How Do Christians Grow: Part 3

Um, so we have been talking about these past three weeks.

What does it mean for us to grow as Christians?

How do we grow as Christians?

What does that look like?

And so, what we say is like, no, not guilt on you or fear on you, you better, or else, and you better do these things, or you'll never be, or if you don't do these things, you're not in God's favor.

What we've been saying is in Jesus, God's delight in you is fully secured.

All of your sin is put upon him, all of his righteousness is given to you.

God's delight is secure.

So we are free from earning God's love.

Earning is over.

Now, effort is not.

So we are free from earning God's love.

So, how do we grow in that lavish love?

This reminded me of a few years ago, Adam Sandler was a guest host on Saturday Night Live, and he played the travel agent Joe Romano, who tells brutal truth about what their trips could do for you and what they cannot do for you.

And so we're gonna watch about two minutes of this sketch.

People love it, but every so often a customer leaves the review that they weren't, they were disappointed or didn't have as much fun as they thought.

So here at Romano Tours, we always remind our customers if you're sad now, you might still feel sad there, okay?

So that's not just gonna be new.

We can thank you to the fine Riviera.

We cannot make you feel comfortable in a we can provide a display.

We cannot give you the ability to say winky and make it.

We cannot get this.

We can provide you with a wine-tasting tour of Tuscany.

We cannot change why you drink what you do, okay?

I'm sorry, but it's true.

And our friendly tour guides are happy to take your pictures.

But remember, the pictures you're in are gonna have you in them.

And if you don't like how you look back home, it's not gonna get any better on a gondola.

So it's easy to think, and we all get tricked into it, that Italy will solve our problems.

Or a new pair of Nike Air Maxes, or two weeks ago I got a new pair of fishing waiters.

I can't get anything better in my life than that.

And you know what?

The same sad me in my old waiters is the same sad me in my new waiters, right?

It's the same person.

But if you're like me, you get tricked.

Like you get tricked into this.

Like if only, if only I go to Italy, if only I get that, that thing, right?

But these weaknesses in me and life problems aren't solved in that way.

A change of location, a change of car, a change of spouse, a change of hair color, a change of haircut.

These things don't change the inside of us.

There's nothing wrong with a new haircut.

There's nothing wrong with moving to Jackson, Wyoming.

If I win the lottery this week, I will not be here.

I will be in Jackson, Wyoming.

And you know what will be true?

The same sad me that lives in Marietta will be in Jackson, Wyoming.

Because the issue is on the inside.

Preacher Paul Walker says it this way: life's deepest problems are bound up in our human propensity to keep messing things up.

See, this is why Jesus says the problems are in the heart.

This is why Jesus drives us to the inner life.

The primary problem is inside of us.

So, where do we go for change?

How do we grow?

How do we change?

The past two weeks we've said it this way: we grow as Christians as we grow deeper in Jesus.

And then this week, I want us to take a step further and talk about spiritual practices.

Let's begin with the 1 Peter 2, 1 through 3, which Katie read for us.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander like newborn infants.

Long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

So, point number one is that God desires to grow us towards humility and love for each other.

If you want to know what Christian maturity actually is, it's humility and love for each other.

The five sins listed in verse one: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, all very relational, all coming out of a heart that's not settled in Jesus.

Tons of destruction come from that.

And it's contrary to the call to love each other, which we get in chapter 1, verse 22.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love.

Love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

My friend Lee, who's a pastor in Athens now, when I was at the Church of the Apostles as a young pastor, I worked under him for two years.

He is a brilliant Bible teacher.

And he said over and over and over again, if you want to know how to grow as a Christian, if you want to know how to grow as a Christian, well, just think about how you grow full, healthy zojagrass.

He says the same thing.

To grow full, healthy zorzagrass, you don't obsess about pulling every single weed.

You turn your primary attention to growing full, healthy grass.

And the full, healthy Zorzia grass will begin to choke out the weeds.

And it was his way to say, which is a great point, is that a Christian life shouldn't be an obsession about every little sin and get that weird, self-righteous faith where it's like a paralysis through analysis.

Our primary attention, our primary attention is to grow full, healthy Zoija and let it choke out the weeds.

And if you're like me, if you're into your grass, guys, usually guys, maybe ladies, are you into your grass?

I go out in the evenings and just like just stare at it.

Just looking at it, seeing what's going on, just but it has a great lesson for us because we should be turning our primary attention to the better love.

That's why verse 2 calls us to long for pure spiritual milk.

That's where our primary attention should go because the Lord is good.

Look at how these verses teach us, lead us through this.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk.

That by it you may grow up into your salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

So point number two is this we grow and change by God's goodness, nourishing our souls.

So that's our growth in grace.

And verse two, we are the infants.

This week I got to go see three little babies in our church.

We're just birthing some babies in our church.

Three little babies this week is a baby tour, and I got to hold them and pray for them, and they're so cute.

I mean, some people call our church Christ the reproducer.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this.

Y'all are very active.

Good job.

Being called an infant is not an insult, it's a term of endearment.

That you are the child of a loving Heavenly Father.

Because at every stage and every age, 45, 25, 65, 85, very mature in Jesus, less mature, we're always the infant.

Because we're always the one that is endeared to the Heavenly Father, adored, loved, held, nurtured.

We are dependent on Him to grow.

So we get point number three.

In growth and grace, our role is to cultivate a longing for the thing that actually nourishes.

Our role is to cultivate the longing.

What are you cultivating?

On a daily and a weekly basis, what is nourishing your soul?

Dane Ortland in his book Deeper writes, We grow in Christ no further than we enjoy his embrace of us.

We grow in Christ no further than we enjoy his embrace of us.

Your growth in Christ will go no further than your settledness.

Way down deep in your heart that God loves you.

Last week we had new insulation put in our attic.

Very exciting midlife expense.

So these guys show up, three guys, big truck, hose comes out of the truck.

It's gonna be a spray foam insulation.

So this hose runs up the driveway in the back door, up the attic, an August Georgia attic.

These guys go up there fully zipped up, masked, everything.

Here's a picture.

That is definitely not my attic.

It is not that beautiful and clean.

But they that's what they look like, all dressed up.

So that hose is about 130 degrees.

The spray that comes out of the hose is 150 degrees.

Then they are zipped up in my August attic spraying this stuff.

So very quickly their bodies hit 102, and then they worked at 102 degrees until they can take it no longer, and then the three of them just sort of rotated, the other two just like laid out on the Zorzurgrass in the backyard.

They worked at a fevered state, and they had to rotate, they had to take breaks.

I think life's a little like this.

It's easy to live in a fevered state.

And we have to take breaks to get our core temperature back down.

That's kind of what spiritual practices are.

In the book, The Spirit of Discipline, theologian Dallas Willard teaches, a discipline, this is a paraphrase of some teaching, a discipline is something we can do that places us somewhere to receive power and change beyond ourselves.

Our disciplines connect us to a power greater than ourselves.

So Willard is sort of saying this: spiritual disciplines place the dry and thirsty soul, the infant, mean you, under the waterfall of God's nourishment and goodness.

Meaning the disciplines open you up to growth.

They don't cause it, and you don't cause it, but they open you to the growth.

Willard explains it this way: Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning.

The disciplines are activities of the mind and body purposefully undertaken to bring our personality and total being into effective cooperation with the divine order.

They enable us more and more to live in a power that is, strictly speaking, beyond us, deriving from the spiritual realm itself, as we yield ourselves to God as those that are alive from the dead and are members as instruments of righteousness into God, as Romans 6.13 put it.

So just a couple book recommendations if you're looking to go further.

A couple just about growth and grace.

I've been quoting the last three weeks, the book Deeper by Dane Ortland.

As well as the book Because He Loves Me by Elise Fitzpatrick is wonderful.

A couple books about spiritual disciplines and spiritual practices, if you want to dig in there.

Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace is a classic.

It's a wonderful book, very readable.

And John Ortberg's The Life You Always Wanted is wonderful.

A more recent book about spiritual practices is practicing the way by John Mark Comer.

And he lists these as spiritual practices for us: silence and solitude, hospitality, Sabbath, fasting, serving, Lord's Supper, community, prayer, teaching, Sunday gathering, scripture, and simplicity.

Now I don't know which discipline you will connect with.

My guess is you'll connect with some more than others, and then your best friend or your spouse or your sister, whoever will connect with some that you don't connect with, and that's okay.

My wife wakes up long before I wake up.

And she wakes up and she goes and sits in a chair in our living room and she reads scripture and reads a devotion and she journals and she prays, and I wake up at like an hour, an hour and a half.

I am not into the early morning spirituality, I'm much more mid-morning spirituality.

And I have my own thing that I do.

I like to read scripture, I like to go for walks, I want to pray, but I also like to pray and walk, because then I don't get sleepy, anybody else gets sleepy, some of us get sleepy.

I like to worship and walk.

That's just a way to say, you're gonna work this out.

And that's your relationship with Jesus.

That you get to do that.

Some practices are public, some practices are private.

Here's how Jesus says we should practice any of our practices.

Matthew 6, 6 through 8.

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who's in secret.

And your father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them.

For your father knows what you need before you ask him.

I mean, this really sets us free, right?

Like you don't have to pretend to be something you're not, you don't have to use certain words, you don't have to sound churchy.

He already knows what you need.

This really sets you up to have relationship and communion, that you're not trying to twist his arm for him to have favor on you or to get something from him.

He goes on to say, hey, by the way, when you fast, don't do it to be seen.

So Jesus assumes we're gonna have spiritual practices, and then he says, Hey, when you do these, make sure you're not doing them to look a certain way or for your image or performance.

Twenty-one years ago, Christy and I went to premarital counseling with Ronnie and Deborah Brassfield.

Here's a picture of us.

Look at that skin.

Beautiful, golden, smooth skin.

Unbelievable.

Never again will we have skin like that.

Ronnie and Deborah talked to us about money, sex, communication, future parenting.

One of the greatest practical lessons we learned was to keep having a weekly date night, like over and over and over again.

So we've always done that.

We like to get tacos and margaritas, we like to go on hikes together.

And there's been times in our lives where we were so poor, all we could do was pay the$30 to the babysitter just for us to go walk in the park by ourselves.

Like there was no other, just pay the babysitter to get away from our children so we can be by ourselves for a couple hours.

But the point was never, and the point is never what we're doing.

The point's just that you're together.

Now imagine that uh we're getting tacos and a margarita, and imagine I start telling Christy my resume.

I tell her what I where I graduated from and what I've done and who I know.

Imagine I tell her uh you know what I do at my church and how I help people.

Imagine I tell her my bench press.

Well maybe not my bench, not my bench press.

That would not that's not impressive.

It'd be ridiculous.

Because pretending and performing just have no place in a relationship.

We've been married 20 years.

My wife has seen me poor, depressed, angry, distant, so sick I can't get off the bathroom floor.

She doesn't want my resume.

That would be silly.

Jesus doesn't need your resume.

He just wants you.

Like whatever you have to bring, even your weakness, to be honest and vulnerable.

My mentor Scotty says this about relationships in general.

He says grace plus time plus vulnerability equals relationship.

So if Jesus already knows you, and on the cross, if all your sin was forgiven, and all his righteousness given to you, and you're fully beloved, and God's delight in you is secured in Jesus alone.

If all that is true, if you are fully known and fully loved, no matter what, where does that leave you?

Oh, it leaves you quite free.

We could say this.

If you are free in Jesus, it means you are free to grow in grace.

If all of your change is growth and grace, it means you can be honest in your spiritual practices.

Which means there's no guilt or condemnation when you do your practice, and it also means there's no guilt or condemnation if you don't do your practice.

Last point.

Point number four.

In Christ's secure love, we are free from pretending and performing, free for honesty and growth with Him.

Beloved, you are fully loved by Jesus.

Fully known and fully loved.

And God is interested in you.

He's interested in you long before he's interested in what you can do for him.

And this is good news.

In growth and grace, our role is to cultivate a longing for the theme that actually nourishes.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you that you know us and you love us.

Would you help settle our souls even more in your love for us?

Help free us for the ways we perform and pretend, the ways we live out of guilt and shame and condemnation.

Free us in the forgiveness we have in Jesus and free us in the righteousness we have in Jesus.

Would you free us to trust all the more that all the delight we ever need for our heart satisfaction is your love for us.

Jesus, I pray this morning that you would minister to our hearts as we slow down and we listen to you.

For you are enough for us.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.