Rate Multiplied by Time

RATE multiplied by time equals distance. If I walk from our church in the southwest of Dallas to downtown Dallas, which is about eleven miles, and I start off at 11:00 in the morning, it’s going to take me a long time to get there—probably about four hours or so. If, at 11:45, you decide that you want to go downtown but you want to drive, you will get there a lot faster.

Even though I started out earlier than you, you are going to get there before me because you are moving at a faster rate of speed than I am. You’ll be covering more territory in a shorter amount of time than I. You’ll be there and have had lunch before I even get to the Trinity River that precedes downtown.

The rate of your speed will allow you to cover more distance than the slow rate that I will be traveling. What is the relevance of that to your spiritual growth? Some folks have been coming to church for years. Some folk were almost born in church, raised in church, and they still aren’t downtown yet because they are moving along at a crawl.

Then there are those people who’ve only been saved five years, but who have reached a steady level of spiritual stability because they moved at a faster rate. God has guaranteed maturity to every believer as a real option, but it is what each believer does with their time that will determine the rate of their speed and time to arrival at the destination of maturity.