'from strength to strength'

We often use this expression when we want to say that someone is growing stronger, not necessarily physically, though it may be that if they have been ill and are recovering. It is sometimes used to describe someone who is growing emotionally or spiritually. Perhaps they have had a hard time but are pulling through and getting more resilient. It is even used of something that is becoming more successful. 'Since Peter joined the firm it is going from strength to strength'.

Not many know that the expression comes from the Bible, from the book of Psalms. Psalm 84 is a psalm of pilgrimage. It either refers to the experience of a pilgrim on his way to a place of worship, probably the Temple in Jerusalem, or to one who imagines he is on his way. All Jewish males were expected to go to the Tabernacle or the Temple (which replaced the Tabernacle) three times a year for special religious feasts. For most of these pilgrims it would have been many days journey on foot. Instead of growing weary the more he travels, the pilgrim's joy in the Lord and his anticipation of fellowship and worship makes him stronger and more determined every day until he at last appears before God in Zion, verse 7. He goes 'from strength to strength'. Every day he reminds himself, 'my soul , yes even fainteth, for the (temple) courts of the Lord'.

Today we do not make such pilgrimages and most of us will not go to Jerusalem to worship. However, we can worship God anywhere, for He is Spirit and we can worship Him in spirit and in truth. For us, the house of God is not a place such as a church or a chapel, it is a people, a congregation of believers. But I want us to think of this progress, this going from strength to strength as referring to our spiritual growth as disciples of Jesus Christ. How is the progress of your christian experience? Is your faith in the Lord getting stronger now that it was when you first became a Christian? Is your love for Jesus more intense? Is your knowledge and understanding of His word the Bible deeper? Are you still drinking the 'milk of the word - the easy stuff, the Sunday School lessons, the simple doctrines - or have you moved on to the 'meat' of the Word, studying it in more depth , understanding the more difficult passages of the Bible, reading it every day? The apostle Paul rebukes believers in the city of Corinth for their lack of spiritual progress. 'But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk (easy christian teaching) not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready', 1 Corinthians 3.1-2. There was no progress.

Are you still full of doubts or have you come to a settled conviction in God, that assurance you are genuinely saved? Again I ask, are you going from strength to strength in the Christian life or are you treading water or even going backwards? There must be progress in the christian life. 'Be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be mature', 1 Corinthians 14.20. Every believer is to 'grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ', 2 Peter 3.18. Are you? Am I? Let us strive to grow in our faith. Let us go 'from strength to strength', 'until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ', Ephesians 4.13-15. May it be so.