we will grow and become an example of Him to others. He will help us to do that. He will help us to see ways to serve Him, our families and friends, and our loved ones with special needs. In this way, we will become loving examples of progress. Oh, may we reflect Him.
Dr. Joe and Cindi Ferrini share their newest book: Love All-Ways: Embracing Marriage Together on the Special Needs Journey (order at www.cindiferrini.com). They are authors, speakers, and bloggers for several blogging sites on marriage, family and special needs. They spoke nationally for FamilyLife Weekend To Remember Marriage Get-a-Ways for 20 years, authored *Unexpected Journey – When Special Needs Change our Course, and have been interviewed on Focus on the Family, FamilyLife Today, Janet Parshall at “In the Market”, Chris Brooks of “Equipped” and various other radio and television venues. Connect with them at: www.cindiferrini.com, and via social media at: www.facebook.com/cindi.ferrini, www.facebook.com/UnexpectedJourney/, www.facebook.com/MyMarriageMatters/ (Copyright by Ferrini's and also used with permission by Familylife.com/artilces.)
