“Grow in grace”—not in just one grace, but in every grace. Grow especially in that foundational grace: faith. Believe God’s promises more firmly than you have before. Let your faith increase in strength, steadiness, and simplicity.
Grow also in love. Pray that your love may widen in scope, deepen in intensity, and become more practical—shaping every thought, word, and action. Grow as well inhumility. Learn to lie very low before God, and to understand more clearly your own nothingness. And as you grow downward in humility, seek also to grow upward—drawing nearer to God in prayer and enjoying closer fellowship with Jesus.
May God the Holy Spirit enable you to “grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Whoever does not grow in the knowledge of Jesus refuses the path of blessing. To know Him is eternal life, and to grow in the knowledge of Him is to grow in joy. The person who does not desire to know more of Christ has not truly known Him at all. Anyone who has tasted this wine will thirst for more. Christ satisfies completely—yet in such a way that desire is not dulled, but sharpened. If you truly know the love of Jesus, then like the deer that pants for streams of water, your soul will long for deeper draughts of His love.
If you do not desire to know Him better, then you do not truly love Him—for love always cries, “Nearer, nearer.” To be absent from Christ is misery; to be in His presence is heaven. Therefore, do not rest content without an ever-growing intimacy with Jesus. Seek to know Him more fully—in His divine nature, in His humanity, in His finished work, in His death, in His resurrection, in His present glorious intercession, and in His future royal return. Stay close to the Cross, and meditate deeply on the mystery of His wounds.
An increase in love for Jesus, and a clearer understanding of His love for us, is one of the surest signs of true growth in grace.