How To Grow In Christ!

Called - How to Grow

August 23, 2020

Have you ever wanted to be like someone else? I remember as a kid growing up, I used to watch the Chicago Cubs all the time. I tried to emulate the way Fergie Jenkins pitched. I tried to swing like Billy Williams. I was Gale Sayers when I played football. I wanted to be Bobby Hull when I played hockey. Those were guys I looked up to . . . and did my best to try to be like them.

Have you ever wanted to be like someone? Maybe there was an athlete, or a musician or actor you really admired, and wanted to be just like them.

Or maybe it was someone’s character; their morals and ethics that really attracted you and you wanted to follow that person. You knew they were different, they had certain character traits and qualities that you wanted. Maybe it was a teacher, a politician, a friend, or a saint in the church,

Maybe it was a biography about someone and as you thought about them, there was something about them you admired and you wanted to be like them.

I had planned on talking about spiritual gifts today, but felt we needed to keep talking about how to get there, more about who we are before we can talk about the doing part.

As I mentioned last week, it’s discipleship. It’s the process of growing to become more like Christ. While we may want to emulate others in our lives; the main person we must seek to be more and more like, is Jesus Christ.

That’s not always easy. We would like it to be easy, but honestly it’s not.

I started this series about our purpose in life - all the way back in a different world. It was PV - Pre - Virus.

If we can remember way back then, we were looking at the reasons for our existence. That we were created by God and for God. We were created to love God, to bring pleasure to God - - to worship God.

We were also created to be in fellowship with God and with one another. When all systems are working right, we are supposed to be family. Worship and serve together in a system in which we truly love one another and want the best for one another. And even when we don’t agree with one another, we’re still unified and have this deep abiding love which is based on the love of Jesus.

That’s where we were at until I started talking about being called by God and what it means to grow in Christ. What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? Another word we looked at last week was sanctification. It’s the life long process of growing and maturing as believers in Jesus Christ.

So, when God calls us, we are able to respond. We were created to become like Christ. From the very beginning, God’s plan has been to make each of us like His Son, Jesus. That is our destiny.

But there’s one huge, HUGE problem. And that problem is us. It’s the problem of sin. It creeps in and is always ready to pounce as Peter says, satan is like a roaring lion waiting to devour us.

Do you recall in the Bible where Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3? Listen to satan’s lie to Eve, he said -

4 “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and YOU WILL BE LIKE GOD, knowing good & evil

Did you hear that lie? He told Eve we will be like God. But we aren’t, are we? We would like to be and we would like others to think we are. But we aren’t.

Rick Warren wrote, “This desire to be a god shows up every time we try to control people around us. But as creatures, we will never be the Creator. God doesn’t want you to become a god; He wants you to become godly – taking on His values, attitudes and character.”

In Ephesians 4 Paul wrote something that ties in with this. I’m going to read it in 2 different versions. Firstly, let’s look at it in the ESV -

17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

20 But that is not the way you learned Christ! 21 assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. - Ephesians 4