Refining Christian Maturity Pastor Allan Kircher
“Snap the chains”
“They cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he rescued them! He led them from the darkness and shadow of death and snapped their chains” (Psalm 107:13-14, TLB).
Are you crying out to the Lord this morning? I cry out everyday for direction and guidance. None of us will ever be able to do it on our own.
The Christian who earnestly recognizes this and goes the heavenly Father is growing.
This is the difference between a maturing Christian and a stagnant Christian.
The Shadow Christian, as we will call him, was a cranky guy. He did not smile easily, and when he did, the smile often had a cruel edge to it, coming at someone’s expense.
He had a knack for discovering islands of bad news in oceans of happiness.
He is the one that sits in the pews on Sunday morning, minding his own business, clocking in the one hour that his soul requires to have peace with God.
The shadow never changed……His native tongue was unwholesome and not uplifting in spirit.
It was just as detrimental to his walk as others when he spewed out complaints, gossip, sarcasm and a dry sense of humor that spoke sincerely of how he really felt.
He was projecting his self-image, the real person he really is.
Occasionally, the shadow’s joylessness produced unintended joy for others.
There are periods of time when the shadow’s primary complaints centered around the music in the church, “there are too many songs,” or “it’s too traditional, or too loud.” Or the preaching is not long enough, or the service is too long.”
The shadow was not changing. Once an idle, complacent young Christian, the shadow grew up to be an idle, complacent old Christian.
The shadow could not say proudly at his deathbed that he has fought the good fight, he has kept the faith, he has finished the race.
His regret consumed him as his life flashed before his eyes and he knew his
Despondent ways were not the ways of his heavenly Father.
Welcome to Refining Christian Maturity…..
Step one: Made a humbling decision that I am completely helpless to do anything good in my life.
I know nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have a desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out (Romans 7:18).
First is the “reality step”…..Realize I’m not God that I’m powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable.
The great thing is all of our lives are unmanageable.. Because were human.
“In reality, I realize that I have problems I can’t seem to control.
Am I going to let my past failures prevent me from taking this road to maturity?
Am I afraid to change? Or, what are my fears of the future?
Open your Bible’s to Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
There are two things I would like to point out in this verse.
God has a particular race, a unique plan, for each of us. A plan for good, not a life full of dependencies, impurities and obsessions.
We need to be willing to get rid of all the unnecessary baggage, the past failure, in our lives that keep us stuck, again, it says let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up.
Many of us are stuck in bitterness over what someone has done to us or what we have done to them.
Or stuck in bitterness over something that has happened in the past or even just this morning.
Don’t allow things to live rent free in your head. They stay in there and periodically they come up again and again reminding you that you are not the Christian you should be.
Reading God’s word and following His teachings will allow you to find the courage and strength to move on in maturity.
Isn’t that what we all desire in life. To grow in Christ Jesus. To have the peace of mind that God is in total control in our life.
But as you travel your road through sanctification, God will help you find the willingness to be free of the hold on your life.
We cannot hide from ourselves.
The greatest hold-up to the healing for my hang-up is me.
The greatest hold-up to the healing of your hang-up is you.
It starts by being radically honest and saying “I’m the problem”
I keep saying, “If I just change relationships, change jobs, change towns, then everything will be fine.
The only problem is wherever I go, I’m there. And I keep messing up.
So you accept responsibility for your faults. Don’t rationalize.
Don’t say “it happened a long time ago” or “It’s just a stage” or “Everybody else does it”
Don’t rationalize it – Don’t minimize it.
Don’t blame others saying “It’s mostly their fault”
It may be mostly their fault, but God holds you responsible for the 10% that’s your fault.
It may be mostly their fault, but what about your 10%.
And you just admit you messed up
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”
That’s why Jesus went to the cross, for our sins. He knows everything you’ve ever done and everything you’ve experienced.
But the race isn’t over yet. God isn’t interested in how we started, but how we finish in our road to maturity.
Step two Accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior knowing only his Spirit can restore me to sanity. Phil 2:13
The beginning place for everything is a right relationship with God.
You must first come to God on his conditions for forgiveness and salvation.
When you make Christ Lord of your life, you forever surrender the right to choose whom you will love.
He will begin to guide your life to be on mission with him.
If you have NOT been in a right and obedient relationship with God since your salvation, you need to repent and get back into that right relationship with him so his Spirit can flow through your life.
This is where we enter into the third step in RCM. Turn my will and my life over to God for his total control in every area. 1 Peter 4:1-2.
Part of this step is the “hope” step….Although I’m powerless to control all the problems and all the things in my life, God has the power to control them.
This hope allows us not to cover up the denial from the past and just try and fix things in our own power.
Instead, we need to keep those things that keep us falling and expose them to the light so that through God’s power they can truly heal.
Hope is knowing that God’s word will come to pass in your life.
Hope is knowing and having true saving believe in the blood of Jesus Christ, trusting that he will conquer all your fears.
It’s all about having true saving faith…Heb 11:1. now faith, is being sure…
Some of us are bound by guilt. We keep beating yourself up over some past failure. You‘re trapped, stuck in your guilt.
Or on the other end of the spectrum, you lay dormant in complacency, your prayer life is none existent, you hardly ever read the bible let alone studying it intently.
Or you may tell people you will pray for them, but never get the chance too.
And you continue to run on the treadmill…. Getting nowhere in growth with Christ Jesus.
Eph 4:18 says…they are darkened in their understanding…
You see we can get to the point where we fell like little hamsters on that wheel, continually going nowhere in our walk yet wondering why God isn’t moving in our life.
Hope says get off the revolving wheel and step into a Christ centered life.
We must have the hope that God has sent his son into our hearts crying for us when we are unable too.
Throughout our Christian walk we will continue to encounter trials and hurts that we are powerless to change, but with God’s help you can be open to allow those circumstances and situations to change you, to make you better, not bitter.
This hope opens the door for us as believers to move on to brighter things in our life.
God can help, God can restore. Open your Bible to John 3:16.
You also need to have a proper view of yourself.
We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves.
You need to love yourself and understand who you are in Christ.
A right relationship with Christ can bring balance to your life that will not only make life more meaningful and fulfilling for you, but it will also be far more effective in revealing the character of Christ to others.
Once you have a right vertical relationship with your heavenly Father and a balanced view of self, God moves you to correct relationships with others.
You cannot be right with God and still have broken relationships with others.
Reconciled relationships with others will clean the channel in your life so that the love of God can flow through you to others around you.
The gospel will move through these right relationships.
RCM is here for Christians who want to grow in maturity.
It is my impression that we should all want to grow in maturity.
The world is so very full of sickness.
Many people come to the church for help, and every church that is doing what it needs to be doing realizes that we all continually need help.
We come, over and again, for help, and we receive it.
The only tragedy is that if we do not mature and grow in Christ’s love by meeting other people’s needs, we become a liability, and the flow is always going inward.
So we stagnate, and that hurts us. That hurts the body of Christ.
In step four we confess our sins by admitting them to God, myself, and to another human being through a humbling moral inventory. Lam 3:40
You see, if there is a ruptured relationship in your life, there is going to be a rupture of the flow of the Holy Spirit through your life.
Jesus made it crystal clear in Matthew 5:23-24, therefore if you are presenting your gift at the altar, and your brother has something against you , leave your gift at the front of the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and come and present your offering.
Jesus taught us to confess wrong relationships and make them right before coming to worship the Father.
We must be reconciled with others to be right with God.
I believe with all my heart that when you have to dig deep into your spiritual well to get the Living Water flowing, there is something wrong in a relationship somewhere.
When relationships are right, the flow of the Holy Spirit is like an artesian well that bursts up and out and over!
Step five: We refine those impurities in our lives by continually allowing God’s grace to work in us so that I may strive for maturity.
We strive for maturity through obedience to the Lord. That is the only way.
Amos 3:3 asked, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?”
If “they be agreed,” you have to come back to accept God’s conditions in total agreement with him for the unfolding of that walk.
Then, if you do that, the Lord says, “ I will reveal Myself in you life.”
If you are not living in agreement with God and in obedience to him, you need to get right with God there also.
Many people lose the joy of their salvation because they do not walk in obedience to the Lord.
Barriers form, and they let those barriers defeat them.
Jesus says in John 14:21 that if you follow his commandments, then you love him, and shall be loved by the Father, and Jesus will disclose himself to you.
Jesus is saying here that he will make himself real. Your search for Jesus is not self-disclosure.
He reveals himself. He makes himself real. Do you want Jesus to be real to you? Then obey him.
I bet the times in your life when Jesus was real were the times when you faced a major decision and decided to do it his way.
You must say at all times, Father, I do not care what it costs. I do not care what I have to do.
The man who walks with God every day has the reality of his presence as God manifests himself. This is God’s promise.
God is alive and well in you, but is he in control? Are there barriers you have not overcome?
Is he free to do all he wants to do in your life? Are you obedient to him?
Jesus needs to be real in your life.
If he is not as real as he used to be, perhaps you need to go back and check the original problem—obedience.
In step six we ignite the power of God in our lives and make amends to those whom I have harmed and continue to take a personal moral inventory so I may not make the same earthly mistake. Luke 6:31
Is there anyone hear this morning that may have harmed any someone in the past whether physically or mentally or perhaps offended someone without knowing.
Well, that should be easy; we should all be able to raise our hand.
You ignite the power of God in your live when you own to it in a personal moral inventory.
When you ignite the power of God,
You show your sincere love to others.
You pray with your spouse at the throne of God to ignite your marriage.
You have passion in your heart for the oppressed.
You continually seek God in all things, not just the things you want to seek him for.
When you know you are not where you should be at in your walk, you ignite the power of by asking God with a humble and contrite heart to engineer his spirit in you.
As God engineers circumstances in your life, the lives of those around you will be affected also.
As he loves the person through you by meeting his or her needs, he will begin drawing that person to his Son.
That is the ignition of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Step seven propels us to triumph in God’s presence through prayer, meditation, and fellowship that I may refine my life as a Christian today claiming victory in all areas of my life. Col 3:16
The key to a fulfilled life is relationships.
Things do not satisfy: relationships do. The first relationship is with the Father.
When he becomes Lord of our lives, we forfeit the right to choose whom we will love, and he releases his love in us to build right relationship.
Prayer is not just a religious activity you go through before you begin your work for the Lord.
IN RCM, I can sum up the lessons on prayer in two sentences.
Prayer is a relationship with the Master of the universe.
When you pray, you enter the throne room of heaven where the decisions that govern the universe are made.
Isn’t that awesome.
God invites us to pray so that when he answers, we will know he did it. He will get the glory.
The RCM steps will help you learn to pray for wisdom and discernment as you seek to make disciples.
You will learn to pray that God engineer circumstances in the lives of others to draw them to himself and to his Son Jesus Christ.
You will pray about the people in your life and watch to see where God is working in their lives.
When you become aware of their needs, that will be your invitation to join God and show his love to the needy person.
Our last step guides us to yield humbly to the power of the Holy Spirit, using it in all of our affairs, and carry that message to all we are in contact with each day. Acts 1:8
In RCM, we have a step that includes evangelism.
This is critical in our maturity.
You see, a person can never lead another closer to the Lord than he or she already is.
Evangelism must flow from a life that is deeply in love with the Lord. It is not something you can learn in a textbook, take tests on, or make A’s on to be assured of success.
When you get out into the world, you will flunk the course if you do not have the right lifestyle. Your lifestyle should reveal what and who you really are.
Sometimes your relationship with people is so shallow or distant that you have little way of reaching out to the person in love.
At other times you will become aware of a person who needs the Lord, and you will intentionally begin building a relationship bridge to that person so that God’s love can flow to him or her.
You can build relationship bridges to people in a variety of ways.
You can show an interest in them during special times of joy or times of stress.
You can build bridges through shared interest or hobbies.
You will find that building bridges is not a waste of time.
Building bridges is Glorifying God.
When people come to Christ through existing relationships with Christians, they are far more likely to follow through in establishing a growing relationship with a church-probably your church.
As soon as you remove your mask, your road to recovery begins-or begins again! It doesn’t matter if you’re new Christian or have been a Christian for years.
As you work the steps in maturity remember 1 John 4:18: “Where God’s love is, there is no fear, because God’s perfect love drives out fear. ”You are not here by mistake this morning. Jesus can change your life.
It is my prayer for each of you that you will not let your past failures or your fear or your future or simply your idleness as a Christian stop you from giving Refining Christian Maturity a real try.
None of us want to be in our last hours, saying I have not fought the good fight, I have not kept the faith, I have not finished the race.
God’s power can change our circumstances and it will strengthen us in our walk with the Lord on the road in maturity.
Don’t quit before the miracle happens!
God is mighty and in control of the situation and will work mightily in you in all things!
“They cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he rescued them! He led them from the darkness and shadow of death and snapped their chains” (Psalm 107:13-14, TLB).
