Three Ways To Hinder Your Spiritual Growth Series

He looked at me like, “What? How would He do that?”

I said, “If I were God and you were in the situation you’re in, I’d send your pastor over here to speak to you. I think I ended up at your house tonight because God sent me. I wasn’t planning to be here tonight, but here I am. And I am absolutely sure that God is speaking to you now. Whatever is true, noble, right, lovely, think about these things. Look up, have hope. Decide that you will embrace these words and live them out. This is God’s word to you.”

You know what else I think, friends? I think this is God’s word to you too. I think we are in this room together right now, and God is speaking to you, through the words of your pastor, and this is what He’s saying:

“There are four ways to respond to God. You can ignore Him, you can respond and then do nothing about what you’ve heard, you can respond and then get distracted by other things, or you can respond and do what He says. Every day you must choose. You must take personal responsibility for your spiritual growth and your spiritual responsiveness to God.” This is God’s word to you.

I walked my small group through this parable this week. We had a very stimulating discussion on taking personal responsibility for our spiritual growth. At the end of it, I asked, “So, where would you rate yourself right now on a scale of 1-10 on how firmly you have been taking responsibility for your own spiritual growth these days.” One of the guys spoke up and said, “I think I’ve been coasting. I’d rate myself a 5 or 6.” A second one said, “I’d put myself at a 7.” The third and the fourth said the same thing. But then one at a time, guys started pointing out the decisions someone else had made to up their spiritual life. I pointed out that the 5-6 guy has actually make huge strides in his commitment to prayer recently. Another guy pointed out that the 7 guy just committed to using his shepherding gifts to start a Fireproof Small Group. A third one is joining a Fireproof group. – And I suspect if you were to benchmark yourself this morning, you’d probably go that way to. You’d have to admit that you haven’t exactly had your foot all the way on the accelerator of your spiritual life, but so many of you have made decisions to up your personal responsibility by signing commitment cards, like we did a few weeks ago, or signing up for leading or attending a small group, that I believe we’re a church that is heading upward towards greater and greater spiritual maturity.

Which raises the question, if we’re going to take responsibility for our spiritual growth, what does full spiritual maturity look like? What are we shooting for anyway? Does it mean that we can recite a lot of verses from the Bible? Does it mean that we could give the sermon on Sunday?

The Bible gives us a picture of full spiritual maturity. It’s Jesus, on the Cross. Having been beaten and nailed there to die, He looks at His assailants, and then He looks up to heaven, and He says, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”