Our Purpose - Week 4

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All right. Amen. And welcome again, Life Mission Church. We're so grateful that you're here.

One thing that I want to do real quick before we move on with the message, is there anybody here in the room that is going on the Kenya trip tomorrow? I knew we had a few of them that were. Where's the app? Your point.

I see people pointing. Where are you? Where are you? OK.

If you're going on the Kenya trip, stand up real quick, because we want to pray over you guys this morning. Yeah. Great. OK.

Helping out. We've got a few others. These guys are on mission. There's one over here.

Awesome. OK. So join with me if you will this morning. Let's pray for this team.

Father, we just thank you, Lord, for their obedience, Lord, the calling that you put on their life. We know that as your commandment to us is to go into all of the world and make disciples. And so these guys are taking it seriously. I love that.

Bless their trip, Lord, their travel. I'm just praying for everything, Lord, from the passports and the paperwork, Lord, when they minister to people, I know that you're going to work not only through them, but also to them. And so we're so grateful for this team. Bless them in Jesus' name today.

Amen. Amen. All right. Thanks, guys.

Appreciate you. Definitely wanted to pray over you before we start. Well, again, welcome this morning. My name is Andrew.

If I've not met you, I'm one of the pastors here. I'd love to meet you after service. If you are one of those prospective life group leaders, we'll talk about that here a little bit. But I will be at the table in the lobby.

I'd love to get to know you and meet you after service. Well, if you've been here the last three weeks, you know that we have been going through a series called Our Purpose, Our Purpose. And we're walking through over five weeks, we're taking to talk about the five purposes that God gave our leadership years ago here at Life Mission Church. And so we're going to look at those here this morning.

If you haven't listened or watched those messages over the last three weeks, I highly recommend that you go back and do that, not because we want to get views and likes and all the things. But I hope that you realize that over these five weeks, these purposes, they actually build on one another. So today we're talking about growth. More specifically, we're talking about spiritual growth.

But how many of you know you can't really sustain growth? You can't have healthy spiritual growth. If you haven't first experienced what Pastor Clint talked about last week, which is true freedom from the world. And you can't have true freedom unless you've been grafted into God's family and you're a part of a community.

And you can't really do that and be a part of God's family unless you first experienced salvation. And so that's why we started week one with salvation. This is the starting point. That's not the finish line.

Salvation is not just your golden ticket into heaven. This is the starting line that we build upon. And now that you've been saved, God says you are welcome to be in my family. You're grafted in now.

And you have brothers and sisters everywhere that want to challenge you, that want to love on you, that want to encourage you to then find true freedom from the things of the world, the things that we used to walk in, old habits and thought patterns. We say we have now true freedom, not just for the purpose of being free, but now we have the opportunity to grow. To grow into what he calls us to be, again, not just so that we can grow. But what we're going to talk about next week is that now we grow so we can live on mission.

And that's what we're going to talk about this morning. We're talking about growth. And the overarching purpose that we have been talking about over the last three weeks is that really the ultimate purpose being the presence of an Almighty God. Our purpose is his presence.

That's what we've looked at. And that's what we're going to talk about here. In fact, Matthew 633 talks about that, that we are called to seek first the kingdom of God or his presence. Live righteously, it says.

And then all of these things will be added onto you. All the things, the daily life that we worry about. But he says, my presence is the ultimate purpose, to spend time to enjoy, to live in that presence of God. So this morning, again, we're going to talk about spiritual growth.

And we're going to time to take a 30,000 foot elevation, kind of look over what spiritual growth looks like. And then hopefully, at the end, we'll get into some practical things that we can do as brothers and sisters in Christ to live that growth out, to live on mission. Now everywhere we look in creation, if you just look at what God did through creation, you see growth. Like it's everywhere.

We see plants and trees that are just stretching to the sun. We see infants and toddlers and teenagers who are outgrowing their clothes faster than parents can buy them, right? I mean, we see growth. There's seeds that break underneath the ground and begin to grow into crops and fields and forests.

Everything that God created grows. When God created life, he also designed it to grow. It's not enough just to be alive. He says, no, I want you to be alive and grow.

And so when it comes to our relationship with Jesus, right, when we give our life to him and we become part of the family and we find freedom from the world, why would it be anything different? Why would we expect anything less in our spiritual growth? And sometimes we kind of get things a little mixed up and we think, well, those guys up on the stage with the super spiritual, the pastors, the teachers, the evangelists, the prophets, those are the people, the apostles, they're the ones that really need this spiritual growth thing. Not me in my daily life.

I'm in my family or I go to work or this is what, no, it's spiritual growth is the expected natural result of those who are alive in Christ. It's not just for here. It's not just for the people on stage. It's the expected, the natural result for anybody who says yes to Jesus.

And so I want to start this morning in the book of Ephesians chapter three. I want us to listen to the Apostle Paul's prayer here, to the church in Ephesus, which is really our prayer for you today and moving forward. It may even be a heading if you've got your Bibles here today. It may even say Paul's prayer for spiritual growth.

So we're going to look at this morning. It says in verse 14, it says, when I think of all of this, and so we don't have time to totally unpack this, but when he says all of this, we need to know what all of this is. So briefly what he says at the beginning of chapter three here, when he's talking to this church is he basically has been unveiling to them God's purpose for their life. Like we now have access.

He's saying, here's the mystery of God unveiled to the church. It used to be that it was only the Jewish people that could have access to this. And he says, now we're in the New Testament church. The mystery is revealed that both Jew and Gentile can have access to the kingdom of God.

And more than that, I want to create and build the church, the big sea church. And he's telling them that God's purpose in all of this, in verse 10 it talked about the fact that in all of this, we want to use the church, not just to congregate and be a nice community of talking to people and having fun, but he says, I want to use the church to display God's purpose to the world. And it's a rich variety of all the different flavors and things of how people choose to worship and all of this stuff. He says, in all of the manifold wisdom, the rich variety of all the ways that we worship him all over the world.

He says, I want to use that to speak and to show people who Jesus is. It even says to the unseen rulers in the heavens. So basically, he says, when the church is doing what it's supposed to do, when we're living in unity, when we're building another one another up, when we're equipping each other to do the work of the church, he says, even the angels are talking about it. It's pretty amazing the responsibility that he's given the church.

And so that's what he says when he says, when I think of all of this, Paul says, I fall to my knees and I pray to the Father. This is going to be the who, who helps us with spiritual growth. It's the Father. It's the creator of everything in heaven and on earth.

He said, I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources that he will empower you with inner strength. This is going to be the where. Where does he do this? He does the spiritual growth on the inside.

It's the inner man through the spirit. This is the howl. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust him. He said, your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong.

And may you have the power to understand as all of God's people should, just how wide and how long and how high and how deep his love is. May you academically understand the love of Christ. May you have wisdom about the love of Christ. That's not what it says, is it?

It says, may you experience the love of Christ. Though it is too great to understand fully, then you will be made complete with all of the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God who is able through his mighty power at work within us to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or even think. And to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever and the church that am I to amen.

This is Paul's prayer for spiritual growth. And it's for us here this morning. And he's not just praying that we would believe. Right?

That's not what he's praying for here. James 2 tells us that even Satan and the demons believe, like they believe and they fear God, like they tremble at the fact that there is a God. So that's not enough. He's saying, no, that's not what it is.

It's I'm praying that you would grow, that you would be rooted, that you would be grounded and experience the fullness that comes with the life lived for God. So what is spiritual growth? We'll look at this as we have the first three weeks. We have kind of want to look at the biblical definition.

We have our dictionaries and Webster's and things. But what did that original language? What did that look like? What did they understand it to mean when Paul spoke these words?

We see this word, oxano, and the Greek. It means to increase or to give the increase too in large as in a territory, too in larger territory or to become greater simply to grow, right? The plants and infant. But really what we're going to focus on today is that inward Christian growth.

What does that spiritual growth looks like? Kind of was praying this week, the last couple of weeks, and I believe God just gave you this definition of spiritual growth. You can use it right now if you want to. But spiritual growth is a spirit- empowered work that deepens our relationship with Jesus, transforms us into his likeness, and then he quips us to bear life-giving fruit.

This is spiritual growth. However, I want to understand this morning that when we talk about spiritual growth, this is not a passive thing. Even though it is spirit- empowered, that's how it works. This is not a passive thing.

This doesn't just happen by osmosis. We have a part to play in our own spiritual growth. Scripture actually gives us a beautiful tension about growth that we're going to look at here this morning in a couple of different verses. It's written by the same author.

And on the surface, when we look at these two verses side by side, it may seem to kind of contradict one another. And we're going to see kind of that beautiful tension that Paul gives us in these two scriptures. I want to start with Colossians chapter 1 verse 9. This is just to kind of give you the setting.

This is a younger New Testament church, and Paul is instructing them. He's kind of pastoring them as a shepherd because they've got all sorts of teachings that have been coming in. They're dealing with false teachings about what religion, about what it means to follow Christ. And so they've got the old Jewish legalism that's coming in.

They've got the Greek teachings coming in. They've got some mystical things that talk about how you've got to be enlightened and all of these things to follow Jesus. And so Paul is kind of coming in and says, let's teach you a little bit. Let me instruct you on what it really means to follow Christ to grow spiritually.

And so in verse 9, he says, we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord. And your lives will then produce every kind of good fruit.

All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. And so here we see Paul and he's like, as you learn, as you gain wisdom and understanding, then your lives will change to where you bear fruit that you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. So that's the first scripture I want to look at right there where it talks about our part, our understanding, our wisdom, our knowledge. And then we move to 1 Corinthians chapter 3 with different church, different time, a different attitude that Paul is bringing here.

This is not necessarily a pastoring shepherding. This is more, let me give you a little bit of a corrective rebuke here because I'm seeing division. I'm seeing pride in the church. You guys are all worried about who you follow and who you listen into.

And this, I go to this church because this is the way I like it. I'm listening to this podcast because I am fed with this person over here and I'm not listening to this guy because they don't do it the way I like it. And so Paul's coming in and going, listen, we need to have some corrective action here. We need to speak into this a little bit.

And he says, after all, who is Apollo's? Because some people are talking about I follow Apollo's and I follow Paul and he says, who's Paul? Who am I? He says, we are only God's servants through whom you believe the good news.

Each of us did the work that the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts. Apollo's watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It's not important who does the planting.

It's not important who does the watering. He says, what's important is that God is the one who makes the seed grow. So in Colossians, Paul prays that the believers would grow in their knowledge of God. It shows our responsibility to seek, to learn, and to pursue.

But then in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, we see it doesn't matter what we do. We do our part, but it's really God who makes the seed grow. So which is it? Do we grow ourselves or is it God who makes things grow?

I would say the answer to that this morning is yes. Yes, let's bring those two things together. We cultivate the soil, but only God makes the seed come alive. We have a part to play.

We cultivate the soil. We make it ready to receive. We plant the seed, but it's only God who makes that seed come alive. It's not a contradiction.

It's cooperation. You see, it's the visible always starts in the invisible. What God is doing that we can't see in the invisible then comes to light. When we plant that seed, we can't see what's going on under the ground.

We just know and we trust and we have faith. And someday we see the shoot come out of the ground. Some of us, you know, you go to the gym and you put in the work and you're tearing those cells and those muscles apart and you're like, am I ever going to see results? But if you stick at it and you do it, what happens in the invisible hopefully becomes visible.

You can see the work. You see spiritual growth. This is not about spiritual improvement or self improvement. It's not just improving ourselves.

This is a spirit empowered experience of his presence. That's what he's called us to. We're not designed merely just to gather understanding about God. We're meant to experience his fullness.

And I know I'm using that word a lot this morning, but it's on purpose. The experience of God. The experience of spiritual growth. I'm in the middle of reading a book that actually Nicole recommended to me.

It's called The Familiar Stranger and it's about experiencing the Holy Spirit in our lives. And as I was listening the other day, this quote came in that the man had just struck me. And so I wanted to share this morning. It says, you can see the kingdom.

You can speak about the kingdom. You can even teach about the kingdom. But if you want in, if you want the life of the kingdom by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, at some point you've got to take the terrifying risk of experience. I can stand up here and teach all day long and you can listen and you can understand.

But at some point we've got to jump in the river. At some point God is calling us off the sidelines into the game. I don't know if you're like me, but if you're a chief's fan and you start reading those first three lines up there, you kind of go back to the Super Bowl with Mitch Holtas and he's like, you can disrespect the chiefs and you can deal, you know, not like the chiefs, but you have to deal with the chiefs. We're not talking about the chiefs today.

They play tomorrow night. So we're talking about the kingdom. He's been here for two services bugging me to death. Almost got him.

That's all right. So God is giving us an invitation to jump in, to get off the sidelines and to do the work with him in cooperation of growth. I'll submit this to you this morning when I read the phrase there at the end where it says we have to do this terrifying choice of experience. The only thing that really makes it terrifying is when we forget who's responsible for the growth.

Right. That's the only thing that really, it's only terrifying when we incorrectly think that the outcome is only on us. Because God is sitting there kind of like that parent that's in the pool when their kids on the diving board going, jump in. I've got you.

Like I'm not going to let you go under. I'll catch you. Just jump. I'm telling you it's safe.

It's great. It's so much fun to be in the pool and they're just standing up there shaking like I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

But God's waiting for us to come in. It's not totally up to us. But neither is God the one that's going to get out of the pool and come around and just push you in either. He's inviting us into cooperation with him.

Remember what we said earlier. That spiritual growth is the expected natural result of those who are alive in Christ. But that doesn't mean that at some point growth is going to be uncomfortable. Right?

Growth is uncomfortable and sometimes it's even painful. But when we grow, when we're taken to a different place, when we're taken to the next level, rarely is that a comfortable process. I don't know if you're like me that dealt with growing pains when you were a kid. Anybody else deal with that as a child?

My goodness. When you're legs at the middle of the night and you're trying to sleep and you just try to get in that one position where it's just not painful for a second so you can get in some kind of sleep. The same thing happens to us spiritually when it's uncomfortable to move. When you're like, you know what?

I've got to distance myself from the things that I used to do. Maybe some old thoughts, old habits, old relationships, old ways of thinking that God is calling us to move on from. If we're growing spiritually, you will inevitably experience some growing pains. Uncomfortable but necessary.

This week when I was studying for the message, I found this quote on a leadership website. It says, growth is uncomfortable because you're outgrowing what no longer fits. That's why it's uncomfortable. We're outgrowing the things that no longer fit, that made us comfortable.

I shared in first service that our family went over to. Mark and Kerry Jones on Friday night, a new kind of basketball ministry, home school, prep for the academy that they're putting together. A great meal and got to meet and be in community. It was great.

Kind of talk about the upcoming season and they had some t-shirts there that the parents could get, right? So it kind of represent when we're at the games and so we got a few and I went home and I tried it on and you know I've been in the gym the last few months so I was feeling good about myself and so I got the large instead of the extra large and put it on and I was standing there like that and I was like, huh cool. And my son, 15 year old came in and he's like, Dad. You look uncomfortable.

He's like, thank you son. Appreciate you. Thought it was just the muscles coming out of the shirt. But he's like, I said, so I need to go to the XL.

He's like, yeah, yeah, it's time. It's time to go back to the XL. So Mark, I need to get to the XL. But that's what happens.

Is it more comfortable or is it more uncomfortable to stay in the clothes that don't fit or to move up, right? Is it more uncomfortable to stay in the old things that we used to do or move on to what God's called us for? A couple months ago I was over at my parents house and we were in the garage or something and my dad's like, yeah, I just found like this snake skin in my garage and I'm like, I know what that means. But for their snake skin, there's the snake.

And so I'm just looking because I hate them. Like I have all my life. Don't like these things. And so I'm just convinced that now every time I go over there in the garage, they get their two cars parked and I've got to walk in the middle to get through the door.

Like I know that thing's just waiting under one of these cars to come get me. So find that thing and get it out of there. But snakeskins, why do they leave their skin? They have to do this, right?

In order for them to live and to grow, they have to share their skin. This is a horribly uncomfortable process for the snake. But if they don't do it, literally this is life and death. If that skin constricts them, they can get infections in their scales and ultimately they can't breathe and they die, it's uncomfortable but necessary.

In the Bible we see Jesus uses the illustration when talking about uncomfortable growth. He uses the illustration of pruning. In John 15, 2, he says, the father cuts off every branch that doesn't produce fruit. And then he prunes the branches that do bear fruit.

Why? So they will produce even more. Pruning can hurt. It can feel like loss.

This morning pruning isn't punishment. It's preparation. I want us to understand that this morning that God is not punishing us. This is what Pastor Clint read this morning about, can we be disconnected from his love?

No, no matter what we do, he's not punishing us. He's preparing us. In all of his wisdom and all of his unfailing love, there's always a purpose to the pruning that you will produce even more fruit. They say, we need to get rid of what's not working anymore so that you can move into something new.

We're taking you. We're building blocks here so that you can spiritually grow. I'll submit this to you this morning that spiritual growth, what we're talking about this morning is a bridge between freedom that we talked about last week and the mission of God that we'll talk about next week. We won't experience true growth that God has for us until we're free from those vices and the values that Pastor Clint talked about last week, but the purpose of growth is not growth itself.

The purpose of growth is mission, which we'll talk about next week. So come back for part five next week of our purpose. Because spiritual growth, it is the bridge between freedom and mission. The Apostle Paul says it this way in Philippians 3.

He says, brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing. He says, I forget the past, freedom. I forget the past, looking forward to what lies ahead. I press on to reach the end of the race.

This is the growth and receive the heavenly prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us. He's calling us to be on mission. Growth doesn't live in the rear view mirror. Christ goes forward.

Growth leads to mission. One final thought this morning as we begin to land the plane here, you can write this in your notes, growth is best cultivated in community. Pastor Clint talked about this a little earlier. The truth is we need each other.

We are not meant to do this on our own. We are the church, the big sea church. We are God's plan A and there is no plan B. We're in.

We are who he has called to go and do the work of the church. The writer of Hebrews says it this way, let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. Let us not neglect our meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. We're called to encourage and to love and to spur one another on.

In Ephesians, Paul writes this, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way, more and more by Christ. Who is the head of the body of the church? He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts to grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Healthy bodies grow. Healthy living things grow. When I was researching this message, I came across the Redwood tree. It was a coyote tree.

I've never actually been there or seen one, but man, to look at the pictures and to hear testimonies from people, many of you have probably seen these and been up close and personal. They're gigantic. It's crazy. The Redwood tree is between 250 and 350 feet.

They are just... But the Redwood tree has one of the shallowest root systems of all of the tree life. They average only going down in the ground about 6 to 15 feet. About 10 feet is all the average.

But being so close to the surface, the reason that God created them in this way is that they're right there able to get any water that comes into the surface. An average Redwood tree would actually take up and soak up about 500 gallons of water a day because they're right there at the surface. They can just get into that water. You might ask, how in the world does a 300 foot tree keep from blowing over in a storm or a windy day when their roots are just right there on the surface?

Like they could just rip out of the ground at any moment. But as you'll see in this picture right here, what happens is although they only grow about 10 feet deep, they can grow up to 100 feet wide and they just reach to the next tree over and they intertwine and they get all knotted up and they're with their brothers and sisters and their other trees and their friends and their buddies and they say, hey, if we're going to survive the wind, if we're going to survive the storm, if we're going to grow, if we're going to do life together, then we need each other. We've got to partner with one another. Growth is best cultivated in community.

Growth is best cultivated with one another. When we spur each other on, when we love one another, when we do life together, when we do community together, growth is best cultivated in community. The bottom line is this, growth is discipleship. Growth is discipleship and discipleship happens best together.

And really discipleship happens best together around the table. Now, rows are good, we can teach and we can worship together and this is all perfect. We just read that in Hebrews, don't neglect coming together. This is perfect.

But really what we see is that true life happens when we get around a table with like-minded people and people we may not even know and new believers and brothers and sisters that we're getting to know and maybe some of the more mature saints say, you know what God's called me to mentor some of these young people. Instead of spending my time complaining about the younger generation, God's called me to pour into them and say, this is kind of some experience as I've had in my life. Let me help you along the way. The discipleship happens in groups.

And that's practically what we're calling you to do today. We're not just asking you to come in just so you can help the church. What growth is about is about being. It's not about doing.

But practically to make this thing work, we need each other. We need each other. Some of you, you pray and you are prayer warriors and you are faithful and you pray every day, whether it's at home or in your car or whatever it might be, you're praying for your friends, your family, your coworkers. And I would invite you to use that gift here during service on a Sunday morning.

Join our altar team. Let me pray for others. Let God use that experience through you to touch the lives of others. Maybe it's what we talked about earlier, leading a life group.

I'll be at the table out there in the back afterwards. A little commercial, little plug. I can come up to have you lead a life group. Not because we need life groups, because we need to do community together.

Maybe it's a surf team. Maybe it's a mission strip. We just prayed over this team that's leaving tomorrow. If I could encourage you to do anything, if you ever have an opportunity, which we give them to you many times throughout the year to go on a mission strip, go, go on a mission strip.

Because God wants you to experience growth. One final thing as we close this morning. Again, we are not simply asking you to do something. We are tapping into your calling to be something, which is the body of Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Amen. Say it with me this morning as we close. I'm going to invite our altar prayer team to make their way forward this morning.

We would love the opportunity to pray with you this morning. If you have a need, if you have something that God is just working on you and with you this morning, these people would love to pray with you. They want to experience Christ with you this morning. If you were one of those this morning that raised your hand and said yes to Jesus, whether it was the first time or rededication of your life to Jesus, right under here, under the cross, we would love to give you a made new packet this morning.

I just meet you and love on you this morning. Pray with you. I would love to meet you out in the four year at a lobby table. Let's pray a blessing over you today and the rest of the day.

Father, we thank you again that we can gather together. But in this place, in your house, as the Church, not just to hear a word, not just to get into Scripture just so we can have understanding, but Father, that you're calling us to spiritual growth. You're calling us to maybe leave some of the comfort of the past and move in to some of the uncomfortable in the future. But I pray that you would speak to each and every one of us.

But that one thing that you're calling us to, maybe that one thing that you're calling us from, when we want to be your disciples, we want to fulfill the great commission which is to go out and make disciples. We know that you're with us and you'll be with us to the very end of the age. We thank you for it. We love you, Jesus.

We praise you in the name of Jesus today. Amen. Amen. God bless you.

Have a great week. I'd love to meet you out in the lobby. Thank you for tuning in to Life Mission Church. If you're interested in connecting with us, please visit our website at Life Mission.

You can also watch sermons on the media tab of our Life Mission app or by visiting Life Mission.church. Thanks for watching.