Warning: I’m Under Construction Message – “Construction on Character”
We’re beginning a 4-part series today called: “Warning: I’m Under Construction”. That title is a light-hearted way of suggesting that all of us are like a building not yet complete, a painting not yet complete, a flower not yet fully bloomed.
All of us, no matter what others might think of us, are in process, we are being shaped, sculpted into something that has not yet taken it’s final and ultimate form.
Now in a way that’s obvious. We know that we have rough edges, we know that we have flaws, we know that we are not complete, we have a ways to grow.
We’re all under construction, including yours truly. And over the course of these 4 weeks we’re going to look at the construction, the building of our character, that’s today.
Next week it’s the building of our faith.
The week after that Pastor Jan will be speaking on the construction of our relationships and then, on the 4th Sunday we’re going to consider what it will be like when construction is complete, when the flower is in full bloom. Can we do that?
Let’s begin to probe our Scripture for today.
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
The Message paraphrase of Scripture puts the first part of that this way: “Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God”.
Now the first thing I want to say is that when we think of growing in character, or developing character strengths and losing character weaknesses, there are 2 traps we can fall into.
On the one hand, the first trap that is that we might lean toward a solution that puts all the pressure on us.
We might think the issue is purely one of disciplining ourselves to do things we really don’t feel like doing, behaving in ways that don’t feel natural. We might think that the path to godliness is just one big old drag.
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. And at its core, growing in godliness has nothing to do with ‘doing’ anything. It has to do with loving God, with KNOWING Jesus.
The more a Christian learns about and comes to appreciate Jesus, learns what He has done for them, let’s that sink in.
The more a Christian reads the thoughts of God in the Bible and the words of Jesus, the more we are pulled into knowing Jesus, personally and intimately.
You know the Scripture that says “Bad company corrupts good character” 1 Corinthians 15:33. That’s very true, and we’d save ourselves a lot of misery if we were very careful about who we hang out with.
But the principal works the other way too. Good company nurtures good character, good behaviour.
And walking closely with Jesus, listening to His Word, praying, enjoying quiet times with Him, praising Him, worshipping Him.
When you do that you’re in His company. And being in Jesus presence is really how we become like Him, how our character grows.
Again, “Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God”.
So the solution is not just disciplining ourselves, and it’s definitely not beating ourselves up. That’s a trap we want to avoid. The solution is drawing near to Jesus. Taking time to know Him, to love Him. To worship Him. To rest at His feet.
But there’s a second trap that we can fall into when we consider growing in Christ-like character. We might, in our present age of smartphone instant-everything, we might want to find a way to accelerate, to speed up the growth of Christian character in us.
Rick Warren said that “It takes years for us to grow to adulthood, and it takes a full season for fruit to mature and ripen. The same is true for the fruit of the Spirit. The development of Christlike character cannot be rushed.
“When you try to ripen fruit quickly, it loses its flavor.
“In North America, tomatoes are usually picked unripened so they won’t bruise during shipping to the stores.
Then, before they are sold, these green tomatoes are sprayed with CO2 gas to turn them red instantly.
“Gassed tomatoes are edible, but they are no match to the flavor of a vine-ripened tomato that is allowed to mature slowly.
While we worry about how fast we grow, God is concerned about how strong we grow. God views our lives from and for eternity, so he is never in a hurry.
“The moment you open yourself to Christ, Jesus begins to work in your life. You may think you have surrendered all your life to him, but the truth is, there is a lot to your life that you aren't even conscious of. You can only give God as much of you as you understand at that moment. That's okay.
“Once Jesus begins to work, he take over more and more of your life until all of your is completely his. There will be struggles and battles, but the outcome will never be in doubt. God has promised that "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion."” (Philippians 1:6, NIV)
We need to realize that growth in character, like spiritual growth, like physical growth, takes time.
So you can’t rush spiritual growth. And we cannot rush growth in Christian character.
What we CAN do is to live in such a way as to create opportunities for growing to become like Jesus. Now that might sound appealing, and it is, ultimately.
But what I mean is that in order to grow, we need to step out and do things that are outside normal for us, outside our comfort zones. Why? Because that is where we make mistakes, and that is where we fail.
And the best way to grow in Christian character is to learn from our failures and mistakes.
I spent my first 11 years at the mission at Evergreen, our Centre for Street Youth.
I have a ton of stories, and I did a ton of growing when I was there. You know what I remember, mostly? Well what I remember very little of is when I got things right.
What I learned next to nothing from was when I was comfortable, when I was sailing through the various ministry experiences there.
What I really remember was the mistakes I made BECAUSE that’s when and where I grew. It was in being in situations that were uncomfortable and unfamiliar to me, being presented with people and problems that I’d never dealt with before, that I often said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing.
And that mistake became my teacher. That failure became my greatest help. And God being gracious and forgiving, I learned a ton. And I managed to not get fired. Yet.
So we don’t grow only through self-discipline. We do grow when we become accustomed to spending lots of time with Jesus. And we don’t grow quickly.
We grow slowly and we grow as we step out, in obedience, to love others and care for others - particularly when that stretches us. We need to not fear failure. We need to understand that mistakes are how we grow.
Let’s see what’s next in our Scripture:
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance (endurance); and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.
The Apostle Peter outlines a path to growth and maturity, a way to build Christian character. It’s presented sort of as a step-by-step process, but like everything else in life, it’s of course messier than this.
You’ll notice that much of Peter’s process here echos what the Apostle Paul says about the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, in the book of Galatians, chapter 6.
But let’s look at what Peter says here.
[PPT] Faith--->Goodness--->Knowledge--->Self-control--->Perseverance (endurance)--->Godliness--->Mutual Affection--->Love
http://www.ovbc.net/sermon/growing-in-grace-add-to-your-faith/
He says that for the reasons he’s mentioned...the fact that God, by His grace, has given us all that we need for a godly life through knowing Jesus, that God has given us awesome promises through His own glory and goodness we can, as it says, ‘participate in the divine nature’. That simply means we can be LIKE Jesus.
Because all that is true, Peter says to make every effort to add to your faith goodness. Why do we need to be intentional about adding goodness to our faith?
Well, is it possible for a person to have faith in Jesus and at the same time really not be known as a good person? Well, yes. I think it’s odd, but we CAN, if we’re not intentional about it, FAIL to live out our faith.
Human nature being what it is, we CAN believe, for example, that God has forgiven us all of our sins. We believe that, but still NOT forgive someone else.
That’s why Jesus built a prayer about this exact issue into the Lord’s Prayer, a cornerstone prayer that all Christians should know well. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others who have trespassed against us”.
That SHOULD be a regular reminder to us to forgive others, because what we’re asking God when we pray that prayer is to forgive us in the same manner in which we forgive others.
If we hold grudges, if we pointedly DON’T forgive those who have sinned against us, are we actually asking God, in that prayer, to not forgive us? Interesting, eh?
So we don’t want our faith to fail to produce genuine fruit in our lives. We need to, on purpose, simply practice our faith.
That really means in large measure giving to others what we’ve received from God. Have we received grace from God? Have we received mercy? Have we know kindness from God’s hand? Has He been gentle with us?
Those are the things that having received them from God, having experienced them from His hand and thus being familiar with what they are, we’re called to freely give those things to others. That’s how we grow in goodness.
To faith and goodness, what are we to add? Knowledge. We really need to continue to grow in our knowledge of God through Jesus Christ.
If we ever feel that we know enough about God, about Jesus, we’re mistaken. I’ve known Barbara for over 28 years (339 months - yes, we still count).
I still do not know anywhere near all there is to know about her. Barbara is human. God, Jesus is God.
We need to add knowledge to goodness, to the practicing of our faith, so that our faith deepens, so that we can be ready to give a defense of the gospel when necessary.
So that in the storms of life we find ourselves with a mature faith, a mature understanding of life and of God, so that we are not bandied about by every trial AND every church fad that comes along.
This is actually pretty serious stuff, and has been an issue in the history of God’s people. Hosea, an Old Testament or Hebrew Bible prophet said: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6)
With knowledge we gain discernment, the ability to distinguish between truth and error, the capacity to determine what the voice of Jesus is saying, verses all the other voices that seek to influence us. Want to grow in knowledge?
Keep reading your Bible. Keep coming to church. Soon enough The Feast starts up again, and you can join the Bible Study that we have on a weekly basis.
To knowledge, we need to add self-control. Self-control is the virtue of a person who masters his or her desire and passions, especially sensual appetites.
This has to come from a place deep within us. It will not ever be encouraged by our culture, by media.
Sadly, since immorality, especially sex outside marriage, is the norm, it is an uphill battle for us to truly honour God with our bodies. But it’s always been a problem.
That’s why to the early church Paul wrote: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body:. 1 Corinthians 6:18
To self-control we’re to add perseverance.
Other translations use the word “endurance” and “patience”.
The original includes those meanings. In the NT this is the character trait of a person who is not swerved from his/her deliberate purpose and his/her loyalty to God even by the greatest trials and sufferings.
Charlie Brown is at bat. STRIKE THREE. He has struck out again and slumps over to the bench. "Rats! I’ll never be a big-league player. I just don’t have it! All my life I’ve dreamed of playing in the big leagues, but I know I’ll never make it."
Lucy turns to console him. "Charlie Brown, you’re thinking too far ahead. What you need to do is set yourself more immediate goals." He looks up. "Immediate goals?"
Lucy says, "Yes. Start with this next inning when you go out to pitch. See if you can walk out on the mound without falling down!"
But if we fall down, as we will, often, if we’re alive and engaged in life, what do we need to do? Get back up.
No one has ever succeeded at anything without first erring, without first learning from their mistakes.
To perseverance we’re called to add godliness. That’s really an attitude, a spirit of reverence and respect to God in all matters.
When culture speaks about something that God has spoken about, who do we listen to? Hopefully we listen to God. Hopefully we obey God.
So we must add holiness to our faith. That doesn’t mean that externally we comply with certain rules. It means that we do those things that nurture a purity of heart.
The final two - mutual affection and love, are clearly similar. This is why church is so important, why Christian fellowship is essential to the growth of our character.
God uses other believers to build character in us. Proverbs 27:17 says: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”.
In order to grow in mutual affection with other believers, it’s not enough to come to church at Christmas and Easter. Pastors call people who do that Chrees-sters.
The best way for friendship to grow is over time and through regular contact. We need each other in order to grow to be like Jesus.
This has always been an issue and a problem for the church. The writer of Hebrews wrote to the early church: “24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching”.
So, let’s not be Chree-sters. Let’s make a good habit of worshipping God together and encouraging one another on a regular basis.
The end of this process, the highest point of it, is love. It’s agape love.
As we walk closely with Jesus, and as we do the things we’ve been talking about to grow in Christian character, where we end up is as people who can love others with God’s love.
Agape love. The most giving, lost self-sacrificing, most full and generous kind of love there is.
A ten-year-old boy had Hodgkin’s disease. During the last two years of his life he was in and out of the hospital many times.
He would try to make up the work he missed at school by writing about what he did in the hospital. Several weeks after Scott died, his mother found a paper entitled, "How I Would Show Love."
It said, "How I would show love is by being thoughtful and caring, helping in any way I could. Hugging and kissing would be a nice way too. Laughing and smiling when someone you love is happy, and being re-assuring, and extra, extra kind when the one you love is sad.
“When you are very sick, it helps to have someone hold your hand, letting the glowing warmth of his love for you trickle into you."
Love is the crowning jewel in the life progressing in holiness.
You see, if we reject the teaching of Scripture, if we don’t add one thing upon another, carefully, prayerfully and thoughtfully, we can’t really expect to see any growth in ourselves.
That would be a little like, to use a sailing metaphor, putting out to sea in a sailboat and never unfurling and setting the sails. Hoping instead that the wind will take us where we want to go.
But passivity is not what we’re called to. Right before outlining the process we’ve been looking at Peter says for us to “make every effort” to do these things.
Peter continues:
8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, we want our lives to count for something. God wants our lives to count. Who here strives to be ineffective and unproductive?
Of course we don’t. And especially we want our relationship to God and our knowledge of Jesus Christ to change us.
God is building Himself a people. God never stops building His church, inspiring His people to be like Jesus Christ.
You and me, we are being shaped, sculpted into something that has not yet taken its ultimate form. But we ned to remember God’s promise to complete what He has started in us.
Next week we look at how God’s builds our faith, how we move from a dormant faith to one that’s alive, or how we move from no faith to strong faith. It’s going to be interested. I hope you’ll be here. Let’s pray.
