CHRISTIAN MATURITY ( a series on growing up in Christ)

    Greetings in Jesus:


          What did you want to be when you grew up?  Has that changed at all from the beginning?  The chances are that you may have changed your mind several times during the course of your life due to circumstances or events that have caused you to shift your priorities.

  My point in this from the start is to have you think about the things that are happening right now in your life that are changing your mind about what is important to you.  Frankly there are millions of combinations  of things that can happen to change the course of our lives in less than a second.  The things that we want when we are first given the choice can go from being a cowboy to  a brain surgeon in a heart beat.

  What I want to begin to do from this point in my work with discussions with you is to lead your thoughts toward a goal of your personal Christian maturity and just what that might look like as we  get blindsided by the things of this world.  I have been trying to lead you into an understanding of the basics of Christian life to this point, but now I feel it is time for us to go deeper into the various things that will spur us into growth in Christ and a kind of leadership by example to those around us who desperately need our guidance at this this point in their lives.

  Just as I have always said before This all starts with God's full control over what we say and do. It is God who is actually speaking through us right now to the hearts of you who have spiritual ears to hear.  We started to speak about the journey we are all on together; some look at this journey differently than others depending upon their spiritual background.  Some view it as a race we are running and in that thought process it always brings with it the concept of competition.  The problem  with that is that we are all too often finding the competition is is with one another.  It does not matter what names we may put on the experience that we are in together ( whether it is and adventure or a journey) does not matter to God.  What does matter to God is that we grow strong enough to understand that we are by ourselves too weak to stand against so great an enemy as the pure evil that stands in our way of being with God.  This experience will be different for each one of us because of the various things that will be thrown into the mix to influence our choices.

  There is a certainty that comes from knowing that Jesus has already forged the way before us to show us that a man can live according to the will and power of the Father through the Holy Spirit.  It is that certainty that is in Jesus alone as the Son of the living God who came to us in the way He did as God's answer to the sin that had separated us from Him.  Without that sacrifice we would still have no hope.  I have mentioned before some about what we as followers of Christ need to be thinking about to get stronger in our faith, but I want to go yet deeper into what it takes to allow God to control the life we have been given here and now as living sacrifices.  May you richly bless God through your life in Him.



THE UNWORTHY SERVANT