Day 2116 – Becoming A Radical Disciple 3 – Maturity and Creation Care – Daily Wisdom

Welcome to Day 2116 of  Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom Becoming A Radical Disciple 3 – Maturity and Creation Care – Daily Wisdom Putnam Church Message – 08/15/2021 Becoming A Radical Disciple – Maturity and Creation Care My purpose in this series is to consider eight character traits of Christian discipleship that are often neglected and deserve to be taken seriously.  In the past two weeks, we have explored Nonconformity and Christlikeness.  Today our focus will be on Maturity and Creation Care.   Maturity What would be your answer if I were to ask you to summarize the Christian scene in the world today?  While it is somewhat difficult to know with certainty, I would sum it up in just three words, namely ‘growth without depth.’   There is no doubt of the church’s phenomenal growth in many parts of the world, including the western cultures. The statistics of church growth are tremendous.  Unfortunately, the news media, even many Christian ministries, focus on the negative aspects.  ‘Explosion’ is not too dramatic a word to describe it. It is an exciting time to be alive as a citizen of God’s kingdom.  For example, the church in China and India has grown at least one hundredfold since the middle of the twentieth century. More Christian believers now worship God every Sunday in China than in all the churches of Western Europe.  Many churches have been forced underground, but persecution has grown and strengthened God’s kingdom throughout the ages. Bible.com and Biblegateway.com have experienced tremendous growth as more people are connected online. Never before have there been so many Biblical resources available today, especially on the internet, where many are either free or very inexpensive.  For many years, the top category for podcasts worldwide has been Religion and Spirituality, with Christianity being the majority.  A 2021 American Bible Society survey showed that 71% of Americans read the Bible regularly. To make a long story short, the kingdom of God is expanding rapidly, and when Christ returns a second time, it will be to establish His kingdom in a worldwide Eden.  With all the negative news out today, this is the Good News that we can rally behind.   While this is good news, we have to keep in perspective this is not an indication that many of these people desire to become radical disciples, for it is numeric growth without depth. Therefore, the third character trait of a radical disciple is Maturity.  A lack of maturity is an issue in western culture and the church worldwide.  Church leaders throughout the world indicate that this is an issue.   There are superficial disciples everywhere; as we see, there is a massive problem with a lack of godliness and integrity.  The church universal lacks a solid biblical or theological foundation of its own.  This rapid growth results in an increasing number of immature disciples because few mature, knowledgeable Shepards are available to train the sheep.  This fact is one of our calls to radical discipleship.   The lack of radical discipleship is not new; the church’s rapid growth fuels it.  We can say this because the apostles whose letters we find in the New Testament rebuke their readers for their immaturity and urge them to grow up. Consider, for example, Paul’s critique of the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this...