Growing pains: as we grow, we all experience them. There are the physical growing pains we experience in our youth as our bodies grow and our bones stretch, the ones that wake us up in the middle of the night looking for the comfort of our parents. Then there are the emotional growing pains that we experience as we mature. These are often the results of relationships: people hurting us, people breaking our trust, people growing apart. These types of growing pains often occur because we are doing life with people, bumping shoulders with one another, getting our hands dirty together. The more that we do life with one another, the more opportunities there are for growing pains.
Growing pains are a part of life; they are a part of living with our relatives, and they will be part of life within the church. Paul experienced growing pains all throughout his ministry. In 2 Timothy, Paul mentions several people who caused him great pain by leaving him at a time when he needed them the most (2 Tim. 1:15, 4:10, 14). Growing pains should be expected as we continue to grow as a church body and grow closer to one another.
In these moments, we need to persevere and live out the many “one anothers” that we find throughout the scriptures. We are called to love one another (John 13:34), build one another up (Rom. 14:9), bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), and forgive one another (Eph. 4:2). The list goes on, and in more than one place you will find some commands repeated. As we grow, we will hurt one another and let one another down, but our response in those moments is a great opportunity to live out the gospel towards one another. Our prayer as the elders here at Faith BFC is that we continue to grow in our love for one another, even through difficult times.
— Ricardo Vargas, on behalf of the board of elers