There is a bamboo tree in East Asia that, for the first four years after planting, shows almost no visible growth above the ground. You water it. You fertilise it. You tend to it faithfully. And to the undiscerning eye, nothing is happening. The ground is bare. The effort appears wasted. But beneath the surface, the bamboo is developing a root system so vast, so deep, and so strong that when it finally breaks through the soil in the fifth year, it grows up to ninety feet in just six weeks.
The tree did not grow ninety feet in six weeks. It grew ninety feet over five years. The growth was simply invisible.
This is one of the most important truths I want to share with you today: growth is in inches.
The Myth of the Overnight Miracle
We live in a generation that has been seduced by the spectacular. We are surrounded by stories of overnight success, sudden breakthroughs, and viral transformation. Social media shows us the highlight reel, the moment of arrival, the trophy, the applause. What it rarely shows us is the ten thousand hours of quiet, unseen, unglamorous work that preceded the breakthrough.
And so we have become impatient with the process. We want to pray once and be completely transformed. We want to fast for three days and emerge as spiritual giants. We want to begin a new endeavour and see results within the week. When the results do not come according to our schedule, we conclude that we are failing. We conclude that nothing is happening. We conclude that perhaps we are not meant to grow at all.
But that conclusion is a lie.
God Is a God of Process
Open your Bible and you will find that almost every great figure of faith spent years, and in some cases decades, in the invisible season of growth before they ever stepped into their moment of purpose.
Moses spent forty years in the wilderness before God spoke from a burning bush. Forty years. Tending sheep. Far from the palace. Far from influence. Far from anything that would have looked like preparation for the man who would confront Pharaoh and lead a nation to freedom. But those forty years were not wasted years. They were root years. They were the years in which God was growing a humility in Moses so deep that Scripture would later call him the meekest man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3).
Joseph received his dream at seventeen. He did not step into the fulfilment of it until he was thirty. Thirteen years of betrayal, slavery, false accusation, and imprisonment. Thirteen years of what must have felt like regression, not growth. But God was growing something in Joseph that the palace could not have produced: the wisdom, the compassion, and the character to sustain what God had promised.
David was anointed king as a teenager. He waited over fifteen years before he actually sat on the throne. In that waiting, he fought lions, he battled giants, he fled from Saul, he hid in caves, he wrote psalms in the dark. He was growing. In inches. In the unseen places. In the moments no one was recording.
Friend, your unseen season is not your wasted season. It is your root season.
Why Growth Happens in Inches
There is a reason God does not give us everything at once. It is not because He is withholding from us out of cruelty. It is because He is a master craftsman who understands that character must always precede capacity.
If God gave you the blessing before He built the character to carry it, the blessing would crush you.
The tree that grows too fast in poor soil is the first to fall in the storm. Its roots are shallow. Its trunk is weak. The height it achieved so quickly becomes a liability when the wind comes. But the tree that has been growing slowly, patiently, with deep roots pressed into nourishing soil, that tree bends in the storm and does not break.
Proverbs 13:11 says, “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.” The principle is not limited to finances. It applies to character. To faith. To skill. To maturity. To every area of life that is truly worth building.
Gather little by little. Grow inch by inch. Trust the process.
What to Do in the Inches
So how do you honour the process? How do you remain faithful in the season when growth is invisible?
First, stay faithful to the small things. Jesus was clear: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much” (Luke 16:10). The small assignment you have right now is not beneath you. It is preparing you. Do it with everything you have.
Second, stop measuring your growth by other the people timelines. Comparison is the enemy of the process. The person beside you may be in a different season, with a different calling, and a different set of roots being grown. Their growth does not comment on yours. Run your race.
Third, let the Word of God be your mirror, not the the world scoreboard. The world measures growth by visibility, followers, titles, income, status. God measures growth by character: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22,23). Are you growing in these things? Then you are growing.
Fourth, celebrate the inches. Do not wait until you reach the mountain to acknowledge that you have been climbing. Every inch matters. Every day of faithfulness matters. Every private victory over a bad habit matters. Every quiet prayer offered in the early morning matters. These are not small things. These are the substance of a life being built for eternity.
You Are Growing
I want to say something to the person who has been faithful for what feels like a very long time, and who is beginning to wonder whether any of it is working.
It is working.
The roots are going down deeper than you can see. The foundation is being laid stronger than you know. God is not slow. He is thorough. And He is not finished with you.
The bamboo does not apologise for growing underground for four years. It simply grows. And when the season comes for it to rise, nothing in the world can stop it.
Your season is coming. Keep growing. Even in inches. Especially in inches.
“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
, Galatians 6:9
