Hey friends! Unlike physical growth, spiritual growth is a choice. A choice that requires effort, but also assistance from God. If you don’t make the choice to grow the choice essentially will be made for you and you will be stagnant. Let’s choose to grow together these next 40 days!
Welcome to a community of women who strive to Let Him In.
You are listening to episode 2, titled 40 days of growth.
Hey you guys! This is Kelsie Millet and I am your host here on the Let Him In Podcast, where
my intent is to have these episodes full of thoughts, impressions and ways for you to easily let God into your every day. You will find a new episode uploaded for you here everyday during this 40 day series.
Why is this podcast series 40 days? I really wanted to jump in today about the significance that the number 40 has.
I love to learn about symbolism and why things are the way they are. So let me nerd out for a second and fill you in on some cool facts about the number 40 and why I was led to have this podcast be 40 days.
First, 40 signifies limitless, UNLIMITED. 40 Also generally symbolizes a period of testing, trial or probation. In the scriptures the number 40 is mentioned 146 times. A few examples, Moses lived forty years in Egypt and forty years in the desert before God selected him to lead his people out of slavery. Moses also spent 40 days on the mountain to receive the ten commandments. Then maybe the story we are most familiar with is when the Savior fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness before He started His ministry and called His disciples. Did you know that during this time for the Savior was when He endured temptation from satan? Satan actually sat and tried to tempt Christ just as He tries to tempt all of us.
Lent came from this 40 day trial period of Christ’s. Not only was He being tempted, but He was also voluntarily refraining from food, I assume to be close with God. I say that because as we fast today, that is the purpose of it. To show sacrifice in order to draw closer to our Heavenly Father.
I’m sure most of you know that Lent is 40 days. Lent is meant to be a period of spiritual humility and growth starting 6 weeks before Easter. When I think of Lent I typically first think of sacrifice. Those that participate in lent usually give up something physical- a favorite food, or show, hobby, and then that extra time is spent on spiritual study and prayer. What I don’t typically think of is the growth aspect, that really is a huge part of lent. Yes, there is sacrifice, but the sacrifice is really only there to create this opportunity to grow.
That is what this podcast was created for. Growth! We all always, always have room to grow. But growth is also always a choice. We are all human and we have been given beautiful bodies. And our physical bodies grow as we age whether we want them to or not. But, or spiritual self, or soul. It does not grow without us intentionally feeding it, nourishing it, babying it. It needs us to make choice after choice for growth.
I love the quote by Abraham Maslow that says “One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again, and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
Growth can be scary and hard! That’s why a lot of us are comfortable staying where we are. But God wants us to choose growth and to have a growth mindset. Simply believing that we have the ability to grow and change- as opposed to believing you are stuck as you are. That is the starting point.
We all have lots of different areas in our life where we can spend time growing. But, the point of this 40 days series is to help you choose to grow your relationship with God.
To make this choice most likely will require some type of sacrifice of time, or energy. But I truly believe that if we do choose to strengthen our relationship with our Heavenly Father that He will also draw near to us.
The next 4 episodes of the podcast I am going to be breaking down 4 different areas of our relationship with God and how we can strengthen each one of them. It is going to be so good my friends you are not going to want to miss it! So meet me back here tomorrow morning as we dive into the first area we can work on.
Today I wanted to leave you with a little reminder that I would encourage you to simply just ponder through the day.
Prompted Thought: Unlike physical growth, spiritual growth is a choice. A choice that requires effort, but also assistance from God. If you don’t make the choice to grow the choice essentially will be made for you and you will be stagnant.
So, what choice are you going to make?
I love you guys and again am so thankful to have you here. Leaving you with hopefully a little more stillness, an open mind and a desire to connect with God.
2 Comments
I’m so excited to start this 40 day journey albeit 6 months late. I can’t wait to get my journal and use everyday. Thank you so much!!
I love this insight on sacrifice and growth and that it is a choice to grow spiritually. Thank you so much.