How Do Christians Grow: Part 1

Well, good morning.

I've been on sabbatical break for July, and so it's my first week back.

My reflection last week as I attended church and helped out but didn't preach is just what an honor it is to stand every week and just tell you that in Jesus God really does love you and He delights in you.

And so these next three weeks, we're gonna talk about how do we grow as a Christian.

When we talk about how do we grow as a Christian, we're talking about how do we grow in that delight.

C.S.

Lewis's Narnia series, there's a scene where Aslan, who's that representation, the lion who represents Jesus, there's a scene where Aslan and Lucy are speaking together.

Here's an image from the movie series.

And here's what the scene, here's the scene.

Aslan, said Lucy, you're bigger.

That is because you are older, little one, answered he.

Not because you are?

I'm not.

But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.

So the question is are we finding Jesus bigger?

Lovely and more than enough?

Or as Christians, are we just busy and distracted?

Now it's possible when I even say Christian growth, or this topic comes up that you could feel guilty.

Feelings of guilt may kind of conjure up because you're not growing and you know you should, or you're not growing as fast as you think you should, or you're not growing and you don't care, and then you feel bad about not caring, or maybe you could even feel bad about not feeling bad about any of that.

All of it, all of it's possible.

We're really good at guilt.

Maybe you were in a church that used guilt or fear as motivation for Christian growth.

And so then, of course, the topic of Christian growth is not something that you welcome.

But these three weeks are a little different because these three weeks were not leaving Jesus to talk about or embrace some set of rules or set of things to do.

The question is how do we grow in this delight?

How do we grow in this lavish love?

And Dane Ortland's book Deeper, he writes this about change and growth.

He writes this.

The basic point of this book is that change is a matter of going deeper.

Some believers think change happens through outward improvement, behaving more and more in accord with some moral norm, the biblical law, the commands of Jesus, or conscience or whatever.

Others think change happens mainly through intellectual addition, understanding doctrine with greater breadth and precision.

Others think it comes centrally through felt experience, sensory increase as we worship God.

My argument is that all of these elements are included in healthy Christian development, but real growth transcends them all.

Growing in Christ is not centrally improving or adding or experiencing but deepening.

A few months ago, I was walking out of a Publix and I walked out the front doors, I walked over that first lane of traffic.

As I walked over the first lane of traffic, I looked up to my left and there was a truck coming toward me, and I passed and I looked into the driver's seat, and it was a guy who in the past years ago traumatically hurt a whole bunch of my friends.

And traumatically hurt myself and my wife.

And as I saw him, I immediately became like really nauseous.

It was so fast.

And I waved.

I did like the path.

There was another hand signal.

There was two, there was this.

I gave this one, but I I there was another hand signal that the inside of me wanted to give, but I'm like, I just waved, and I got to my car, and by the time I was at my car, I was just like back in anger and bitterness.

Now you don't even need that backstory because you have a person like this.

Um hurt you or betrayed you or frustrated you and just like seeing them or hearing their voice.

One thing's clear.

I I want God and I want all of God's grace to shower over me.

I just don't always necessarily want it for him.

Maybe you're like that.

But this is this is actually how we are like this guy in the Old Testament, Jonah.

God calls Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh.

The only thing is in 2 Kings we learn that these people that God called Jonah to go to, they were horrible.

And they had tortured Jonah's people.

So Jonah wanted nothing to do with these people.

He wanted them to pay for their sins.

So he runs.

But finally he relents, he goes, he preaches to Nineveh, and just when we think the story is like kumbaya, sweet tea, pecan pie, they're all friends in the backyard, just when we think that's the story, Jonah 4, 1 through 4.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

And he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?

That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

I mean, just like a little drama.

Can you hear it?

Just a little drama, just a little, we're good at this.

Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry?

Point number one is this everyone is a mixed bag.

We can be obedient one moment and then heartless the next.

Jonah has no love for these people.

He is arrogant, he is bitter.

That's Jonah's sin.

It may not be yours, it may not be mine.

We all have ours materialism, lust, greed, anger, selfishness.

You watch what you shouldn't say, something you shouldn't, or you wanted to say it, maybe you didn't, the hand signal you wanted to give, but you didn't, right?

Like, it's in us.

You know you should be loving and giving and kind, but then you're not.

So how does Jonah become loving?

How does Jonah change?

How do we change?

How do we grow as Christians?

In the New Testament, we read Paul, Ephesians 3, 8, to me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

So point number two is this we grow as we develop deeper in our understanding and relationship with Jesus.

Now, if you've been around church, that isn't new.

But what it turns out is there's nothing more profound than that.

This word unsearchable, verse 8.

It's only used one other time in the New Testament, Romans 11, 33.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

So God is filled with wisdom and insight, and this Jesus is that source for us.

So how do you become loving, filled with insight?

How do you grow wise?

How do you grow upright, pure, giving?

Well, we look to Jesus.

There's nothing more profound.

There's no greater spirituality, no next book that you will need.

There's no second blessing.

Looking to Jesus is supreme.

Back to Ortland and his book, Deeper.

Open yourself up to the possibility that one reason you see modest growth and ongoing sin in your life, if that is the case, is that Jesus, the Jesus you are following, is a junior varsity Jesus.

An unwittingly reduced Jesus, an unsurprising and predictable Jesus.

Have we snorkeled in the shallows thinking we've now hit bottom on the Pacific?

So Jonah preaches to these people.

The people repent.

God is gracious, God is merciful.

It's amazing.

And Jonah hates it.

Jonah leaves the city, he goes out, he sits, and God appoints a plant to grow up and provide shade for him.

So Jonah's happy.

He's comfy under the shade.

But the next morning, God appoints a worm to attack the plant and kill it.

And then we get verse 8, Jonah 4, 8 through 10.

When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah, so that he was faint.

And he asked that he might die, and said, Is it better for me to die than to live?

But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant?

And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.

And the Lord said, You pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in the night.

Point number three is this our growth will include awareness of the destruction of sin in our hearts, lives, and relationships.

We could say it this way: conviction by the Holy Spirit and confession to God will be part of our growth.

We will have to see our sin.

Jonah had to see his sin, his rebellion to God's call, his lack of love for these people.

The good news for Jonah and for us is that God never gives up on him.

Jonah becomes so miserable that God and change are his only option.

I've heard author Ann Lamont say something like this: we change when we are falling apart faster than we can lower our standards.

Like it's like, okay, like this is all my great ideas are not working.

Unfortunately, God's office is just there at the end of our rope.

So how do we grow?

We get a hint, a pretty big clue in 2 Peter 1, 3 through 8.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

Okay, so his power, number one.

Through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

Okay, knowledge of him, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises.

Okay?

Power, knowledge of Jesus, his promises.

So that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires.

Okay, are we caught up here?

We have his power, Jesus, Jesus' promises.

For this very reason, make every effort.

So out of all of that, out of all those promises indicated to us, given to us, now we have something we should do for this very reason.

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, verses six and seven could feel like a to-do list.

They actually feel like a pretty incredible list of characteristics, right?

I mean, all of us would be like, man, to be known as something like that, to be known as steadfast and godly and loving and self-controlled.

That would be amazing.

The problem is, the problem is the list is not enough to get us to be the list, right?

The demand is not enough to create the change.

Or else we would all already have it figured out.

We would already be that.

Now, fortunately, that list comes out of verses three through four, and then again in verse nine, we are given this rescue for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he's blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

So when we lack the desire or the power to change, we have forgotten God's grace.

That's point number four.

The grace of God known in Jesus saves us and transforms us.

It's because as we remember God's grace to us, that limitless love to us, while we did not earn it and while we do not deserve it, a healing occurs in our hearts.

Something changes inside of us.

This is why our goal as a church is for us to leave every single Sunday reminded and thinking about the Christ more than the Christian.

This is why we keep looking at this in Christ list.

I don't know if you've picked up on this in the last two years.

I keep blending this list into sermons over and over and over again.

Do you remember this list?

In Christ, we are always forgiven and always righteous.

In Christ, we have secure forever acceptance and peace with God.

In Christ, we are never alone and have endless companionship.

In Christ, we are liberated from performancism to live by the Spirit and freedom and love.

In Christ, we are relieved of judgmentalism and empowered to live with love toward others.

In Christ, we are both deemed godly and become godly.

In Christ, we have a heavenly home prepared for us when our days on earth are over.

We grow deeper.

We change as we grow deeper into Jesus, and it won't be perfect.

In fact, it may be one of the biggest letdowns of your life that you aren't changing, you haven't changed as much as you thought you would.

And this is how Jesus will look even bigger to you.

It's why our growth is always a growth in grace.

One of our core values as a church is growth.

It's not numeric growth, it's about our growth as Christians.

Here's how we word it: we grow in the grace of God by living more deeply in the great wealth of our beloved identity in Jesus Christ as we know it through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

The Holy Spirit uses this deepening to heal and transform us.

This is a rest from our self-reliant striving as to know a spiritual growth that occurs only by God's work in our lives.

This growth and grace is a lifelong process filled with imperfection and grace, confession and peace.

A couple weeks ago I did a deep dive on our Jesus, Big Jesus artwork.

Have you ever wondered, like, where did that thing come from?

Like, what in the world is going on?

When we started our school, so it's called the DC's Mosaic, is what it's called, the original.

Um, that's a copy.

The original is from the 13th century and it's in Istanbul.

Now that copy it came from Mount Perrin's school.

Some Christian artist came through and did a big concert at Mount Perrin, and they brought that thing and hung it up on stage, and then they just left.

And so Mount Perrin's like, what are we gonna do with this?

So it'd been in their basement for a couple years, and then they heard that we were starting a church and we're moving into a building, and so they reached out and like we're yeah, like we were taking free stuff.

It didn't even matter, don't send a picture, we're on our way.

Sam Heiling and I went with the truck, we laid it down vertical on the truck bed.

It's the only way you've been vertical, I mean horizontal on the truck bed, tied the thing down.

We drove down the center of Stylesboro Road.

Jesus was just parting the traffic as we went.

It lived in my garage for six months, and then it's been here.

Here's the original in Istanbul, an original mosaic over the years and centuries, lost the bottom half of it.

Christ flanked by Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.

Christ is labeled with a Greek abbreviation for Jesus Christ, and he sits upon a jeweled throne, like an emperor or a judge.

The work reminds us that Jesus is king.

And then we look at his facial expression, and it reminds us that this king is different.

I love in Matthew, where King Jesus describes himself.

Matthew 11, 28 through 30, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

So King Jesus, preeminent before all time, who reigns above it all, says, To you and to me, I'm gentle and lowly.

If we could go back to that picture of Aslan and Lucy and remember their conversation, and this is not guilt on you or guilt on me, this is grace on us for our growth.

That question, are we finding Jesus bigger, more lovely?

More than enough, or are we just busy and distracted?

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you that Jesus is more than enough for us, supreme and sufficient for our hearts.

Help us even more to fall back into your grace known in Jesus.

That in Jesus we have full forgiveness, in Jesus we have full righteousness, in Jesus, you are always with us.

Help us to trust you more, to grow in you, to confess more, and to laugh more, to feel your delight because Jesus is enough, and to grow in the lavish love you have for us.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.