Why Growing in Christ is Like Learning Guitar

Photo by Louish Pixel

First off, if you've tried and failed at guitar, don't freak out.

Second, if you want to ACTUALLY learn how to play, my special fee for email list followers is $25 a lesson. Talk about incentives, right? I'm assuming everyone will be jumping all over that one.

I'm only one man, people. I can't teach everybody how to play.

SOOOO... Why is growing in Christ like learning how to play the guitar?

Well, I'll tell you.

It starts out crazy awesome...

We've had quite a journey, me and my trusty Washburn. I got her (or him) when I was a junior in high school, and we've been best friends ever since. I thumped down the stairs on Christmas morning to find ol' Washy just staring at me next to the tree, as if to say, "Laying with the rest of the presents is beneath me. And besides, I can't fit." I did nothing else for weeks.

When you first make a commitment to follow Christ, cloud nine ensues. You just feel like nothing is ever going to feel bad again, and nothing is ever going to change. Everything is just peachy.

And then it gets hard.

Learning guitar sounds great in theory -- You'll be able to play your favorite songs, rock in a band, impress all the ladies. And then you get into the nitty gritty. And then it gets hard. And then your fingers get swollen. And then you want to stop.

If you want to advance, it takes actual hard work. Sound familiar?

At some point in your Christian walk, you realize you have to actually sacrifice things when you follow Christ. You realize it doesn't feel good all the time. You realize studying the Bible and listening for God's voice is hard work. And sometimes you want to quit listening and go play guitar.

Sometimes you don't feel like you're getting better... 

There was a point in time where I woke up one morning after practicing guitar for three hours the night before, only to find out I was worse than when I had started yesterday. Talk about frustrating. Sometimes you put in a ton of practice, and you get minimal, if any, returns. Sometimes, it even seems like you've gotten weaker.

Does the term "backslidden" mean anything to you? Because I've had plenty of times where I wondered if the last few months or so of my spiritual life had been wasted. And sometimes, even when I'm putting forth the effort to study and learn, I just end up feeling more confused. It's hard to recognize you're growing when every day feels more confusing.

But when you zoom out, you are.

The times where I didn't see results in my guitar playing were always frustrating. But after a while, when I zoomed out from the daily graph to see the monthly or even the yearly graph, I saw the upward trend. I actually was getting better.

Going through trials has a similar way of making you feel like the wheels have come off. But when you zoom out, you can see how far you've come. You remember all the things you've already overcome to get to this point. And you realize God's been faithful, and you're closer now than you were a few years ago. And then, you recognize it -- you actually are growing.

And you're not really sure how.

The funny thing is, I didn't even recognize it. I just suddenly could play the songs I was practicing. And I didn't really know how or why my fingers just decided to finally work -- especially when they seemed so adamant about not working for the previous two months. They just did. And then I began to play full songs, which inspired me to learn more and practice even harder songs. And thus, I learned the rhythm of learning how to do new things. And I've never again been so discouraged by the process. Because I realized it was normal. I was normal.

One of my favorite verses right now is Mark 4:26-29, where Jesus describes living in His kingdom like this:

"A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Growing in Christ is like watering a seed. You don't have to make it grow; you just have to provide the right environment for it to grow. And then it grows by itself, in its own way, on its own time. And then finally, you look back, and there's something sticking out of the ground!

There's a rhythm to growing.

It's a correlation more than a steady incline.

Photo by Eric Fischer

 Some days you'll be higher than normal, and other days you'll be lower. But when you plot out the days and zoom out, you see they point upward... especially when you're consistently giving yourself the right environment to grow. James Clear, a blogger and weightlifter, wrote a great post about how whatever you do consistently gives you compounded results.

It's no wonder Paul compared growing in Christ to growing your physical body. Because all kinds of growing share the same rhythm.

And that's why growing in Christ is like learning to play guitar. It's all about the steady progress that comes from time and experience.


1 Timothy 4:7-8 - Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.