Purpose - to look at what helps and what hinders us in growing in our relationship to God and how a right perception of who God is can encourage us to deepen that relationship….

God longs for his children to grow because growth is essential to our spiritual well-being. A failure to grow is tragic in our physical lives as well as our spiritual lives. A parents expectation is that their children will grow both physically and mentally to become fully mature adults.  Lets look at how such growth occurs to help us discern principles we can apply to our spiritual journey: -

• Growth is orderly - occurring in natural stages. e.g. talking before growing beards!  We must therefore start with the basics!
• Growth is planned - Our DNA may control the maximum height we can grow to, but how tall we become will depend on nutrition, health and exercise etc.  God has planned our spiritual growth and calls us to an incredible potential but we choose whether we attain it.  Sinful lives, a wrong attitude to trials and poor spiritual nutrition will stunt our growth in Christ.
• Growth is slow, but sure.  Children long to be grown-up and may become impatient but one day they find that they are adults.  So it is with our spiritual growth - it may seem slow to us at times but we are changing little by little.
• Growth occurs in spurts - adolescents seem to sprout up.  We need to realise that times of discouragement may temporarily slow our spiritual growth.

We will come into our full inheritance, the Kingdom of God, little by little - which is the way that Exodus describes how Israel grew into her inheritance, the Promised Land.  But however slow the process may seem to us at times we must never forget just how important growth is to God.  The parable of the Talents (Matthew 25: 14-30) makes this clear.

Don’t worry if at the moment you are thinking that the potential that God has for you seems too big for you to attain. To illustrate the point think of small children that are given clothes that are too big for them - the trousers tend to bunch up around the waist and the trouser legs may need to be rolled up.  But one day, when the child has grown, the trousers will be a perfect fit.  God has given each one of us a great potential to grow into, which seems way too big for us now.  We can’t begin to imagine what it will be like but if we patiently grow then, in time, God’s Kingdom will become a perfect fit and we will feel at home in it!

As Christians we have not however been brought into God’s family just so that we can feel good, but one of the purposes behind God’s calling is for us to be people who can contribute to the spiritual well-being and progress of our fellow believers. 

In order for us to be effective in helping others we need to grow spiritually ourselves. Trials and suffering are a normal part of our Christian life and a necessary but painful part of the growing process.  As we learn to cope with suffering by trusting God, so our faith is built up.

God, our loving Father, wants what is truly best for us, which is not necessarily what we think is best!  He wants us to be filled with a confidence and happiness based securely on our love for Him and His Son rather than being dependent on worldly circumstances.  As believers we really do lack nothing.  We are children of God, heirs of all His promises, guaranteed an eternal home in His presence forever.  Moreover the Holy Spirit was given to us when we believed - both as a seal and pledge of this life to come and also as an everyday helper in our daily lives.

Lets take a few moments to think about the parable of the sower that we had read from Mark’s Gospel:

Amongst other things, this parable can help us to explain the mechanics of spiritual growth.  There are four basic types of response to the Gospel - but only one of these will result in lasting spiritual growth.  In essence the “seed” is the Gospel message that proclaims salvation is possible only by faith in Christ.  The “plant” is our faith and the “ground” represents the hearts of different kinds of people.  A very good question is to ask yourself which type of ground you want to be?

·         Hard ground - such a person chooses not to believe in Christ.  They have heard “the word” but are unwilling to believe it and won’t therefore be able to understand the salvation that is on offer.  In the three Gospel accounts of the parable different names are used for Satan.  Matthew refers to the “evil one” - whose trick is to substitute lies for truth.  Mark refers to “Satan” - a Hebrew name meaning ‘adversary’ - who will oppose the truth.  Luke refers to “the devil” a Greek word meaning ‘slanderer’. The devil slanders God’s word so that peoples fears and doubts are stirred up and all the ‘untruths’ about God that have filled their minds over the years mean that the hard heart is like a hard-packed surface unwilling to receive God's teachings

·         Rocky ground - in this person the plant of faith quickly grows, but over time the cost of discipleship proves too much and, under the pressure of trials and testing, faith is abandoned.  In the rocky heart there is a hard layer under the soft surface that prevents the Word of God from taking proper root.

·         Thorny ground - such a person allows worldly distractions to compete with the “faith plant”.  Other matters prove to be more important than Jesus Christ.  Worries, fears and lusts will of course continue to confront all of us throughout our mortal lives but we must not let them control us.  God is mightier than anything we fear and He is here in His Sprit helping us!  We must make sure that our desire for the riches of this world does not lead us to abandon our reliance on God. We must guard against the thorns of fear and desire choking the life out of our newly sprouted faith.

·         Good ground - such a person believes in Jesus and continues to grow as a believer. In this heart there is no hard-packed surface which is unwilling to receive God's teachings, no under-layer of rock preventing the Word of God from taking hold, and no thorns of fear and desire to choke the life out of the newly sprouted faith.  The heart of a “good ground” person is not only able to receive the seed of God’s message about Jesus but also proves to be a fertile environment so that the seed grows and bear fruit.  Such a person wants to continue growing spiritually and to help others do the same.

Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself with others.  God does not want us to compete with each other in our growth but be honest before him and open in our relationship with him so that our faith may increase. There will be different amounts harvested from different people’s lives and scripture makes that clear.  Our responsibility is to be those people who God can use to produce fruit.  We need to grow by seeking out and accepting Jesus’ teachings and allowing them to mould our thinking and lives. Hiding God’s word in our hearts is a good place to start.

Are we those who are maturing in our faith, or still stuck in spiritual infancy? Three times in the New Testament God’s people are exhorted to be those who should be growing and able to take “solid” rather than “liquid” spiritual food.  In both Corinthians and Hebrews it is made clear that whereas people should have been able to take on-board deep spiritual truths they were not yet able to do so. How about us?  Does God feel like a Maths lecturer trying to explain complex principles only to discover that we his students cannot recite the three-times table?

We’ve thought about some of the things that can help or hinder our growth, and I want now to think about our perception of God so that we may be encouraged to grow more into His likeness.

The problem is that many of us have an image of God clouded by all sorts of things from our past, emotional and physical - that mean we have no clear picture of the God we long to worship. Who is God?

David, in Psalm 23, gave us an answer :  “The Lord (Yahweh)is my shepherd”

David was himself a shepherd and know how helpless his sheep were, how it took time for them to trust and follow him, how he often rescued them from harm.  He realised just how like a good shepherd God is. In those days shepherds didn’t drive, but led their sheep to fresh pastures.  They stayed with them all day and took them back to the fold in the evening and slept across the gateway to protect them. Sheep don’t have to go looking for their shepherd - he is out looking for them.

Some 600 years after David composed his shepherd song Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me - just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father - and I lay down My life for the sheep” (Jn. 10:11-15).

Yes, the Good Shepherd laid down his life for the sheep.  Since early days religions have decreed that a lamb should give up its life for the shepherd.  They would confess their sins on the lambs head and it would then be slain.  What irony!  The shepherd gives his life up for the lamb:

"He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:5-6).

It wasn’t anger that led Christ to be crucified; it was love. God loves us so much that He Himself took on our guilt; He took all our sin into Himself and healed it. When it was over He said, "It is finished!" There is no more that can be done, nothing left for us to do but to enter into acceptance of God’s forgiveness.

“I’m not good enough, why does God want me, I keep wandering off, I keep sinning, I can’t break bad habits, I’m not sorry enough…”  Don’t you see - God already knows - He sees into all the dark corners of our hearts BUT what he sees only draws out His love the more.  It is His nature to love; He can do nothing else for “God is love” (1John 4:8) The Lord is “MY” shepherd, not just “A” shepherd.  I can have all of His attention all of the time, just as if I am the only one.  I may be part of a flock, but I’m one of a kind. 

God leads us beside still waters and makes us lie down in green pastures.  These were the oases in David’s day - lush places in the desert that the shepherd led his flock toward so that they could feed, and rest.  The Good Shepherd knows His sheep, and calls them by name.  God makes the first move; He takes the initiative and leads us to a place of rest. 

To finish I would like to read something I read to our Home Group this last week which we all found moving and challenging:

'God's cry to wayward Adam and Eve, "Where are you?" suggests the loneliness He feels when separated from those He loves. G. K. Chesterton suggests that the whole Bible is about the "loneliness of God." I like the thought that in some inexplicable way God misses me; that He can't bear to be separated from me; that I'm always on His mind; that He patiently, insistently calls me and seeks me, not for my own sake alone, but for His. He cries, "Where are you?"

Deep within us is a place for God. We were made for God and without His love we ache in loneliness and emptiness. He calls from deep space to our depths: "Deep calls to deep" (Ps. 42:7).

David put it this way, "My heart says of You, 'Seek His face!' 'Your face, LORD, I will seek' " (Ps. 27:8). God spoke to the depths of David's heart, uttering His heart's desire: "Seek My face." And David responded with alacrity, "I will seek Your face, Lord."

And so it is: God calls us - seeking us to seek Him - and our hearts resonate with longing for Him. That understanding has radically changed the way I look at my relationship to God. It is now neither duty nor discipline - a regimen I impose on myself like a hundred sit-ups and fifty push-ups each day- but a response, an answer, to One who has been calling me all my life.'

May each of discover for ourselves that God is calling us in this way and has been all our lives and may we respond by seeking to open our hearts to Him more and more, so that we may grow day by day secure in the love that He has for us.

Jes Branscombe
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