Series

Shortly after I became a Christian in high school, I heard someone give a talk at youth group in which he said, The Christian life is like an airplane. If you’re not going forward, you’re going down. You need to be constantly growing in your walk with Christ, or you’ll get stagnant and decline. That made a lot of sense to me, and I never forgot it. But it seems to me that a lot of people think of the Christian life a bit differently—they see it more like a helicopter, where you can hover in mid-air almost indefinitely, without really going anywhere. Which of those two images makes the most sense to you?

To be fair, we should admit that even those who are determined to fly airplanes rather than helicopters do go up and down in their Christian walk. Sometimes we drift, we get out of our spiritual disciplines, the circumstances of our lives change, and one day we wake up to discover that the ground is a lot closer than it used to be! But most of us do wake up in time, we don’t crash, we are able to pull back on the stick and regain altitude, often rising to heights we had not attained before. But at least we’re moving. We’re not stuck; we’re not hovering; we’re not stagnant. I’ve had plenty of ups and downs in my Christian life, but I once heard that the definition of a success is a person who gets up one more time than they fall. I am determined to keep getting up, no matter how many times I fall or get knocked down. I am determined to keep moving forward in my relationship with Christ.

I. Seek God 1Ch 16:11; 2Ch 7:14 Ps 24:6; Ps 27:8; Ps 105:4; Dt 4:29; 1Ch 16:10,11; 28:9; 2Ch 14:4; 15:2,12; 20:4; 34:3; Ps 9:10; 27:4; 34:10; 63:1; 119:2,10; Pr 8:17; Isa 55:6; Jer 29:13; Hos 10:12; Am 5:4,6; Zec 8:21

The Bible everywhere exhorts us to constantly be moving forward toward spiritual maturity. For example, we are often encouraged to seek God’s face.

· 1 Chronicles 16:11, “Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.”

· Psalm 27:8, “My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

The word “seek” implies movement. It means to look diligently, energetically, persistently for something, and you can’t do that sitting in your easy chair or lying on the floor watching cartoons. You have to be moving to seek something. The question is, Are you seeking? Are you looking for more of God in your life? Are you hungry and thirsty for Him?

II. Quench Your Thirst in Him Ps 42:2; 63:1; 107:9; 143:6; Isa 55:1; Mt 5:6; Jn 4:13,14; 6:35; 7:37; Rev 21:6

That’s another image the Bible uses for God—He’s the living water who quenches our thirst.

· Psalm 63:1, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” If you are lost in the desert, your desire for water is not a casual one—it’s a matter of life and death, and you will stop at nothing to get it.

· John 7:37, “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.”

Again, you can’t quench your spiritual thirst for God sitting on the couch; you have to get up and go in the kitchen and run the tap; you have to go out to the fridge in the garage and get a can of pop. It takes some effort on our part, some action.

The Christian life is also pictured as a race. The Apostle Paul lived at a time when the Greeks had begun holding the Olympic games; he knew about the rigorous training a top athlete goes through to compete at that level. He said, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27 No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” The NASB says, “I buffet my body,” and many have thought it meant to “buffet” their body (in the sense of a meal where guests help themselves to a number of dishes). The English words are the same, but they have drastically different meanings. This is not a buffet line, it is a race, and we are told to run in such a way as to win—don’t give up and quit; don’t slack off; don’t run aimlessly; run to win.

It will require strict training. It will require disciplining our bodies, which have naturally sinful desires that work against our spiritual progress; we have to beat them into submission. It will mean we have to say No to that extra few minutes in bed. We have to say No to the extra helping of food or that dessert. We have to say No to the thoughts of revenge that creep in when someone hurts us; or to the lustful thoughts that plague all men; or to the covetousness that envies someone else’s good fortune. We have to discipline ourselves to overcome all the sinful desires that rise to the surface.

To the Philippians, Paul wrote, Philippians 3:12-14, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

He’s not sitting on the sidelines as a spectator; he’s not wandering aimlessly through life. He has a goal and a direction, and he is pressing on toward that all the time. Notice the verbs that speak of the effort involved here: press on, take hold, straining toward the goal. Is that the way you approach your Christian life? Or do you think of it as more like a cruise ship? You just sit back and the waiters (pastors, choir, band, Sunday School teacher, small group leader, youth group leader) just bring you the appetizers and cold drinks, and let you know when the buffet will start. What’s your mental picture of the Christian life?

Paul says it requires strict training. How do we train for the Christian life? That’s what spiritual disciplines are—they are the training regimen that enable us to live the victorious Christian life. You know when an athlete works out in the gym, doing weight training, or working on the Stairmaster, or stretching, or whatever, that’s not just so they can lift weights or climb so many stairs, etc. They do that to get their body in shape so they can perform at their peak in their sport. When I jog or ride my bike or stretch, it’s not so I can say I rode 20 miles or jogged so far; it’s so my heart and lungs will be in good shape and give me the stamina to do my ministry well.

The spiritual disciplines are like that. They include things like Bible study, and Scripture memory and prayer and practicing silence, and accountability, etc. We don’t study the Bible so that we can study the Bible well; we do it so that our minds are transformed so we think about life the same way God does. We don’t memorize Scripture so that we can say we know 30 more verses than the next person; we do it because we want to have God’s Word at hand in every situation He may put us in, so He can use it in our lives, and use us in others’ lives. We don’t enter in to an accountability relationship with someone just so we can say we did it; we do it because we want them to help us grow spiritually, and we want to be used by God to help them grow as well.

Are you using the spiritual disciplines? If it’s been a while since you got in the spiritual “gym”, maybe it’s time you got back in there.

The goal in all this is spiritual maturity. What comes to your mind when I say “spiritual maturity”? Turn to someone near you and give them your definition of spiritual maturity.

The shortest definition of spiritual maturity is Christlikeness. We have been called by God to be conformed to the image of Christ. He was the only perfect person, and we are all in the process of becoming more like Him.

This was the end goal of Paul’s ministry with people: Colossians 1:28, “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.” The word “perfect” here (JX8,4@H) means something that is fully developed, which has attained its original purpose, is complete or mature. In other words, the whole point of Paul’s ministry was to grow everybody up to spiritual maturity.

The author of Hebrews chastised his readers because they were not as mature as they should have been, and he challenged them to graduate from the milk to the solid food of Scripture. We have to get past the Sunday School stories and the easy, pat answers, and dig into the Scripture until we can really grasp the deeper things—the meat, the solid food. Those are the truths that will nourish your soul, and strengthen you in times of trouble, and equip you to explain your faith to someone else. If you are satisfied with milk, with the pre-digested pablum of a sermon or a Sunday School lesson, you are going to be weak and easy pickings for the enemy when trouble comes.

The elders have been working on our definition of a mature disciple for some time now. We’ve been trying to distill all that the Bible tells us a Christian should be down to the characteristics that we want everyone at Faith Church to have. We’ve asked ourselves, what is the target we are aiming at? Everyone is in a different place on the road to maturity, but what is that destination we all heading toward? We’ve come at it a couple of different ways, and we’re still somewhat in the process, but we think we’re getting closer.

One approach we took was to ask what our lives should look like in each of the Three Priorities. Here’s what we came up with.

Actively loves and serves Christ with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. Jesus Christ is their top priority; their highest goal in life is to glorify Him and please Him.

An apprentice who follows Christ’s teaching, example, and Spirit. We like the term apprentice. We are apprentices of Jesus who are learning to be like Him. Mature disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit, so they exhibit the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22,23)—love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, humility, self control.

Authentically lives in grace, not under the law. Far too many Christians still live under the law. They may have accepted God’s grace in their heads, but it hasn’t gotten down to their hearts yet. They still act as though they believe that God loves them more when they do everything right, and loves them less when they don’t. And they project that same legalistic performance standard onto the people around them, making for a really unhappy family and family of God. A mature disciple constantly lives in the awareness that God accepts him or her just as they are—and passes that unconditional love on to everyone else.

And therefore, Actively loves and serves others in the Body. A disciple discovers and uses his/her spiritual gifts to build up the Body. Mature disciples are not self-centered; they are helping others move to greater maturity. (See Matt 28:20; Col 1:28)

Both a student and teacher of God’s Word. A disciple desires to study God’s word. If you don’t have any interest in knowing what God has said, or in drawing closer to Him through His Word, I question if you are saved. Not everybody is a spiritually gifted teacher, but every mature disciple should be able to informally pass on the fundamental truths of Scripture. So there is this intake and outflow constantly going on in a mature disciple’s life.

Partners with fellow Christians to introduce others to Christ. A disciple bears witness to his/her own experience with Christ. Faith should be shared in both word and deed, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Each one uses his/her own spiritual gifts and talents in the service of evangelism. This may be in our own culture, or in a different culture, but every mature disciple cares about those who are outside the circle of God’s love, and does what they can to bring those others in.[1]

I’m talking about spiritual growth, about continuing to grow to maturity our whole lives. I’m not talking about just accumulating more information. We often fall into the trap of defining spiritual maturity as having lots of Bible knowledge; the one who knows the most about the Bible is the most mature. That is not a biblical notion! The Pharisees and teachers of the law knew more of God’s Word than anybody Jesus met, but He certainly didn’t think much of their maturity!

I’m talking about life-change. And change is hard. One reason is because most of us have old patterns of thought and behavior and feelings that have to be broken down before we can replace them with the lifestyle and mindset of Jesus. One example that comes to mind in my life is my legalism. I learned at an early age that in order to be OK, for me to be acceptable, I had to perform really well. I put myself under a law of high expectations and performance and perfectionism, and it made me into a legalist. God tried many times to break through that, and finally succeeded. I now see the spiritual dangers of legalism, and am delighted to just wallow in His grace and acceptance of me “just as I am.” But even now, there are still remnants of that old thought pattern that creep in from time to time when I am not vigilant. Life change is hard.

Another thing that makes it hard is our pride. In many cases, we just don’t want to change. How many times have I heard one spouse say to the other, “That’s just the way I am. You have to accept me the way I am.” I want to say, “Well, yes, you are stubborn and self-centered and angry, but you shouldn’t be!” Jesus accepts us just the way we are, but He loves us to much to leave us there. Our pride gets in the way of our spiritual progress.

And a third thing that trips us up is our blind spots. We just can’t see who we really are. We are looking at ourselves from the inside, and don’t have a moral-mirror to look in to see what our character is like. Actually, we do have one—it’s called the Bible—but we often don’t use it. So we need others to help us see ourselves as we are, to point out in love our blind spots.

That’s why one of the key components of a spiritual training program is a team. We all need a partner or a small group of partners to help us get there. No one summits Everest alone; it takes a whole team working together. Jesus sent His disciples out in 2s. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Two are better than one. They complement each other. No one has all the gifts, all the strengths, all the insight; we need each other.

And frequently, it isn’t going to be your spouse. You might think that husbands and wives would be the perfect partners to help us grow to maturity, and it is certain that God does use them in that process. But all too often, we can’t hear it from them. We’re too close; we suspect they want something from us, that they have ulterior motives, etc. Or we’ve just become numb to their criticism. So men need men around them who can shoot straight with them; women need women around them who can see through their female games.

We need others around us who can pick us up when we fall; who can stand by us in the trials of life; who will pray for us, and point us to God’s truth, and sometimes kick us in the pants when we need it. We need teammates/partners.

How many of you are in a small group of some sort? I want to encourage every one of you who is not in a group to get in one. We will have several new groups starting this October, and several existing groups are open to new members. See the bulletin insert.

But I also want to say something to the many of you who are in small groups. Don’t let them become Petri dishes, which just culture stagnant bacteria in your spiritual lives. All too many small groups just enable the members to stay right where they are spiritually, without that sharpening, growing, changing element to them. If you are too comfortable in your group, start another one. Multiply your group into two others, and invite some new people to those. Have an honest talk with each other about how you have become stagnant, and what you can do to change that. Dare to love one another enough to hold your friends accountable for changes they want to make.

This sermon could become just a nice exhortation that you forget before you get to the car. But on the back of your outline today, there is a table that I hope you will work on this next week.

The elders have sort of defined the general target for us, but everyone is in a different place. What do you need next? What do you need to know? Where are the gaps in your understanding of God’s truth? What godly habits do you need to develop? Or resurrect? Have you gotten sloppy with your spiritual disciplines lately? And what about your character? Where are the weak spots in that? This week, read over the verses listed there on the table, the fruit of the Spirit, and the qualifications for church office. Ask God to show you what is next on His agenda for you. And since we want to be balanced as well as growing in the Three Priorities of loving God, the family of God, and the world for which Christ died, consider your life in those three categories as well. Start filling in the table as God gives you His thoughts, and in the coming weeks, I’ll try to flesh out what some of these things should look like in our lives.

How many of you are 70 or older? Let me speak specifically to you for a minute. Moses, Joshua[2], and Caleb all took on major responsibilities for God, took on major risks to themselves, when they were over 70 years old. Now I know we are not all equal in our physical makeup, and these men were exceptional in that regard, but I’m not talking so much about the physical demands of what they did as I am about their willingness to step out into something new, to follow God wherever He was leading them, even though they were at an age when many of us think we’re about done. The terrible temptation of our society is to think that when we’re old, we’re no longer useful, and we’ll just go out to the pasture and rest until God calls us home. Brothers and sisters, that is not God’s way! That is not His will for you. I can say that with confidence. Retirement from spiritual growth is not a biblical option. Sure, we have to change some things, we have to make allowances for our declining physical and mental abilities, but we also have to keep growing. Marie Hoch is in the last period of her life, and she is still memorizing great chunks of Scripture and writing wonderful poems about her walk with Christ. When you can’t do anything else, you can still do the one thing that is most useful: you can pray.

There is a highway with lots of lanes headed toward the goal of Christlikeness—spiritual maturity. Every one of us needs to be on it. Some will be far down the road, others will have just started, but we all need to be on that road, moving forward, pressing forward, straining toward the goal. When I think of our church, and most churches I know, the image is somewhat different. We are more like a neighborhood with lots of cul de sacs. Many folks have gotten into some program or ministry that is good, and has potential for spiritual growth, but after a while, they are no longer growing, or even helping others grow all that much. It’s just something they do. Folks, we need to get out of the dead ends and onto the highway. That doesn’t mean you have to leave your ministry, or stop doing what you’re doing, necessarily. But it does mean you need to examine how you can use your current activities to be more growth-producing. How could you tweak that so that it really helped you and the others involved in it grow in one of these ways I’ve been talking about? Is your life changing? Are the lives of the people involved in that program changing? That’s the bottom line—and are you changing to become more like Christ?

It was June 4, 1940, the second year of World War II. The British Expeditionary Force had to withdraw in defeat from France. The troops escaped with very little loss of life, and Britons were unrealistically optimistic. Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain, addressed the House of Commons to warn the nation that they were in for another attack, perhaps even an invasion of England. Near the end of his speech, he said these famous words, “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”[3]

A year and a half later, October 29, 1941, Churchill visited Harrow School. It was after the Blitz and things were looking up a bit for Britain. He gave a speech to the students, reflecting on the fact that over the previous months, their situation had improved considerably. In part, he said, “…surely from this period of ten months, this is the lesson: Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”[4]

That is just as true in the spiritual realm as it is in war. Sometimes it feels like the enemy is just overwhelming us, like we can never win, that all we can do is lie down in defeat. But Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell can never overcome it. The Church is on offense, and can never lose the ultimate battle. As part of the army of God, we should never give in, never give in—never, never, never, never! We will always press on; we will forget the failures and mistakes of the past and press on to higher ground. We will never lie down in defeat. We will never say die. We will continue to grow and serve God as long as He gives us breath. Are you growing?

[1] Another way the elders have approached this is to think in terms of what a mature disciple knows, does, and is. What should we know about our faith? What habits and skills should we have? What should our character be like? I’ll be preaching on the marks of a mature disciple for the next several weeks, but I wanted to give you an idea of where we are going. The point I want to stress today is that every single person in this church, whether you are a member or not, should be moving toward this target. None of us are there fully, but we definitely need to be moving. Are you moving? Are you moving in the right direction?

[2] He was certainly older than 30 when he was chosen as a scout in Numbers 13, because he is described as a “leader of the Israelites.” Then he spent the next 40 years in the desert wanderings.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_shall_fight_on_the_beaches

[4] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Winston_Churchill_say_Never_never_never_never_give_up