PROGRESSION is...

Progression is thought to be advancement in a certain area of your life;  Gaining momentum; or to develop to a more advanced stage.  For example, we progress in our education as we advance from grade to grade, and degree to degree.  I progressed for sixteen years of schooling and obtained a degree in Business Administration. Progression?  Personally and eternally, not so much.  We progress in our careers from position to position and salary to salary. “Moving on up” we sing, but is it at our souls expense?The world has us believing that progress is chronologically linked with success.  Think about it!  “Years involved” in striving to advance only makes one tenured or scholarly or masterly.  But if that next stage of “progression” is the ends to the progressive means, I wonder, is the desire to progress controlling you or are you controlling it?  I do know however, that whatever we choose to serve becomes our master—even progression.The “Topic Buster:”  Progression then, can’t mean “chronologically moving forward or advancing to another stage of outward development.”  Because if so, how then did Jesus rise well above His contemporaries?  How did He progress with His life when it ended up hanging on a cross?  At the time, the progressor’s of theology, royalty, and nobility had ridiculed that He was nothing more than a carpenter, therefore they refused to stop their “progression” to hear Him.  Again, they progressed in the world at their souls expense.  Consider this!  Jesus was not schooled, nor did He sit at the feet of great Rabbi’s.  He did not climb the corporate ladder, nor did He spend more than three years in His work.  Progression then, had nothing to do with advancing chronologically outward, and everything to do with developing maturity inward.  Yes, Jesus was God, but He became a man to show us the progression that matters most in God’s eyes is the one that is “about the Father’s business.”  And His example remains the stencil that we are to trace—“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps” (I Peter 2:21).Thus the one who exercises himself towards godliness truly advances.  And this “progression” is not status that changes yearly, but maturity  that is birthed daily.