We are in the plague of growth. You are being expected to become the best version of yourself. To juggle work, kids and church. To exceed in college. To be occupied by various classes on a daily basis. To live fulfilled life where work is satisfying and the destiny for vacations can be reached only by plane. Growth means success and reward of growth is happiness.

Growth is not always sanctification.

Sanctification is always growth.

Growth is good if it doesn’t just serve your ego to get stronger and more stubborn. And your ego can camouflage as humble but it’s the ‘old man’ wanting to be preserved. It wants to go with your unredeemed wants, selfish needs. It hides your wounded heart and waves your traumatized emotions around.

Sanctification can start in that place but only when we agree that ‘me first’ has to pull out and be exchanged for ‘Jesus in me’ first. Going this way you are not losing your identity. Your ego submitted to your will aligning with God’s will frees you from your pettiness, smallness. This death is slow but resurrection is its reward.

You need to slow down to see, hear and feel.

New sensitivity of the heart, restored sensitivity of the spirit, receptivity to God’s movement and presence, peace that surpasses understanding, mind that is still going all over yet it is not ruling from chaos, heart that is still reacting yet knows how to regulate its extremes toward wholeness.

Sanctification is more than integration. It is experience of growing in being fully alive and seeing God as close and deep as we allow Him to show Himself.

That’s part of School of the Heart journey. To start without condemnation. To go forward in grace and expectation.