Many believers have known seasons of real spiritual growth. A sermon series opens something up. A retreat, a hard season or a fresh commitment brings a new seriousness about prayer, Scripture and obedience. Many church leaders see the same thing in their congregants: they are moved, they respond, and for a while things look different. Then, often without anyone deciding it, life settles back into its former shape.
Those seasons are not worthless. God can use them, and often does. But Scripture does not describe lasting growth as something a single moment produces. It describes growth that lasts as the fruit of a continuing life: God at work in His people, and His people holding on to His word, remaining in Christ, obeying Him and not giving up. A moment can begin something real. What makes it last is what continues after the moment has passed.
Joy Without Roots
Jesus described this difference in the parable of the sower. Some people, He said, hear God’s message and “receive it with joy” (Luke 8:13, NLT), but they have no deep roots, and when they are tested they fall away. Then He describes another kind of hearer:
“And the seeds that fell on the good soil represent honest, good-hearted people who hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest.”
Luke 8:15, NLT
Jesus is speaking about how people receive God’s message itself, so the parable is not a verdict on every believer whose growth has slowed. But notice what separates the two kinds of hearers. Both heard. Both responded, and the first responded with joy. What lasted was the hearing that clung to the word and kept producing, patiently, over time. The harvest did not come from the first response. It came to those who held on.
Fruit That Lasts Comes From Abiding
On the night He was betrayed, Jesus told His disciples He had appointed them to “produce lasting fruit” (John 15:16, NLT). In the same conversation He told them where that fruit comes from:
“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:5, NLT
The fruit is real, and it appears in the disciples’ lives. But it does not begin with them. It grows from a continuing connection to Christ. Jesus connects remaining with His words remaining in them (John 15:7) and with obeying His commands (John 15:10). A branch does not produce fruit by straining. It bears fruit as it stays joined to the vine.
What Scripture Puts Together
Put those two pictures beside other New Testament teaching, and the things that contribute to lasting growth come into view. None of them is a technique, and none of the believer’s responses works on its own.
God is the source. Growth is His work before it is ours. He produces it by His Spirit, and Paul calls believers to “follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives” (Galatians 5:25, NLT). The Spirit’s work continues, and so does the following.
God’s Word is what we hold on to. The branch has Christ’s words remaining in it, and those represented by the good soil hear God’s Word, cling to it, and patiently produce a harvest. Growth that lasts keeps returning to Scripture, not as information to get through but as truth to keep living from. Scripture is central to the renewing of the mind Paul describes in Romans 12:2.
Obedience is how the connection is lived. Jesus ties remaining to obeying. Growth lasts where truth is not only received but acted on, again and again, in ordinary situations. Over time, that repeated response becomes practice. It does not earn growth; it is how a believer keeps responding to what God has shown.
Perseverance carries it through the long middle.
“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”
Galatians 6:9, NLT
Paul is encouraging believers to keep doing good. His words fit everything said so far: the harvest comes later than the sowing, and it comes to those who do not give up.
Other believers help us hold on. Lasting growth is not sustained in isolation. Believers who are holding on to the same word help one another keep holding on when drifting would be easier.
And all of it is progressive. Sanctification is the work of a lifetime, not a single event. Lasting growth does not mean finished growth. It means growth that keeps going.
What these have in common is that each one continues. That is why a single moment, however real, cannot carry growth by itself.
Why This Question Matters to Me
This question is not theoretical for me. I spent decades in Christian settings with a good deal of biblical knowledge, and there were still areas where what I knew was not consistently how I lived. The question that mattered was not how to know more, but what Scripture says makes growth last.
I am still learning the answer. I have not finished growing, and nothing in this article rests on my experience. Scripture is the authority here. My story is only the reason I care about the question.
What a Church Can Faithfully Give
For church leaders, this can be both sobering and freeing. No church can manufacture lasting growth in another person. God produces it, and each believer must respond to Him. But a church can faithfully give people what Scripture says growth draws on: the Word taught clearly, encouragement to obey it in daily life, real relationships with other believers, and patience for the long work. The question is not only whether people are moved, but whether what moves them is given room to keep going.
From a Moment to a Continuing Response
So if growth in your life, or in your church, has tended to rise and then fade, the answer is usually not a stronger moment. It is learning to keep living what God has already shown you, in the ordinary situations where it is tested, week after week, while depending on Him for the growth.
That continuing response is what The Process, the approach of Renewing Your Mind Discipleship Ministry, is built around: returning again and again to what Scripture teaches, in the places where you actually live, and trusting God to produce what lasts.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
