Growing spiritually does not just happen by accident. It is not something that falls on you while you are going about your day. It is something you have to want, pursue, and stay intentional about.
So before getting into the ways a Christian can grow spiritually, the first thing to settle is desire. If you truly desire something, the rate at which you pursue it will be something else entirely. You will be intentional, you will be consistent, you will not need anyone to push you.
But if it is something you do not really want, if it feels like something being forced on you, you will lack zeal. You will just go through the motions and wonder why nothing is changing.
Thus, spiritual growth starts with you having reasons. Because if you do not have reasons why you want to grow, you will not see reasons to push for it. If you know that without growing, certain things in your life and destiny will suffer, you will want to make sure you do not become a victim of that. That desire is where it all begins. Now, here are the ways to go about it.
5 Ways a Christian Can Grow Up Spiritually
1. Stay in God’s Word:
The first and most non-negotiable way a Christian can grow spiritually is by staying close to God’s Word. You cannot joke with this. Just as you cannot grow physically without food, you cannot grow spiritually without the Word. You have to eat. Even when you fast, you cannot fast every single day of your life. There will always be days you eat something, drink something, because the body needs it to function and grow.
Think about a newborn baby. Doctors will tell you that a newborn must take the mother’s milk because it is what helps the child grow. You cannot starve a newborn baby. Nobody would say, it is my child and I need the child to fast. You cannot do that. You would kill the child. That is exactly the same way it is in the spirit. If we need food to grow in the physical, we need something to grow in the spiritual, and that something is the Word of God.
The Word of God literally becomes the food you eat. And just as you would never say, I ate today so I will not eat tomorrow, the Word of God should never be treated as optional or something you read today and come back to next week.
The Bible puts it plainly in 1 Peter 2:2: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.”
As a new believer, a new convert, the Word of God is something you must constantly feed on. Because there is no way you can say you are growing spiritually and you are far from God’s Word. What are you learning? What do you know? You cannot grow in a direction you are not moving towards.
It is as you stay in God’s Word that God begins to reveal things to you, open your understanding, and show you the way things really are. The more time you spend in His Word, the more God grants you access to that maturity. You will not be like children tossed to and fro. You will be different, grounded, and sharpened.
And you cannot replace the Word of God with anything else. Not a devotional booklet. Not books by authors. Not sermons. The Word of God on its own, from Genesis to Revelation, is what you need. You pick whatever book you want to start with, you sit on it, the Holy Spirit breathes on it, grants you understanding, breaks it down, and the more you keep at it, the more it sharpens and shapes you into who God wants you to be.
2. Pray Without Ceasing:
The second way a Christian can grow spiritually is through prayer. Prayer is communication with God. It is where you spend time with Him, tell Him all that you need, and learn to hear what He has to say back.
When you are just starting out with God, your prayers will mostly be full of requests. God, I want this. God, I want that. And God, in His mercy, is gracious enough to answer many of those prayers because He knows where you are and He knows you do not yet need so much. But as you keep spending time with Him, something shifts. It gets to a point where your prayer requests are no longer about your wants, your needs, those petty things. You graduate to that point where you are asking God, what is on your mind? What should I pray about? What is bothering you? Is there any burden you want to lay on my heart? Give me a burden for souls.
You move from that realm of being a child that is always give me, give me, give me, to that realm of someone God can begin to trust with information. He starts saying things like, I want you to pray for this person. I want you to win this soul. I want you to do this. You become more responsible when it comes to the kingdom agenda. And that shift is a sign that you are growing.
It is in the place of prayer that God begins to work on you. The more you come before Him, the more He takes away the things that are not meant to be in your life. The more He works on your character, shapes you, breaks you, and remoulds you. There are some things you will learn from studying God’s Word, and there are some things that the only place you will get to learn them is in the place of prayer. The only place God can do certain interpretations, the only place He can cause you to have certain encounters, is in the place of prayer.
And if God wants to address something and you are not available in the place of prayer, He will minister to you through the Word. That is why you cannot afford to stay far from either of them. The Word and prayer go hand in hand. You cannot love one and neglect the other. They must be balanced.
As a believer who wants to grow spiritually, you cannot say you love studying the Word, but you do not like praying. And you cannot say prayer is your thing, but you do not like studying. The two must work together. Because there are some things God can only do in the place of prayer, and some things He can only do through the Word.
There are even some prayer points that will spring up in your heart while you are studying the Word. When that happens, pray them. Do not set them aside. Those prayer points are part of the process. At the end of the day, you will look back and realise that each one did something in you, and that each one was gradually making you a better person.
3. Stay Connected to Other Believers:
A Christian that wants to grow spiritually cannot afford to stay far from the brethren. The Bible is clear: do not forsake the gathering of other believers. You cannot decide to go at it alone, to shut yourself off from other people and say you do not need anyone. There are people who know what you do not know yet. There are things God might want to teach you, but because He has already brought someone else through that experience, He will simply refer you to them. Go and join this church. Go and meet this person. Sit under this person’s teaching.
You cannot afford to be on your own. You have to trust God to connect you to the right people and to a growing, believing church where you can learn, where you can sit under a pastor who is feeding you every Sunday, where you are being transformed and enlightened.
Being in a physical church atmosphere does something that sitting at home, already distracted by everything around you, simply cannot do. So do not fall into the trap of saying you will just join online service every time. Sometimes, being physically present does more for your growth than you realise.
If you are thinking of neglecting the gathering of the brethren because you feel believers are not who they claim to be, or they are this and that, understand that in doing so, you are only limiting yourself. And if you ever have questions, if something is bothering you after studying, if you are not getting fast answers and it is weighing on you, you can reach out to your pastor. You can reach out to the head of your unit. That kind of covering and accountability is something you simply cannot do without.
4. Listen to Sermons and Sit Under Anointed Teachers:
Another way to grow spiritually is by listening to sermons and reading good spiritual materials. It might seem like the same thing as going to church, but it is different. There are men and women of God who release powerful sermons that wake your faith up, bring your spirit alive, and shed more light on things you have already been studying in your secret place. When you listen to them, you gain a greater understanding of what you already have, and your knowledge deepens.
So you cannot say you do not follow ministers or that you do not listen to sermons. You have to create time for it.
That said, especially as a newly growing believer, you cannot afford to listen to everybody. Too many voices at once will confuse you. You have to trust God to show you who to sit under. Ask Him: God, who do you want me to be learning from right now? He will direct you. He might say, stay under this particular man of God for now. And as you grow, He will expand your table. For the matter of tithing, listen to this one. For the matter of forgiveness, listen to this one. God is the one running the whole thing, and when He is the one directing it, your growth will not be a confusing or overwhelming one. You will not get to the point where you are so tired and scattered that you want to give up.
The Bible says that without controversy, the lesser is always blessed of the greater. You will always receive more from those who have gone further. God, knowing this principle, will place you under people who have already paid the price to grow. They are still growing themselves, but they have passed the level you are just trying to reach. So God will place you under them so you can learn from them better.
But as you are learning from them, do not let them become your only focus. Do not get so caught up in their teachings that you begin to neglect God’s Word or the place of prayer. Everything must be kept in balance. If one side is off, your growth will not be a proper one. You will notice that things start to feel somehow, that something is not quite right, even if you cannot put your finger on it.
Whatever you listen to, wherever you go, it should never be placed above the Word of God. Whatever God says to you should stand above everything any man is saying, because God is the one who will lead you to those men in the first place. So do not esteem the words of men above the Word of God. Once you start doing that, even without realising it, confusion can begin to set in.
Just because you listened to a two-hour sermon does not mean you do not need to open your Bible that day. Listening to a sermon does not cover up for reading your Bible. Studying the Word should be a fixed thing, a non-negotiable, regardless of whether you listened to a sermon or not. Nobody and nothing should get you to a place where you are putting them above God.
The same place those men of God are drawing from is God Himself. So it is far better to stay close to that source than to stay closely connected to the vessels and slowly lose the God who is filling them. Never esteem the words of men above the Word of God.
5. Promptly Obey the Word and Voice of God:
As you go about all of these things, as you genuinely desire to grow spiritually and spend more time in God’s presence through prayers, Word studies, listening to sermons, and reading Spirit-filled materials, God will speak back. And sometimes what He speaks comes with instructions.
When that happens, you must carry out those instructions promptly. Do not sit on them. Do not delay. Because delayed obedience is equally disobedience. Be eager to obey whatever God tells you to do, and do so as soon as possible.
Think about Solomon. God appeared to Solomon and spoke to him, and it was not until Solomon did what God asked of him that God appeared to him a second time. That is not a small thing. God will keep coming back to the first instruction until you have carried it out, because He is a God of order. He does not move on until you have moved first.
So promptly obey all that God asks you to do. Do not push it aside, do not tell yourself you will get to it later, do not let the busyness of life bury what God has dropped in your heart. Carry it out. And as you draw nearer to God through that obedience, God will surely draw nearer to you. More instructions will follow. More access will open up. More of His presence will become available to you. Because you have shown Him that you can be trusted with what He gives you.
Toppings on How Can a Christian Grow Spiritually
Growing spiritually is not something that happens to you. It is something you build, day by day, choice by choice.
Stay in the Word. Show up in the place of prayer. Stay connected to the right people. Sit under anointed teachers. And through all of it, keep God at the centre. Because everything else flows from that.
The moment you begin to put anything above Him, even good things, things will begin to slip. Keep the balance, stay intentional, and trust God to take you from one level to the next.
