One of the most reassuring things about walking with God is that growth leaves traces. You do not have to guess whether you are moving forward or standing still.
There are real and tangible signs that show up in your everyday life and tell you that God has been working on you from the inside out.
So how can you get to that point where you can tell that you are growing spiritually? How do you know that all the praying, the studying, the fellowshipping is actually adding up to something?
Below are the clearest 7 Signs of Spiritual Growth to look out for:
1. Your Hunger and Desire for God Increases:
The first sign of spiritual growth is that your hunger and desire for God goes through the roof. You notice that your love for God begins to expand and enlarge in ways you cannot quite explain. You discover that you desire more of God, more of His presence, more of His voice.
When it comes to anything that has to do with God, you are just interested. You are all in. You are not complaining, you are not murmuring, you are not the person asking whether you must pray every time or attend every Bible study. That kind of resistance begins to fall away, because your love for God has outgrown it.
Your love for God enlarges. And with that enlargement comes a deeper desire for intimacy with Him. You want to know God better. You want to dig deeper into what it means to walk closely with Him. You want to know what you can keep doing to stay productive in your work with God, what you can keep doing to please Him and make Him happy. You are no longer just going through the motions. You are genuinely pursuing Him, and that pursuit is a clear sign that you are growing spiritually.
2. You Begin to Pursue Knowledge and Understanding of God:
The second sign is that you begin to desire understanding and knowledge. Not just a little bit of it, but more and more. You begin to pursue knowledge, and your hunger for it keeps growing. You become more inquisitive, more curious, more unwilling to just take things at face value without digging into them yourself.
Think about little children between the ages of three and five. Ask any parent of a growing child at that stage, and they will tell you the same thing: the questions never stop. Mummy, why is this? Mummy, why is that? Daddy, how does this work? They just want to know. They are curious about everything around them, and that curiosity is not a sign of trouble. It is a sign that they are growing.
The same thing happens when you begin to grow spiritually. You study God’s Word, and you are always asking questions. It is not even that you do not know what to ask. The questions just keep coming naturally because your desire to know keeps expanding. Why is this? Why is that? How does this work? What does this mean?
And once you get to that point where you are hungry to know more, it will naturally keep you in God’s Word more. You will find yourself going back, digging in, sitting with a passage until it opens up for you. And the fruit of that is that if anyone ever comes to you with something wrong, you can tackle it. You can push back with confidence. Because you know that, from the last time you sat down to study, even if you were confused at first, you took the time to work through it, and now you understand it better. So you cannot be told just anything.
You can stand your ground, and beyond that, you can also help the other person understand. You can clarify, break it down, and bring them along with you. That desire to know better, to do things better, to be better, is a solid sign that you are growing spiritually.
3. You Easily Forgive and Let Things Go:
Another sign is that you do not find it hard to fellowship with the brethren, and you do not neglect the gathering of believers. There are people who, just because of a small offence, just because someone said something or did something that rubbed them the wrong way, decide to stay off church entirely.
They cut themselves off. They check out. And they will give you all kinds of reasons, but at the bottom of it, they have let an offence make a drastic decision for them.
But if you are someone who is growing spiritually, you easily forgive. You address whatever it is, you deal with it, but you do not let it push you to the point of dropping church completely. You do not let petty things have that kind of power over your spiritual life. You let things go. You move on.
4. Your Character Begins to Change:
Beyond forgiving others, you will also begin to notice that certain character traits and weaknesses you used to carry around are simply no longer there. Things you used to do before, you have dropped them. Habits, attitudes, patterns of thinking that used to follow you everywhere-you’ll look back and realise they are gone.
God has been working on you quietly, changing you from the inside out, and the evidence is showing up in how you handle things now.
Once you become intentional about growing, you get to that point where you can tell the difference in yourself. You can look in the mirror and say, this is not the person I used to be. This is not how I used to respond. And you will be proud of yourself, genuinely proud, because you will think back to how you used to get angry at everything, how you used to be selfish, how you used to hold grudges, and then look at who you are now and see that God has done a real work.
That kind of transformation will not make you want to run away from your church or walk away from those mentoring you or become rebellious. If anything, it will make you want to stay close, because you know that it is the proximity to God and to His people that has been producing the change. You yourself can tell. These are the signs, and you will be able to see them clearly.
5. You Become Bold in Confessing Your Faith and Drawing Others to Jesus:
A sign of spiritual growth that many people overlook is boldness. When you are growing spiritually, you do not find it hard to confess God openly. You do not find it hard to tell people about Jesus. You stop beating around the bush. You stop acting shy. You stop asking yourself who you think you are to be talking about God to other people.
Someone who is still in the very early stages of growth might still be acting shy. They might be holding back, saying things like, “Me, I do not want to talk; if I talk, they will say, ‘Who am I?’”
That kind of timidity is understandable when you are just starting out. But as you grow, that begins to fall away. You become more bold and confident in your journey with God. You can profess who you serve without shrinking back. You can say things. You can do things. You can open your mouth in a room full of people who are not expecting it and speak about the God you serve.
This boldness does not come from nowhere. The Holy Spirit imparts the spirit of boldness on you as you spend time in His Word and in prayer. It is deposited in you as you grow. And this is exactly why someone who is not growing spiritually can literally lack it, because they are not spending time with the One who can impart it upon them. They are not in the Word, they are not in prayer, so what is the point? The boldness has nowhere to come from.
But when you are growing, it shows. If the opportunity comes up, you go out to win souls. You do not hold back. You do not pretend you did not see the open door. You walk through it, because the timidity that used to sit on your chest has been lifted off.
6. You Become Selfless and Want Others to Grow:
As you grow spiritually, the Holy Spirit will begin to take away whatever form of selfishness you are holding on to. Little by little, He strips it off you. And you get to that point where you become genuinely selfless.
You stop keeping things to yourself. If you receive a truth, a revelation, a fresh understanding of something in the Word, your first instinct is to share it. You want people around you to come to the same place. You want them to also get to know Jesus, to also have a working, growing relationship with God.
So you will find yourself witnessing to people. Telling people about Christ. Asking someone why they are not studying, why they are not praying. Sharing testimonies of what God has been doing in your time in the Word and in the place of prayer. You will want to tell people, you are missing out. This is what I am enjoying from God’s Word. Come and tap into this too.
7. You Are Not Ashamed to Stand for Christ:
You will get to that point where you are actively encouraging people. You will not hold back or restrict yourself from talking to people just because you think you do not know enough. If you have been praying and God has been helping you, that alone is a testimony worth sharing.
You will not be shy to say, while I was studying, while I was praying, this is what I was trusting God for, and this is what He came through on. And those who hear you will be stirred up. Some of them will want to start working on their own growth. Some of them are people who dropped the whole thing somewhere along the way because of work, because of busyness, because life got loud, and your testimony will be the thing that pulls them back in.
You will not be trying to play both sides and be a believer on Sunday and a non-believer during the week just because you are at work and you want to blend in. You will stand for Christ wherever you find yourself, because you are not trying to sugarcoat anything or hide anything. You know you have nothing to lose. You become very bold about who you profess to love and who you profess to serve, and that is a sure sign that you are truly growing.
Toppings on What Are the Signs of Spiritual Growth
Spiritual growth is not invisible. It shows up in your hunger for God, in your pursuit of knowledge, in how quickly you forgive, in the character shifts you start to notice in yourself, in how boldly you speak about Christ, and in how much you want to bring others along with you on the journey.
Once you become intentional about growing, you will reach a point where you can look back and see the difference. You will be able to say, this is not the person I used to be, because God will be working on you. Hence, keep pressing in until you get to that climax.
