by Christopher Alan Sweeney

Created on: March 30, 2010

If you’re lucky there comes a time in your life when you find that bottom where all you have left is God and you find that God is all you need. Only at that point can a whole new world of spiritual growth become possible.

The great Russian author Alexsandr Solzhenitzyn found his bottom in a camp for political prisoners. When all hope of ever being released was gone; when he was freezing and starving he prayed to God thanking God for the imprisonment which had brought him to the realization that God himself was all he had and all he needed.

This is not to say that spiritual growth is not possible for one who has never suffered extreme circumstances. Nor is it impossible that a new intellectual comprehension of God would not contribute to a greater understanding and appreciation of God. Of course those things can be true. But if one is to come to a new, bright, shining, crystal clear and climactic vision of one’s relationship with the Almighty significant discomfort is probably required.

Witness all the ascetics: John the Baptist, St. Simeon and Jesus Himself. John lived in the desert; ate locusts and honey and wore only a goatskin. St. Simeon spent forty years atop a column. Jesus, Himself, found it necessary to fast forty days in the desert. These are but a few of the countless examples of those who chose an adverse experience to put themselves in the frame of mind and spiritual condition preparatory to a new experience of the Godhead.

When God is all you have it is so true that you realize He is all you need and all you want.

Spiritual growth is not religiosity. It has been said that: “Religion is man’s way of relating to God. Jesus is God’s way of relating to man.” But spiritual growth is not an exclusive province of any denomination of Christianity or even Christianity itself. Adherents to other faiths have reported experiencing dynamic spiritual growth as well.

Spiritual growth is growing in both the knowledge of and love of our Creator.

When you get there, in that state of proximity to the creator, many mystical and strange things seem to happen:

You’re about to pull out into traffic though you can’t see because of the car on your left who is trying to make a left and must wait for the red arrow to turn green. The light to go straight has turned green and yet you don’t go. Then a car comes barreling through the intersection running the light. He would have clobbered you if you had gone. Why didn’t

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