Letting Go to Grow Deep

“The best things in life are not things, they are moments. Growth takes time, like the slow rise of the sun over the horizon. If you rush it, you risk missing the beauty of the journey.”
Unknown

“Growth is the process of responding positively to change.”
George Vaillant

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
T. S. Eliot

“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”
Tennessee Williams

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor Frankl

Life resists our control. We draft plans, set expectations, and map out the trajectory we believe things should follow. But then reality intervenes—detours, delays, dry seasons. Growth does not arrive on schedule. Change does not look the way we imagined. Faced with the discomfort of uncertainty, we try to force movement, fabricate progress, and impose structure where there was once only the wild and unmeasured work of God. But here is the danger: what we manufacture in our impatience can look like growth while suffocating the very life we claim to nurture.

When the Metrics Become the Mission
It happens gradually. The desire for growth starts pure, but then expectation creeps in. We convince ourselves we know what progress should look like—how many people should be showing up, how much engagement there should be, how full the calendar ought to be. And when the reality does not match, we pivot. We stop seeking life and start manufacturing results. We start counting. And once we start counting, we cannot stop. Numbers become our compass. Did attendance go up? More sign-ups? More views? More engagement? Metrics give us something solid to hold onto, something that reassures us we are heading in the right direction. But numbers are deceptive. A room full of people is not the same as a room full of life. A packed schedule is not the same as a thriving body. Metrics tell us how many, but they will never tell us how deep. Jesus never chased numbers. In John 6, after feeding the five thousand, the crowds sought Him out again, eager for more. A modern strategist would call this momentum—an opportunity to build on the surge. But Jesus did not celebrate the numbers. He confronted their motives. And many walked away. He let them go. Because He was not gathering an audience—He was calling disciples.

Corporate Mirage of Chasing Growth
Modern business culture is built on the assumption that growth is something we can control. Performance metrics, efficiency benchmarks, productivity quotas—each one designed to corral human effort into something quantifiable, something predictable. When the numbers do not meet expectations, the instinct is not to question the system but to push harder. A company can streamline, optimize, and expand, but if it does so by grinding down the people within it, what has it truly built? Progress that demands exhaustion is not success. Growth that ignores human dignity is not worth chasing. The drive to manufacture life does not stop in corporate boardrooms. The modern church has borrowed the strategies of industry, adopting growth models that prioritize numbers over nourishment. Parachurch organizations and corporate-style church consulting firms promise sustainable expansion, offering sleek methodologies that claim to ensure success.

When the Church Becomes a Machine
It is no surprise that the modern church has adopted the corporate world’s approach to growth. Church health is measured by attendance, engagement, giving records. Discipleship is structured into programs, spiritual maturity reduced to a series of steps. We talk about revival like it is a business strategy rather than a sovereign act of God. But the early church did not grow because it mastered a system. It grew because “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47, ESV). He added. Not marketing campaigns. Not leadership initiatives. Him. And what of the kingdom of God? Jesus describes it as a mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32)—small, slow-growing, seemingly insignificant. The kind of thing we would dismiss because it does not produce instant, measurable results. Yet in time, it becomes something unstoppable. Growth that is forced is not the same as growth that is real. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1, ESV). Manufactured growth can look impressive, but it cannot sustain itself. It is not rooted in anything real. It burns out, falls apart, leaves people exhausted and disillusioned. True spiritual growth is untamed, unpredictable, and impossible to package. But it is real. And real is what we were meant for.

Corralling People Into Manufactured Growth
The impulse to manufacture growth is not confined to spreadsheets and strategy meetings, and the need to force growth does not stop with numbers. It turns toward people. It seeps into the way we view them and the way we handle relationships. We begin to treat spiritual formation like a program to manage, discipleship like a system to streamline. We imagine the way people should develop, how they should think, when they should mature. And when they do not, we intervene—not with patience, not with grace, but with pressure.We manipulate circumstances. We try to “fix” them. We call it helping, but too often, it is just control dressed up as concern. If things are not progressing the way we envisioned, we assume it must be because people are not engaging as they should. So we push. We create expectations, spoken and unspoken, of what involvement should look like. And if someone does not fit, they are quietly edged out. We do it in churches. In communities. In relationships. We build frameworks, we define commitment, we measure participation. And if someone does not conform, we see them as a problem to be solved rather than a person to be loved. Yet Jesus never forced transformation on anyone. He invited. He waited. He let people wrestle with truth, let them take the long way to understanding. Even the disciples—slow to learn, quick to doubt—were not pressured into spiritual growth. They were simply called to follow, to walk with Him, and in that journey, they were changed. Paul reminds us, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6, ESV). That is God’s work, not ours. When we try to accelerate someone’s process—whether in faith, in maturity, or in healing—we risk interfering with what only He can do. God does not corral His people—He calls them. Jesus never forced anyone to follow Him. He invited. He let people wrestle. He let them leave. The rich young ruler came to Him with sincerity, but when Jesus asked for surrender, the man walked away grieving. And Jesus let him go (Mark 10:17-22). No coercion. No softening of the message. No chasing after him to negotiate an easier path. Just an invitation to real life—freely accepted or freely rejected. But we struggle with this. We fear decline, so we adjust the message. We make it easier, more appealing, less disruptive. Or worse, we pressure people into staying, into serving, into fitting into spaces they were never meant to fill. We manipulate with guilt, obligation, cultural expectations. But anything coerced is not growth. It is captivity.

Releasing Our Grip
James warns against the arrogance of thinking we can control the future: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring” (James 4:13-14, ESV). We do not know. And that is the point. Life is not something we manage—it is something we receive. The corporate world tells us to manufacture progress. Our pride tells us to engineer or coral people. The church tells itself that growth is something to be strategized. But the Spirit moves where He wills (John 3:8), and He does not submit to our spreadsheets and schedules. So we let go. We do the work, but we do not force the outcome. We plant seeds but acknowledge that only God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:7). We step back from our manufactured versions of life and let something truer, something holier, take root. Because in the end, what we force will never compare to what God freely gives.

Dear reader, what are you holding onto that God is asking you to release? Where have you measured success by numbers instead of faithfulness? Where have you tried to shape people into what you think they should be rather than trusting the Spirit to do the shaping? The temptation to control is subtle but relentless. It dresses itself in good intentions, in stewardship, in responsibility. But in the end, it strangles. You were never called to manufacture life—you were called to receive it. So let go. Stop forcing. Stop striving. Stop trying to make something happen in your own strength. Trust the One who breathes life into dust, who brings fruit from barren places, who does His deepest work beyond what human eyes can measure. Trust Him—and watch what real growth looks like.