The Marks of Maturity

Introduction

Summer's one of those times of the year when life seems to slow down, and that seems to be compounded in our state. We only have a short window of time to accomplish everything we've been wanting and dreaming about doing the whole winter.

So as I was thinking about what could benefit us as a church this morning, I couldn't quite get away from the idea of bringing us a message that would practical and straightforward. Sometimes we need those kinds of messages. There's times for theological studies, or Bible studies. But other times, we need to hear a message that slows us down and helps us get back on track, especially during a season where we seem to be anything and everything can be distracted from our own spiritual walk.

And so I want to talk this morning about spiritual maturity. I think if we were to survey everyone in the room, I doubt there would be anyone who would say they don't care about their spiritual maturity. All of us, I would imagine, want to be mature Christians.

And yet I also think that spiritual maturity is one of those concepts that often is left undefined. We talk about it, but we never describe it. And so to some, spiritual maturity might be defined by the amount of hours you spend reading your Bible, or praying. To others, it might have to do with what movies you watch.

But I think it's a question that we need to answer: What does spiritual growth look like? What does it mean to be a mature believer, and what kind of criteria can we use to assess our own spiritual maturity?

The answer is found in the text before us. Colossians 1:9-12 is a prayer. We get that fact at the very start:

Col 1:9 For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask...

So this is a prayer that the apostle Paul has penned. We get a short glimpse into his prayer journal. And at the heart of this prayer is Paul's desire for the Colossian church to grow into mature Christians. But as inspired Scripture, it is more than a prayer for them. It is a prayer for us. It represents God's desire for us—for all his people—to mature in their faith.

Proposition: We see in this passage the marks of maturity in the Christian life that will help us assess not only where we are, but also where we should be.

1. A mature Christian is marked by how he thinks (v. 9)

Spiritual maturity begins in the mind. That may be surprising to some. We've been trained by popular culture to associate religion with a certain behavior. But in reality, whether we understand it or not, what happens externally in the everyday aspects of life begins with thought processes in the mind.

A mature Christian understands this. He understands that the mind is the seat of our convictions. It is where we form our worldview, and assess thoughts before they become actions. And so Paul begins his prayer for the Colossian Christians by focusing on how they think:

Col 1:9 We have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

We see in this statement two aspects of how a mature Christian thinks

a. He knows biblical truth (v. 9a)

A mature Christian knows biblical truth. He knows theology. He knows doctrine. And we see that in Paul's incessant prayer for the believers to be filled with the knowledge of God's will.

Let there be no mistaking what he's praying for. He's not asking for the believers in Colossae to know just enough to get by—as if they're students cramming for a midterm and hoping they can pack just enough information into their brains to pass with a decent grade.

No, the language here is quite intense. He asks that they be filled—a word that carries the idea of filling something to fullness. It's the same word the NT writers use to talk about something being fulfilled or completed. It's the word Paul uses to describe the absolute divinity of Christ a few verses later­—"in Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form." It means to fill something up until it's full.

ILLUSTRATION: A common treat for our boys at our house is that we let them have what they passionately refer to as "fizzy drink." It's just seltzer water with some fruit flavoring—a healthier version of a soft drink. Now, they are completely happy to just get anyfizzy drink, even if we just fill the cup up a little ways. But can you imagine the look of excitement on their faces if/when I fill the cup up to the brim? Now THAT'S a treat!

That's the idea of being filled. Paul is praying for a fullness that's not full until it's filled to the brim. And what he's asking is that they be filled with knowledge. But even this word isn't normal. Even this carries a sense of intensity.

The usual term for "knowledge" is gnosis, and it's where we get the term agnostic—"no knowledge." But Paul goes a leap further. He doesn't just want them filled with gnosis—"knowledge." He wants them filled with epignosis—"thorough knowledge," "complete knowledge." It's a knowledge that is larger and fuller, that completely grasps and penetrates to the heart of the object it knows.

And what's that object? God's will. Paul wants his readers to be completely filled to the brim with a complete, thorough, intimate, penetrating knowledge of the will of God.

Background of Colossian Heresy: Now, looming in the background of all this is the very circumstances surrounding why Paul was writing in the first place. At the time he wrote this, the apostle Paul was in Rome under house arrest. Timothy was with him (1:1). He had never met the Colossian believers. In fact, he had never even been to Colossae, a once-thriving economic center in Asia Minor that had since declined into a quiet and forgotten community in the Lycus Valley, overshadowed by its neighboring towns of Laodicea and Hyerapolis, and most of all, by Ephesus.

In fact, Paul would come to find out that Ephesus was actually where all of this began. During his missionary efforts in that city, he had apparently converted a man named Epaphras, who returned to his home town of Colossae filled with missionary vigor, where he preached the gospel and planted churches not only there, but in Laodicea and Hyerapolis as well.

The Christians in Colossae were obedient to the gospel. They had been godless pagans living godless, pagan lives, but when Epaphras shared the gospel with them, they repented and turned to Christ. Paul, in fact, talks about how much fruit was growing out of Epaphras' gospel ministry there, and how the believers were growing in their faith.

But then something else happened. You see, Paul would not have known any of this if it wasn't for the fact that Epaphras traveled some 1,000 miles to visit Paul in Roman prison. You see, things were happening in the Colossian church—ideas were circulating and new teachings were being introduced by key individuals—that so alarmed Epaphras that he was willing to make the arduous journey to Rome to elicit Paul's help.

Apparently a very specific kind of false teaching had surfaced in the area—a kind of Jewish mysticism that most closely resembles the kind of teachings that came out of the Qumran community in the Dead Sea area. These teachers came espousing a doctrine that they held up under the authority of "tradition" yet it grossly deviated from the gospel.

It was a religion for the elite, and it preyed on those who desired more for the spiritual lives but didn't know how to get it. These teachers claimed that spiritual maturity—what they called "fullness"—was only attainable through the acquiring of a special wisdom and knowledge that could only be initiated through the observance of strict dietary laws and Jewish ceremonial observances. Through self-abasement and extreme asceticism, they believed they could placate the spiritual forces that guarded heaven, allowing them to participate in mystical experiences. The "mature" believer—who had "fullness" in wisdom and knowledge—could enter into heaven and join in the angelic worship of God.

That is the backdrop for the letter, and it begins to bring into perspective exactly why Paul is praying the way he is. In contrast to this special, elite "knowledge" which was the exclusive property of these false teachers and offered the hope of reaching "fullness"—maturity—Paul prays that God would fill the Colossian believers completely with a thorough, complete, and penetrating knowledge of his will.

He wants them to know what the will of God is, a knowledge that—unlike the false teachers in Colossae—is not a mystery. In fact, in Eph 1:9, Paul makes the startling assertion that God has actually revealed to us the "mystery of his will". And even in our own letter here, Paul says,

"I was made a minister of the church according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has not been manifested to His saints" (Col 1:25-26).

The will of God he's talking about here is more than simply what God wants from us. It is that, but it's more than that. The will of God is the revealed will of God's plan for the ages—the redemptive plan of God that he has revealed to us in Scripture and particularly through the coming of Jesus Christ.

What Paul wants his readers to have is a thorough, complete knowledge of doctrine—of theology. He wants them to thoroughly comprehend what God has done and is doing and will do in the future to redeem a people for his name through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He wants them to know about the doctrine of God, man, sin, redemption, the church, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and last things. He wants them to understand the totality of the gospel, and then he wants them to be able to apply it.

b. He applies biblical truth (v. 9b)

That's the second mark of how a mature Christian thinks. He knows biblical truth, and he also is skilled at applying it. We get this from the end of verse 9:

Col 1:9 That you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

Mature Christian thinking means being able to take the doctrine they know and critically apply it to the various aspects of everyday life. That's the idea behind this verse. This means that the knowledge he wants us to have is a knowledge that is processed in the mind in ways that are deliberate and discerning.

Wisdom and understanding are two terms that often appear together. In fact, the two words harken all the way back to Proverbs: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Prov 9:10). In fact, they're often synonymous with each other.

Here, if anything, wisdom carries a very broad idea. It speaks of an ability to collect and concisely organize principles, in this case, principles of God's will. Understanding, on the other hand, it a more focused word that refers to the idea of skill in applying those principles to everyday life.

It's this kind of skill that marks off the immature Christian from the one who's mature. An immature Christian may know a lot of Scripture. They may have a thorough knowledge of all things theological. They may be able to dance around their own pastor theologically. But when the heat is turned up—when it really counts—they don't know how any of it makes a difference in their lives. They have all this knowledge, but they don't have the skill to apply it.

A mature Christian, on the other hand, loves theology. They love to learn more from God's word. They never have enough. But it's not an end in itself. They have the wisdom to organize it's principles in their mind and the skill to apply it in life.

These things, by the way, aren't something we just acquire by our own ingenuity. You can't simply develop wisdom and understanding on your own. That's why Paul calls them spiritual wisdom and understanding—wisdom and understanding given by the Spirit. We don't have time to get into it, but 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 outlines this case in detail. The wisdom of man versus the wisdom of God, and the fact that only the one who has God's Spirit can understand and possess God's wisdom because it's something that comes from the Spirit.

That means that spiritual maturity—which starts in the mind, remember—is not ultimately a work of man but a work of God. And that's why Paul prays what he does—he prays to the only one who can give the Colossians what they really need.

TRANSITION: And that leads us to our second mark. A mature Christian in marked by how he thinks. But he's also marked by how he lives.

2. A mature Christian is marked by how he lives (vv. 10-12)

Paul writes,

Col 1:9-10a That you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord...

The whole point of Paul's initial prayer is so that right theology would translate into right conduct. Too often, Christians want to reverse the order. We want to know how we're supposed to live, but we don't really care to understand why we're supposed to live that way. That's a perfect recipe for legalism. Paul never operates in that order. The majority his epistles—think Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians—begin with theological principles and then move onto how those principles apply to the various aspects of life.

ILLUSTRATION #1: One of my passions in life is cooking. I'm not saying I'm any good at it, but it's a passion nonetheless. And in particular, I have a love affair with BBQ—I mean real BBQ. Slow smoking meat for hours and hours—I'm talking 12-hour smoked pork shoulder on a Weber kettle slow. But as I got into cooking, I quickly realized that I would never be satisfied simply following a recipe. In a recipe, the cook simply tells you what to do, and if you follow all the sometimes convoluted steps, it may turn out well. Rarely does a cookbook go into the details of why you need to do what you do. And so as I grew in my interest in cooking and BBQ, and began to read. Sure, I read recipes, but I also read techniques. And I read science. And what I found was that the knowledge of the science of cooking—and understanding of thermodynamics and how it relates to the proteins in a steak, or the collagen in a brisket; the concept of reverse-osmosis and its relationship to salting meats—all that knowledge helped me cook better because I understood WHY I was doing what I did. In fact, the principles have become so ingrained in me that I don't need recipes to cook on the BBQ because I understand how the science of BBQ informs the technique of BBQ, and that opens up a lot of creativity.

ILLUSTRATION #2: One of the shows that Natasha and I enjoy watching every now and again is called "Chopped" on the Food Network, or its comedic cousin "Cutthroat Kitchen." And what astounds me about these shows is that these contestants are able to start with "zero" knowledge of the ingredients they have to work with, and yet they can on the fly in a matter of minutes produce gourmet meals that knock the socks off anything we make at home. Why? How do they do it? You see, it's all about the knowledge they start with. It's experience.

You want to be a chef or a home cook? Do you want to follow a recipe, or do you want to freely cook with creativity? Right theology translates into right conduct.

Paul makes this clear when he writes, Be filled with the knowledge of his will...so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.He introduces the idea of a worthy walk. It's a concept found in a number of his letters.

In Ephesians 4, after Paul expounds three full chapters on the riches of the gospel—how we were once dead in our trespasses, but we've been made alive in Christ by God's grace, and how we've been joined together with the Jews into one new man called the church and made coheirs with them, he writes, "Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the callingwith which you have been called" (Eph 4:1). You know everything that's involved in that calling—so make your conduct match it.

In Philippians, he writes, "Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ" (Phil 1:27). He writes in 1 Thessalonians, "You know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory" (1 Thess 2:11-12). A worthy walk.

The word worthy carries the idea of weight—a weighty walk. But it's always a weight in relation to something else—a standard. And the standard of our walk—the weight by which our walk is evaluated—is the Lord Himself. One commentator put it this way,

The saints are to see to it that their manner of life, their conduct, weighs as much as the character of their Lord (Wuest).

A mature Christian understands the weight of the Lord's character and live in such a way that his life measures up to that standard.

TRANSITION: Now, this gets worked out in a number of different ways in the Christian life, and Paul expounds of these in the rest of his prayer.

a. He desires to please the Lord (v. 10a)

The first aspect of mature conduct is seen in the Christian's motivation. Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects. The Christian's ultimate desire, his ultimate drive in what he does, is to please the Lord. That's part of the grid through which he evaluates life and makes decisions and ultimately acts.

That's why later on in the letter, Paul can write, "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Col 3:17). He gives the same idea in 1 Corinthians 10:31—"Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

GOSPEL: Now it's important to bear in mind this point: this isn't something you can do on your own strength. The Christian can only please God in his life if he really is a Christian. The Bible makes that clear. "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom 8:8), Paul writes. And the writer of Hebrews asserts the same thing: “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him" (Heb 11:6).

It doesn't matter how hard you try, if you don't know Christ, God is not pleased with you. You may be an upstanding citizen with no criminal record who helps the poor, contributes to all kinds of philanthropic activities. Your standing before God—a guilty sinner—makes you under his judgment, and while you're under God's judgment, he will never be pleased with you.

If you want to be pleasing to God, you have to heed the warning of Hebrews 11:6—without faith, it is impossible to please God. So recognize your condition and repent, and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in the power of his death and resurrection to pay for your sins and make you right with God, and you'll be able to please him.

That's why Paul wrote in Galatians 8:8-9, "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit!" And that leads us to our next point.

b. He produces good works (v. 10b)

A mature Christian not only desires to please God in everything, but he produces good works in his life. Paul continues in Colossians 1:10,

Col 1:10 Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work

The Bible anticipates, expects, even demands, fruit in your life. All the way back in the OT, the picture of Psalm 1 is a picture of the wise man delighting in the Law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, and so growing like a tree planted next to a canal, strong and prosperous and yielding fruit (Ps 1:3).

ILLUSTRATION: Anyone who gardens understands this fact. We plant our crops. We fertilize the soil. We keep it watered. We clear out any weeds that spring up. And we expect that at the right time, there will be a harvest. Our garden will be fruitful. But when that DOESN'T happen, is signals to us that there's something wrong.

And so, one of the ways we can assess our spiritual health and maturity is by looking at what our faith produces. The mature believer understands this connection. He understands that, while he was not saved by any of his own works, he was created by the Master Craftsman who created him "in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10).

Now, fruit in the NT takes a variety of forms. In some cases, they are attitudes that begin in the heart but manifest in different ways. Galatians 5:22-23 talk about the fruit produced by the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

But spiritual fruit take on different expressions elsewhere in the NT. The praise that you offer up to God in thankfulness to Him for who He is and what He's done for you is called "the fruit of the lips" in Hebrews 13:15.

In Romans 15:28, though, fruit is identified as the freewill offering given by the believers for the poor in Jerusalem. That means that our wallets and our checkbooks become an expression of our spiritual maturity. Not necessarily because of how much we give, but that we give and that we don't hold onto our money with a stingy attitude. That's why Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6:17-18,

1 Tim 6:17-18 Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.

You see how "good works" gets manifested in the life of a rich person? Generosity. Readiness to share with those who are in need.

c. He continues to grow spiritually (v. 10c)

The mature Christian is also marked by the fact that he continues to grow in his faith. He's not stagnant. He's not lagging. He's not content where he is, but when you place his life on a chart, there is a slow but steady uphill climb. We see this at the end of verse 10:

Col 1:10 Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God

Now, there's a couple of things going on here. First, there's the action of the believer. He's increasing—growing—being built up. All of those are different ways the term is used. At times, it takes the form of a crop that is growing in size (1 Cor 3:6-7). In other times, it's used to speak of a building that's getting bigger and bigger as it continues to be constructed (Eph 2:21). This is the essential concept of increasing—of maturing.

But second, there's also an indication of how this growth occurs. It happens "in the knowledge of God," or even better, "by the knowledge of God." That is to say, Paul's not praying for his readers to increase their knowledge—getting more and more and more knowledge. He's already prayed that they be filled with knowledge.

Rather, he's talking about how they grow and increase. It's "by the knowledge of God." That is to say, spiritual maturity and growth takes place as the believer continues to feed on the riches of the Word of God, and the Spirit of God operates to drive the truth of the Word deeper and deeper into his heart. We see this stated elsewhere in Scripture.

Peter offers a magnificent picture of the power of God's word to affect our spiritual life when he writes in 1 Peter 2:2, "Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation."

ILLUSTRATION: I love the picture he creates with that statement. It reminds me of the birth of my own children. I've got two boys, Desmond and Weston, and I remember when they were born, how tiny they were, and how vulnerable. I remember those precious moments of holding Desmond in my arms for the first time—my first child—he seemed weightless in my arms. And Weston—a tiny little 3-pound baby. I remember going into the NICU most days of the week when he was first born and holding him. Other parents told me to cherish those moments because they'll be grown up so fast, and to not wish they would get bigger. And I agree. I miss those tiny little babies.

On the other hand, I would not be content if my boys stayed as infants. And no, it's not because of the crying and the sleepless nights. It's because they're not supposed to stay infants. If they didn't grow. If they stayed infants. If they didn't get stronger, I'd take them to the doctor out of fear that something was wrong! That's not how it's supposed to work. They're supposed to get bigger and stronger and more mature.

And so are you. One of the marks of a mature Christian is that he keeps growing, and he knows how that growth happens. By the pure spiritual milk of the Word. It's called progressivesanctification because there's progressinvolved. And God has provided all the resources we need:

2 Pet 1:2-3 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and grace.

d. He shows strength during trials (v. 11)

So the mature Christian desires to please God, produces good works, and continues to grow spiritually. But he also shows strength during trials. We see this in verse 11:

Col 1:11 Strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience with joy.

Jesus promised us that in this life, we will have trouble. And if any of God's promises have come true, that one has. Life is wracked with trials. Some are external circumstances that overtake us—we lose our job, making finances tight. The pressures of life close in. Our house burns down in a fire. We experience great pain through some medical condition or accident. A loved one dies. The list goes on and on.

Then there's the trials that come at the hands of unbelievers. You're ostracized at work because you're a Christian. You're put in a position where you have to make difficult decisions and risk relationships in order to stand up for the truth. You undergo some type of persecution because you won't participate in something you know isn't pleasing to God.

But then there's also the reality of living life as a sinner among sinners. You're a believer, but you live with a spouse who's not. Or maybe they are a believer, but there's just times when they drive you crazy. Your kids are just at that age—6—or 16—and they really test you. Even within the church, we have personal struggles—relational issues where we disagree or come to bad terms or really have difficulties with this person or that.

Whatever scenario might be in place, there is a strength to the mature Christian that is absent in one who's immature. The reason for this is because the mature Christian understands the source of spiritual strength. It's right there in the text—strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might.

The idea here is that God's glory—His attributes at work—provide the believer with a kind of power unavailable to them anywhere else. This isn't some kind of strength you can conjure up on your own. It's a divine power and it's available to the believer. And the mature Christian understands how to possess it.

The immature Christian experience the trials and tribulations of life, and they try to be strong by hunkering down, by trying to get through it. Listen to how Paul dealt with perhaps the greatest difficulty of his life:

2 Cor 12:7-9 Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And he has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Paul came to the place where he understood that humility was the attitude that unlocked the flow of God's power. He had to recognize his own weakness—his inability to do anything about his situation.

That kind of attitude produces two things: steadfastness and patience. The first is has to do with endurance with respect to things—trials, outside stresses, persecutions, etc. The second has to do with people. It's being longsuffering towards people you may be tempted to lash out at.

A mark of maturity is a humility that gives the believer the ability to endure anyone and anything through a supernatural power that strengthens him.

e. He remains thankful for the gospel (v. 12)

Finally, the mature Christian remains thankful for the gospel. He never loses sight of the gospel. His theology won't let him. He knows that everything he has and is comes from the fact that the Lord first loved him. Verse 12 says,

Col 1:12 Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.

There's so much we could unpack in this verse, but I want to focus on what Paul says is a qualifying mark of a mature Christian—thankfulness. As we said before, the Colossian believers came from godless pagan backgrounds. They were, as he describes the Ephesian readers (and all of us), "Dead in our trespasses and sins...formerly living in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath" (Eph 2:1-3).

But then the gospel came to them, a miracle he alludes to when he says that the Father qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. Before the gospel, they were unfit for anything in God's kingdom, but then God took sinners disqualified for heaven and he qualified them.

And it's that reality that Paul says should be the impetus for the believer's thankfulness.

ILLUSTRATION: Albert Mohler, writing last Thanksgiving time, composed an insightful article on this issue. He writes,

"Thanksgiving is a deeply theological act, rightly understood. As a matter of fact, thankfulness is a theology in microcosm—a key to understanding what we really believe about God, ourselves, and the world we experience."

"Romans 1 has at its center an indictment of thanklessness. They did not honor Him as God or give thanks. Paul wants us to understand that the refusal to honor God and give thanks is a raw form of the primal sin. Theologians have long debated the foundational sin—and answers have ranged from lust to pride. Nevertheless, it would seem that being unthankful, refusing to recognize God as the source of all good things, is very close to the essence of the primal sin. What explains the rebellion of Adam and Eve in the Garden? A lack of proper thankfulness was at the core of their sin. God gave them unspeakable riches and abundance, but forbade them the fruit of one tree. A proper thankfulness would have led our first parents to avoid that fruit at all costs, and to obey the Lord's command. Taken further, this first sin was also a lack of thankfulness in that the decision to eat the forbidden fruit indicated a lack of thankfulness that took the form of an assertion that we creatures—not the Creator—know what is best for us and intend the best for us."

"Sinners saved by the grace and mercy of God know a thankfulness that exceeds any merely human thankfulness. How do we express thankfulness for the provision the Father has made for us in Christ, the riches that are made ours in Him, and the unspeakable gift of the surpassing grace of God? As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 'Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift' (2 Corinthians 9:15)."

Conclusion

Colossians 1:9-12 is Paul's prayer for a brand new church. They were in danger, but they hadn't given in. And he wants them to come to maturity­—to grow up in Christ.

How about you? The challenge we have this morning is to look at this passage and to give ourselves a close evaluation—to ask ourselves, "How am I doing?"

How's you're thinking? Do you know biblical truth? Do you understand biblical theology? Do you love to spend time in Scripture? Do you read good books on the Bible? Do you make it a habit to come under the teaching of those at the church who endeavor to explain the Bible to you? Can you take what you know of the Bible and apply it the various aspects of life?

And how's your life? Do you find yourself thinking through scenarios and asking what will please God the most? Do you see fruit in your life? Are you growing? Have you progressed in your faith from where you were last year? Do you remain strong during difficult circumstances? Do you reach for strength through humility? Are you able to endure with patience people and events? Are you thankful? Do you remember from where you came and what God's done in your life?

These are the marks of spiritual maturity. And my prayer for us as a church and you as believers is that we would be able to make an honest assessment of where we are in our faith and strive to grow in our faith, all the while relying on the Lord to make it happen.