Spiritual growth in Scripture is not an achievement to be measured but a life to be lived — the natural outworking of a relationship that is already secure. When growth gets reframed as performance, the Christian life quietly becomes exhausting. Understanding the difference between formation and performance changes how believers read their own progress, their failures, and the ordinary slow pace at which God works.
A man once described his experience of being a new Christian to me like this: “The first year, I was on fire. I was reading, praying, everything felt alive. But then I started comparing myself to other people at church and realized I was behind. They knew more Bible. They seemed more peaceful. They talked about God more naturally than I did. I started trying to catch up, and somewhere in the effort, the whole thing started to feel like work.”
He didn’t say he stopped believing. He said he started performing — showing up in certain ways, saying certain things, maintaining a particular appearance of spiritual progress. And the performance was exhausting in a way the early relationship hadn’t been.
What Formation Actually Is
Paul writes to the Colossians — who were being pressured by various religious teachers to acquire additional practices, experiences, and knowledge to complete their faith:
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
Colossians 2:6–7
That opening word — “therefore” — points back to everything Paul has already established about who they are in Christ. And then the instruction: walk in him the same way you received him. How did they receive him? Through trust, not achievement. This is the same logic behind identity before responsibility: who you are in Christ precedes what you do for Him. Through grace, not performance. Formation happens the same way faith begins: through relationship with Christ, rooted in grace, shaped over time by the Spirit.
The image Paul uses — being rooted and built up — is organic and architectural. Trees don’t grow by effort. Buildings take time. Neither is hurried into completion without cost to the structure.
The Performance Trap
Performance in the Christian life usually shows up quietly, without announcing itself. It looks like measuring your spiritual progress against others, treating spiritual disciplines as scorecards, performing for community rather than living in it, and treating growth as something you produce.
Paul’s answer to the last of those in Galatians is direct:
“Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
Galatians 3:3
Growth is God’s work in you, not your work for God. Paul understood this from the inside — the thorn that tames our boasting shows how weakness becomes the ground of grace. The disciplines are means of relationship, not measures of standing. And performing for community — presenting a version of your faith that looks further along than it is — tends to be lonely, because you’re not actually known. You’re observed.
What Faithful Growth Looks Like
This doesn’t mean nothing is required of believers. The New Testament is full of instruction, exhortation, and command. Formation is not passive. But the engine of formation is relationship, not effort — and the posture is receptivity, not striving.
Faithful growth looks like regular, unhurried engagement with Scripture — not as a box to check, but as the ongoing means by which the Spirit shapes and forms. Prayer that is honest rather than polished, because relationship with God deepens through honesty. Remaining in community, where the friction of genuine relationships and the steadying effect of others further along the path are ordinary means of grace. And returning after failure — which is perhaps the clearest distinguisher between formation and performance. Performance dreads failure because it shatters the appearance. Formation treats failure as part of the process.
Paul tells the Philippians:
“I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Philippians 1:6
That’s not a performance review. It’s a promise. God finishes what He starts.
A Slower Pace Than You Expected
Most believers find that real growth is slower than they expected, and less dramatic. It shows up gradually, in the accumulation of small decisions over time — the pattern of return after failure, the deepening of prayer, the slow reshaping of how you see people and situations. It rarely comes with a visible milestone.
That slowness isn’t failure. It’s the pace at which deep things form. The goal of the Christian life isn’t spiritual performance — it’s becoming someone who loves God and loves people, slowly and imperfectly, over a long time, within a relationship whose security doesn’t depend on the quality of the progress. Rest in that. It’s more stable than any performance would be.
Key Takeaways
- Spiritual growth is the outworking of relationship with Christ, not the product of religious effort or performance.
- Paul’s instruction in Colossians 2 is to walk in Christ the same way faith was received — through trust and grace, not achievement.
- The performance trap shows up quietly as comparison, scorecard-keeping, community performance, and the belief that growth is something believers manufacture.
- Faithful growth is characterized by honest engagement with Scripture and prayer, community, and returning after failure — not by visible milestones or measurable achievement.
- Growth is God’s work in believers; the promise of Philippians 1:6 is that He will complete what He has started.
Questions Worth Sitting With
Growth in the Christian life tends to show up in patterns rather than moments — a gradual deepening of care for others, an increasing comfort with uncertainty, a quicker return after failure, a slower rise of anger. It rarely announces itself with a dramatic moment. If you’re continuing to engage with Scripture, prayer, and community — and returning after failure rather than walking away — that is growth, even when it doesn’t feel like it.
The same practice can be either, depending on the heart behind it. Spiritual disciplines practiced as means of deepening relationship with God are formation. The same practices kept up to maintain an appearance, or used as evidence of standing before God, become performance. One produces freedom; the other produces anxiety. The question worth asking: am I doing this for relationship, or for the record?
No — the desire for growth is good. The problem comes when that desire tips into comparison with others, or into the belief that you’re responsible for manufacturing the growth yourself. A healthy desire for growth looks like honest engagement with the means God provides — Scripture, prayer, community, the ordinary rhythms of faithful living — while releasing the pace and outcome to God.
Mostly by remembering that you don’t actually know anyone else’s interior life. What you observe in others is curated, not complete. And comparison — in either direction — isn’t a useful measure of anything. The more productive question is: am I walking faithfully in what I’ve been given today?
They’re normal and expected. Formation isn’t a straight line, and long stretches of apparent stillness are part of almost every believer’s story. God is not absent from those seasons. Often the work He’s doing isn’t visible from the inside. Keep showing up, keep the ordinary rhythms, and trust the One who promised to finish what He started.
Christ reigns. Christ restores. Christ will return.
Longing for Christ, learning to wait faithfully.
Your brother in Christ,
Duane