Grow like a Lily

We understand that God wants us to grow to maturity and there is a corresponding desire in our hearts to be like Him. Like the women in Song of Songs, we say “Draw me and I will run after you”.

Sometimes we think that growing up to be like Jesus, is all about how we are performing. Did I love as I should have? Did I act like Jesus today toward people - did I love them or share with lost people or love my wife as I should? Am I on my way to the fullness of the stature of Jesus? But as my friend Stephen McCracken points out, our focus needed to be realigned. Becoming mature is not the goal but coming to know Christ is our goal.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Php 3:12

He doesn't say in what the goal is, so it must be mentioned before in earlier verses. Yes, here it is! Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,..... that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection,..........”. Php 3:8

Our focus is for us to personally seek and know Christ Himself. Our life of finding, apprehending and running after God, is to know Him more; it's all about the relationship. All a lily does to grow is keep drawing water up it dost try!
Friend, sometimes we have made the goal, maturity (a changed life) and being like him but the goal is knowing Him! Stephen said, “Maturity is the evidence of the destination and not the destination itself”.