As we come to this part of our service this morning, I'd like to ask those who are on
the left ends of the aisles to reach underneath your chairs.
You should find there a stack of booklets called, 50 Days to Open My Home to Christ.
If they're not there, then I don't know what happened to them.
Perhaps someone in the last session walked off with them, but they were to put them back
underneath your chair.
Now, would you look around and be sure that everyone has at least one to two persons.
We can do it one to three.
It's a little more difficult that way.
Thanks for your help.
We'll be referring to these a little later in the service, so you need not take time
to read through it now.
Our subject for today is the cycle of spiritual growth.
Seeing things grow and change, and it's fun to observe them do that.
This past summer while I was on vacation with my family, the family farm in Kansas, I collected
two wasp nests.
One nest was that of a mud dauber, which is a solitary wasp.
That is, it makes its own nest out of mud with several compartments.
In the compartments, it keeps its own larvae as well as food for its young.
Then I collected another kind of nest, that of a polystyse or social wasp, which is paper-like.
It's the normal nest that you think of with a wasp, the comb, as sometimes we call it,
really made out of masticated fibers.
Inside these little compartments, once again, the larvae are kept.
As I tore into the nest, it was interesting to me to observe the larvae and the pupa,
observed in their various stages of development.
Now frankly, I did this to make it an educational experience for my children.
I might have tried something else more successfully, but it was at least educational to me.
I enjoyed seeing the stages of growth that were involved in these insects.
Whether it's insects we're talking about, or plants, or animals, or human beings, whatever
is alive grows and changes.
That growth may be slow and imperceptible, like that of a redwood, or it may be incredibly
quick, like some species of bamboo in tropical areas, which grows up to two feet in one day.
The principle is the same, that living things grow, as that is true in the realm of nature,
so it is true also in the realm of the spirit.
Whatever is alive grows and changes.
We who have been made alive in Jesus Christ through the regenerating power of the Holy
Spirit grow and change.
Sometimes the growth is slow, sometimes it is quick, but thank God He is not finished
with us yet.
What we are going to be, we are in the process of now becoming.
We are in the developmental stages to become what God intends for us to be one day.
We are all growing.
In our text today we observe what seems to have been amazing growth on the part of the
Thessalonian converts.
Paul seems to express almost a surprised delight at the growth that he had heard about in them.
Would you turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 1 and verse 2, where we begin to read.
We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly
bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord
Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father.
Young brethren, beloved by God, his choice of you, for our gospel did not come to you
in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, just
as you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake.
You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation
with the joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became an example to all the believers in
Macedonia and Achaia.
And now turn over a couple of pages to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1.
We will read verses 3 and 4.
We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because
your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows
even greater.
Therefore we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance
and faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure.
My theme this morning is this, that spiritual growth has a cycle or rhythm to it.
That is something we all experience, and I think it may be helpful for us to consider
it more closely.
Our text today gives us several pieces of information regarding spiritual growth.
I'd like for you to note them.
In the first place we observe from our text that spiritual growth is definable.
It is not something that cannot be defined, but rather it is able to be defined in terms
of certain spiritual graces that will be in the life of the person who is a Christian
and growing.
We see them back in our first text, 1 Thessalonians 1, very clearly, where the Apostle talks about
their work of faith, their labor of love, and steadfastness of hope.
Faith, love, and hope.
These spiritual graces define for us, at least in part, what spiritual growth is all about.
The presence of faith, love, and hope indicate growth and maturity.
It would be good to define these terms that we are quite used to hearing.
Faith may be defined as an attitude of dependence.
That's where it begins, with an attitude.
An attitude of dependence, producing an act of obedience to God based upon His Word.
I think that is a sufficient definition of faith.
It is an attitude of dependence producing an act of obedience to God, which is based
upon His Word.
Love is defined as an action of sacrifice for the welfare of another.
Love cannot be defined merely in terms of romanticism.
Love is not merely a sentiment that we have, but love is action.
Love is a deed.
It goes beyond the words to produce an action of sacrifice for the welfare of another, whatever
the response.
And those last two words are key.
Agape love, God's love, does not expect anything in return.
It gives simply for the welfare of that which is loved.
The natural man is incapable of knowing and expressing agape.
For the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts the agape of God when we are saved, and then
enables us by the production of His fruit in our lives to be filled with love, as well
as joy, peace, longsuffering, and so on.
Agape love is God's love.
It is an action of sacrifice on our part for the welfare of another, whatever the response
may be.
Hope then may be defined as the confident expectation of the future.
We Christians may have our blue days.
We may go through periods of depression.
That is a normal part of our humanity.
But down beneath all of that, and undergirding it and supporting it, is hope.
Hope that is a confidence in God.
A hope that expects good in the future because that is what God has said.
Faith, love, and hope.
I believe these are the marks of a Christian and will be observed in a growing Christian.
That brings me to the second of the pieces of information that we gain from our text
regarding spiritual growth.
It is not only definable in terms of certain spiritual graces, but it is observable.
Each of these graces produces results in the life.
Notice he talks here about the work of faith.
Faith wasn't something they just talked about.
Faith wasn't something they prayed for.
Faith was that which controlled them.
It caused them to work.
It was an attitude of dependence that produced in their lives actions of obedience to God.
There was the work of faith observable.
Regarding love, he mentions its labor.
The word refers to the fatigue and exhaustion that comes with hard work.
Love doesn't merely observe the need.
It doesn't just talk about it, but love gets in there with its sleeves rolled up and
does something.
It labors.
It is observable in the life.
Thirdly, he mentions hope, which produces patience, the steadfastness, the patience
of hope.
Spiritual growth cannot be hidden.
By its very nature, spiritual growth demands exposure in the life.
Where there is faith, it will work.
Where there is love, it will labor.
Where there is hope, it will produce patience.
It is observable in the life.
The third thing that I think we learn from our text regarding spiritual growth is actually
found most clearly in chapter 1 of 2 Thessalonians, in the text we read there, the third verse.
For he mentions that their faith is greatly enlarged and their love toward one another
grows even greater.
I observe from this that spiritual growth is measurable.
By that I mean the progress or the increase of our growth can be determined.
We can know that we are growing, and others can know that we are growing.
To Timothy, the apostle Paul said, Let your spiritual progress be made known to all men.
Spiritual growth is measurable.
Paul says, whereas one time their faith was here, it is now greatly enlarged.
He was able to measure it on some scale.
He says at one point your love could be observed this way.
Now it is growing even greater than it was before.
It is measurable.
Now it is important, and please hear me, it is important to understand what the proper
measuring device is.
The measurement of spiritual growth is not found in man-made rules and regulation.
That is only legalism.
Legalism and spiritual growth are antithetical.
One can live up to a certain list of rules that man lays down and be a pygmy spiritually
and never grow.
We find the proper measuring scale in the Word of God.
This is the measuring scale that tells us how much we are growing.
It is our measuring standard.
A fourth thing that I see in our text is that spiritual growth is predictable.
Paul seems to say that here in the fourth verse in 2 Thessalonians 1.
I think it is predictable in two respects.
In the first place, spiritual growth is always present in a true believer.
As I said before, it may be achingly slow at certain points, or it may be very rapid
at another point.
But that which is alive grows, and a person who is genuinely saved will grow.
It is predictable.
He just will do it.
Paul says, knowing, brethren, beloved, your election of God.
What gave him that assurance that they were truly God's children because of the work
of faith, the labor of love, the patience of hope?
Spiritual growth is predictable in the life of one who is truly one of God's own.
But I think it is predictable in another respect as well.
That is that pressure tends to produce growth.
We can almost always predict that.
When there is pressure in a person's life, it will produce growth.
That may be an external kind of pressure, like the Thessalonians were facing with persecution
illustrated today in modern China.
When the missionaries left in 49, there were about 1 million Christians today.
The estimates range widely, but the minimum you usually hear is 50 million up to 100 million
Christians in China.
In the midst of persecution, you see that external pressure produce growth in them.
The pressure can also come internally.
It can come from the inside of us.
I would call this internal pressure discipline.
That is, we can discipline ourselves so that we grow spiritually.
There are certain steps we can take in our lives that we can predict will produce spiritual
growth.
So I say spiritual growth is predictable.
Finally, I would like to point out that it is also cyclical.
That is, it runs in cycles.
There is a natural rhythm to it.
Spurts of growth are followed by periods of testing, proving, assimilating, and incorporating.
It is that point that I want to focus on this morning.
I want to talk about the fact that spiritual growth has normal cycles to it.
Cycles are built into the very fabric of life.
Solomon seems to say this in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, where he says, there is time
for every event under heaven.
A time to give birth, a time to die.
A time to plant, a time to uproot, to heal, to tear down, to build up, to weep, to laugh,
to mourn, to dance, to throw stones together, to embrace, to shun embracing, to search,
to give up as lost, to keep, to throw away, to tear apart, to sew together, to be silent,
to speak, to love, to hate.
A time for war, a time for peace.
What is Solomon saying?
He is saying that life has its periods, its cycles, its own rhythms that are built into
it by God.
That is the way that life is.
As that is true in the natural realm of life, so it is true in the realm of spiritual things.
It will help some of us if we can get our hands on that.
Let me illustrate it.
We would all desire to feel close to the Lord and sense His presence all the time.
But the fact is that we don't.
None of us do.
At least we don't sense it always in the same way or in the same intensity.
There are normal ups and downs in our Christian experience.
There are times when we sense the Lord's presence, there are times when He seems far
removed from our situation.
I was talking to a dear brother pastor in another state a few days ago.
He is going through one of those down periods.
He says that it seems as though God has removed Himself.
Now, He knows God hasn't, just like you and I know that.
But there are times it seems that way.
That is simply a natural flow, a natural part of the cycle of our Christian experience.
There are periods of growth that are followed by rest.
We should not feel guilty when we experience these.
They are natural, they are normal to our spiritual experience.
There are some of us who think we have to be up on a spiritual high all the time, intense.
We can't be.
We are not made to be that way.
Our humanity cannot take that.
Jesus took His three closest disciples up to the mountaintop and was with them for a
few short minutes and was transfigured.
Some of them couldn't even handle it at all, and those three could only handle it
briefly because of their humanity.
They had to come back down from that mountaintop.
We are the same way.
Spurts of growth are usually of limited duration, whereas they are followed by longer periods,
usually of reflection and enjoyment, of learning to live out in our daily routine in the valley
what we gained while we were on the mountaintop.
I think that this idea of cycles, of rhythm in our spiritual experience, is suggested
even in the setting up of the annual feast days in ancient Israel, as recorded in Leviticus
23.
As you read about those feast days, and there were certain periods, you will recall, when
Israel was to come together and worship the Lord.
They were to observe certain festivals.
As you read about them in that chapter and in other places where regulations were laid
down, you are impressed by the fact that some of these festivals, these feast days, were
somber, meditative, deeply spiritual times.
Others however were celebrative, exuberant, and festive.
They were not all of the same intensity.
You see, God planned that into the very calendar of ancient Israel.
Sometimes they were quiet.
They were to be repentant.
They were to think about God, meditate upon Him.
At other times they were waving palm branches and joyous and festive in their mood.
God seems to have built in a definite rhythm to our spiritual growth as well.
We who are in Grace Church Roseville are on the threshold of an exciting opportunity for
all of us.
I would term it this way.
It's a time of corporate, accelerated spiritual growth.
We've been calling it our fall adventure.
It is opening our homes to Jesus Christ.
It is for 50 days of intensive, concentrated discipline on our part to gain measurable
spiritual growth.
Now I must say at this point that we're going to have a break halfway into this thing for
our missions festival.
For five Sundays beginning September 21, we're going to emphasize certain themes in conjunction
with this.
Then we'll have two Sundays of break for missions.
That festival is always a high for us.
That's one of our celebration times.
And then we're going to go back to this theme for three more Sundays concluding on Thanksgiving
Sunday, November 23.
So it won't be exactly 50 days for us.
But we're going to emphasize during these weeks opening our homes to Jesus Christ.
We are doing this in conjunction with the Chapel of the Air radio broadcast that some
of you listen to.
In the booklet it talks about listening to the broadcast because they will plan to talk
about certain themes as we study them.
However, that will be next spring.
You see we are one of 11 pilot churches in the United States doing it this fall.
Now it's to our benefit we're doing it first because then in the spring we can personally,
if we wish, go back through it when thousands of other churches will do it.
Right now there are 11 churches from coast to coast doing this, only 11.
And we have the opportunity to do it first and then to give feedback to the Wheaton office
of this broadcast so that they can better prepare materials, etc., to help those thousands
of churches next spring.
So in a way we're able to serve thousands and thousands of Christians all across the
United States.
And I think that in itself is an exciting aspect of this whole adventure.
But what a tremendous fall this is going to be.
On the one hand we recognize, of course, that all that God does in maturing us and in sanctifying
us is by grace.
Paul said of the Philippians, that is God who works in you, both the willing and doing
of His good pleasure.
We recognize that, would never deny that.
But on the other hand, we are exhorted to discipline ourselves unto godliness, too.
We are instructed in the Word of God to make particular effort in the direction of our
own godliness and growth.
Now we have an opportunity as a church to do that together.
You say, well how are we going to do it?
We'll open up to page three in the adventure journal that you have available to you, where
we have listed the first of five disciplines.
How are we going to have a time of accelerated spiritual growth together?
By sharing together in one, two, three, or maybe even all five of these disciplines.
The first discipline says, go on a daily God hunt.
To put it briefly, what this involves is actively looking for and recording a way in which the
king has acted on our behalf in the course of a day.
In other words, for these days we are going to make it a point of disciplining ourselves
to look for at least one way in which our king, the Lord Jesus Christ, has intervened
on our behalf, either through specific answer to prayer or some peculiar unusual timing
that only he could bring about in our circumstances, or in any way that we see it, we are going
to be looking for the king.
It's called a daily God hunt.
Some of you are familiar with this already.
That's one discipline.
The second one is found on the next page, face crises with the help of God's Word.
We do this by daily allowing our king to counsel us through his Word.
If you look back further in the journal, you will notice that there is a spot for daily
recording of certain things, and in each of those spots there is a daily scripture reading
along with just a sentence or two to provoke us to think about it.
Every day there will be some passage from the Word of God that all of us together who
are participating in this will be reading.
We will be asking our king to give us direction, allowing him to counsel us so that as we face
the crises of our days and we have them every day, we have his Word to give us direction.
What a great discipline that is.
Some of us are already doing that personally in our times with God.
Here's an opportunity for us just to shift gears a little bit if we've been doing it
already and to do it with everybody else.
Number three is on page six.
To personalize the prayer of ownership by daily praying the ownership prayer, recognizing
His Majesty's rights to our possessions.
That's the prayer that I read earlier in the service.
Boy, that's meaningful.
As we pray that every day for 50 plus days in our case, as we pray that prayer, God is
going to cause those words to sink into our hearts and become a part of us by the end
of these seven weeks.
That's another discipline I would encourage you to consider.
Number four is found on page seven.
To speak words of affirmation.
How?
By at least once a week verbally encouraging at least four people remembering our King's
presence in all of our relationships.
There's a place in the journal for you to write down the names of these people and to
record each time during the process of these weeks that you speak an affirming, encouraging
word to these people.
It may be your family.
It may be your roommates.
Because you see even if you're a student or you're a single career person, you can
join in this adventure.
There's application for you to get involved.
Speaking words of affirmation.
So often aren't our words to one another neutral, tending toward negative, being critical,
biting, etc.
Here's an opportunity for us to learn some new habits in this discipline.
Then discipline number five is to make Sunday the high point of your week by specific steps
of preparation and then reflection that will focus on that Sunday and its particular emphasis.
The theme is this theme on the front.
But each Sunday for eight weeks beginning September 21 with two weeks out, there's
going to be a particular emphasis that we'll be talking about in connection with this theme.
We want to learn to make Sunday the high point of the week.
In the middle of the journal, the very center of it, you will find a revised calendar for
50 days.
You will notice that Sunday is put at the center of the week at the high point and then
following the Sunday there's a place for you to write down an answer to this sentence.
Jesus, here's what I'll carry in my heart from this last Sunday.
In other words, we reflect on the theme from Sunday.
And then in the last part of the week we prepare for the next Lord's Day by saying I'll
make this coming Sunday special for you, Jesus, by… and then we write in our answer.
We do not want to become legalistic Sabbath observers.
If we did, we'd have to start meeting on Saturday anyway.
But I'll tell you one thing I've observed.
That is that many of us don't consider Sunday special enough.
We've really not considered carefully what rights our King has to this particular day
of the week and how we ought to be preparing for it and then reflecting upon it.
Now if those five disciplines or any one of them, any combination of them is not sufficient
for you, on page 9 there are some alternative disciplines that you may want to consider.
But my point is this.
How are we going to grow together in an accelerated way?
Well part of the answer is that we will be observing these disciplines, whichever ones
we desire to put into our lives, perhaps even all five of them I would hope, we'll be
working on these together and then sharing together and encouraging one another during
these weeks about what God is doing to help us to grow.
Now I can hear someone say, well what if I can't participate?
And I recognize that could well be a response.
What if I can't participate?
May I suggest first of all that you see if your reason is really valid for not participating.
If in fact it is, I want you to know that there is no pressure that we've placed upon
you to be a part of it.
You will still benefit by coming here and weekly worshiping with us.
But there will be no pressure on you to become an adventurer.
But I hope rather your question would be how do I get involved as an adventurer?
What do I have to do to sign up?
Well how we're going to do it is by investing just two dollars in one of these journals.
Now I can't let you do that this morning.
In fact I want you to pass them in before the end of the service to the person on the
left end of the aisle.
I'd like to put them back under the chair again.
I can't give them to you today.
But beginning tonight they will be available in the bookstore and you can get a personal
copy.
Now two dollars shouldn't be too much of a handicap for us.
That's only the price of a Big Mac and a drink.
And you know if we can't spend that much on a tool to help us grow spiritually then
we've got deeper problems than we know.
That's right.
So the cost of the journal is but two dollars.
We would encourage you to get one for each adult in your family and each junior high
age person on up.
For these booklets are suitable for all of those age groups.
One per individual will undoubtedly be necessary.
By the way for those children in grades three, four, five, and six there are children's
journals being printed.
Now they're not off the press yet because of course we're early in this whole process
with Chapel of the Air as a pilot church.
But we hope to have them here by the time of our first Adventure Sunday, September 21.
So children in grades three through six will also be able to have a journal and work with
us in this process.
I hope that you will prayerfully consider being involved.
I'll have more to say about this next Sunday.
But I want to ask you, are you ready for a time of spiritual growth, of intensive effort
on your part, of discipline so that you can see accelerated spiritual growth in your own
walk with God?
Now there may be some of you that have just come through a time of intensive growth.
I want to encourage you to take 24 hours to get your breath and then decide to be a part
of this one too.
It may be that you haven't grown for years.
I hope that you will ask God to make these next months a time, a meaningful, special,
significant time in your life when you will be able to see measurable, observable, definite
spiritual growth in your life.
Seeing things grow and change, unless there is something that interrupts the growth process.
Last summer I interrupted those larvae.
They are not going to grow up because I killed their nest.
I sent them to their great reward with great delight too, I might say.
You know in our own spiritual development there are things that can hinder us, namely,
sin.
Sin precludes spiritual growth.
We cannot grow if there is sin that is unconfessed or un-dealt with in our lives.
So before we really can get to the point of growing spiritually through this effort, we
need to examine our hearts to make sure that sin has been adequately dealt with.
Before we can tell the King that we are ready to take the steps of discipline, whatever
ones we may wish to take, we have to be able to go to the King and make sure our lives
are clean and right with Him.
Is that your case this morning?
Is He really Lord of your life today?
Growth will only come if Jesus is Lord.
And if today there is something that would choke off, that would preclude your being
a part of this adventure, I beg with you, child of God, to deal with that.
And it may be that you are not a Christian at all, you have never been saved.
You have to have life before you can grow.
A baby has to be conceived and born before he can grow up to be a child and adult.
You are born into God's family through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We want to give you an opportunity this morning to make that life-transforming decision to
be born into His family.
Let's bow together in prayer.
Since we sit here this morning and many of us have heard about the spiritual adventure
somewhat already, others of us maybe have heard about it the first time in this message.
But I want to ask you a question.
Are you at the point right now that you are willing to say, yes, I want to join that adventure?
That's for me.
Now I recognize some of you cannot do it.
That's fine.
But if you say, yes, I can do it and I will do it by the grace of God, I want this to
be a time of accelerated spiritual growth in my life.
Would you lift your hand and put it down?
I'm asking this for practical reasons as well as for other.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Now if you couldn't lift your hand then, could I at least ask you to pray about it,
consider it?
You don't have to be a member of our church.
All you have to do is be coming here and sharing with us what God is doing in your life.
But would you at least pray about it?
Would God give you direction?
Maybe there are some decisions in your life that have to be made before you can say, yes,
I want to join.
Maybe you need to be saved or perhaps you need to get sin dealt with in your life.
Father, I pray that you will work with us.
I pray that you will bring us to that point of knowing what your will is for each of us
in the adventure this fall.
And if today, right now, you are dealing with us regarding areas of our life that are not
under your kingship, where your majesty is not being observed, then give us the courage
to make the decisions and the changes that need to be made right now so that we can grow.
In Jesus' name, amen.