Bible verses about growth

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Luke's one sentence on the quiet years between the temple at twelve and the river at thirty. Jesus grew, in four directions at once, and the Gospel treats that as worth recording.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

A song for the Sabbath, its author unnamed. Palms and cedars grow slowly and stand for a long time, which is the kind of growth the psalm has in mind.

Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James, traditionally the brother of Jesus, writing to scattered believers. Maturity here is the finished work of perseverance, so the hard season is not an interruption of growth but the means of it.

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday.

Traditionally attributed to Solomon, in a chapter of a father's advice to his son. Dawn does not arrive all at once, and neither does a righteous life; the point is the direction, brighter and brighter.

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation

Peter to new believers, using the least flattering picture of growth in the New Testament. A baby's appetite is not dignified, but it is the reason the baby grows.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head.

Paul on how a church grows up: by speaking truth, and speaking it in love. Either one without the other stunts the growth, which is why he names both.

being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Paul from prison, to the church he loved most. The growth belongs to God from the first day to the last, which is why he can be confident about people who are plainly not finished.

He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes to make it even more fruitful.

Jesus on the night before His death. The branch that is already bearing fruit is the one that gets pruned, so a season of cutting back may be a sign of growth rather than the opposite.

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

The last verse Peter wrote, as far as we have them. Grace and knowledge grow together, and the command is in the present tense, with no point at which a believer is done.

No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it.

An unnamed writer to Christians tempted to give up. The verse admits the discipline is painful, then names the harvest, and the honesty about the first half is what makes the second believable.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.

Paul, in the middle of the chapter on love. Growing up meant setting something aside, and he says so without embarrassment; maturity involves leaving things, not only adding them.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Paul on what happens to a person who keeps looking at Christ: they come to resemble Him, by degrees. The verb is passive, since nobody transforms themselves.

Therefore, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

Paul to a church he had never visited. Rooted, built up, established, overflowing: pictures from the garden and the building site, and both take time.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

Paul, turning from doctrine to daily life. The growth happens in the mind first, and the test of it is a person who can tell what is good, which is a quieter result than most people expect.