Growth Is Success Series

Conrad Hilton, president of the world's leading hotel organization,

has all his life prayed for God's guidance to help him grow. Mr.

Hilton is a professing Christian who, like many other successful

Christians in the world of business, feels that we should never be

content with what is small, but keep our sights set on what is big. He

started in Cisco, Texas with a small $40,000 dollar hotel, but even then

he had his eye on the Waldorf-Astoria, the most famous hotel in the

world at that time, and in 1949 he got it. He did not then give up the

desire to grow, however, but began the long complicated process of

acquiring the Statler Hotels. In 1954 the largest real-estate

transaction ever made up till then in the United States took place

when he bought the Statler chain for the $11,000,000. Conrad Hilton

never stopped growing, and that was one of the key

factors in his success. This has been true for successful people in all

areas of life. Longfellow in his declining years was asked how he

could be so energetic and write with such power. He pointed to an old

apple tree and replied, "That apple tree is very old, but I never saw

prettier blossoms on it than it now bares. The tree grows a little new

wood each year, and I suppose it is out of that new wood that those

blossoms come. Like the apple tree I try to grow a little new wood

each year." A tree that stops growing is a dying tree, and a life that

stops growing is a failing life, for the facts of life, and the teaching of

God's Word is, that growth is success. All that is living must grow or

die. This is as true in the realm of the spirit as it is in the natural

realm. Paul makes this point clear-

I. GROWTH IS ESSENTIAL.

Paul is not scolding the Corinthian Christians because they are

immature babes in Christ. That would be as foolish as scolding a baby

for not being a man. It is not only legitimate, it is absolutely essential

that churches have immature babes. There is no way to grow the

kingdom except by winning new converts who begin as babes. Paul is

not angry because they are immature, but because of their lack of

growth. No one can complain that a baby is a baby, but it is a

problem when an adult is a baby. When a child does not grow it is a

serious matter. Lack of growth is the real issue here, and it is their

failure to grow that is making them fail in the Christian life.

There can be no success without growth. The tragedy of many

Christian lives is that they come to a point where they stop growing.

Elizabeth O'Connor, in her book Our Many Selves, feels that this is

the essence of sin. She writes, "The meaning of sin is usually not that

we try to make ourselves the center of everything. That may happen,

but it is a monstrous perversion. We are usually more subtle. We

make our present state of selfhood the meaning of existence and thus

refuse the deeper meaning which lies within and beyond this present."

In other words, if you stop pressing on toward the goal for which God

made you, you are failing. Failure is often success that stops growing.

That was the case with the Corinthians. Glen Dresback put it in

poetry-

But no defeat is quite so imminent

To common ways as the defeat success

Turns into when it puts aside the dreams

That made it be and somehow, grows content

With what it is, forever giving less

Until it is not, and no longer seems.

If growth is success, then lack of growth is failure. This means the

question is, not where are you, but where are you going? The new

Christian who is immature but growing is a successful Christian. The

mature Christian who is standing still is failing, for growth is success.

The analogies that Paul uses in this text are analogies that deal with

growth. In verse 9 Paul says you are God's field and God's building.

A field that does not grow anything is a flop, and so is a building that

never gets off the foundation. There must be growth and

advancement, or there is no success.

The Biblical perspective is similar to that of Ben Sweetland the

contemporary success writer. He stresses that success is not a

destination but a journey. You are not just successful when you arrive

at your goal, but you are successful the minute you start, and all along

the way as you move toward it. Paul makes it clear in this context that