“The question is always useful, but especially so at certain seasons. A Saturday night, a communion Sunday, the return of a birthday, the end of a year – all these are seasons that ought to set us thinking and makes us look within. Time is fast flying. Life is fast ebbing away. The hour is daily drawing nearer when the reality of our Christianity will be tested, and it will be seen whether we have built on the Rock or on the sand. Surely it becomes us from time to time to examine ourselves and take account of our souls? Do we get on in spiritual things? Do we grow?”

“When I speak of growth in grace I only mean increase in degree, size, strength, vigour and power of the graces which the Holy Spirit plants in the Believer’s heart. I hold that every one of those graces admits of growth, progress and increase. I hold that repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, zeal, courage, and the like may be little or great, strong or weak, vigorous or feeble, and may vary greatly in the same man at different periods of his life. When I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this – that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked. He manifests more of it in his life. He is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith and from grace to grace.”

J.C Ryle on Holiness

May this Lord’s Day be a day of examining ourselves, to see if we are growing in grace…