This is a life lesson that everyone learns, but all too often we don’t pay the right attention to it. Motivational speakers love this lesson, as its simplicity gives them free points without even trying.

Whatever you give attention to will grow.

That is, if you have something to learn and you give it the right intention, you will learn it (or at least more than if you didn’t).  If you have a skill you want to develop and you get training and you practice you will most certainly improve.

At church this morning I showed people the green grass I grew, when it had been dry and brown.  How did I do it?  I gave it some attention.  I watered it, and then I fertilised it, and get water up to it.  Guess what?  I grew and it turned this amazing new colour – green.  In truth it isn’t rocket science – whatever you attend to will grow.

The same is true in our spiritual lives.  Too many people somehow think that God has to make all the moves.  After all, isn’t God God?  Well, yes.  But God has so defined things that we get to make moves too.  Those moves get summarily called faith.  And when we give attention towards God, we will most certainly grow in that area of our lives.  The contrary is also true: if we neglect God, our spiritual selves will starve.

Is that somehow unfair?  I think not.  Our priorities determine to what we give our attention.  Those things naturally grow and develop.  Lesser things get less attention, and grow less.

This whole God thing is not some sprinkle of icing sugar over an otherwise conventional life.  It is a whole new order of life, with its own set of life “rules” (I think of spiritual physics), and it needs to be organised around God.  It can’t be organised around you – that just doesn’t work.

So here is the thing: it your spiritual life matters to you, you’re going to have to attend to it.  If you understand that as following Jesus, then you need to be attending to God’s input to your life, primarily in prayer, the Bible and getting together with other Christians at Church.

Everyone knows this is true in every other area of life – of course it’s true about your spiritual life as well.

These next 8 weeks at Northside Mackay, we’re going back to basics to reconnect with the absolute essentials of what we believe to be true about God, ourselves and hoe we come together and live with that. Let’s get into it!  Do that and you will grow as surely as my now green lawn.