Worship in the Revelation of Joh(2)
Introduction:
Discipleship
the most chronic problem facing churches and Christians is the lack of consistent spiritual growth and progress in discipleship. We all know Christians who have confessed faith and repentance, yet who sadly admit that they have not grown in some time. This situation comes in two varieties. There is the temporary plateau or spiritual rut that every Christian experiences and must overcome from time to time. This is normal and shouldn’t cause too much alarm. Perhaps routines need to be changed or focus renewed, but the problem isn’t chronic yet.
But then there is the chronic variety. Here, people may not be able to perceive much growth over a prolonged period of time. They’ve fallen into something deeper than a rut. They’re not just “stuck,” struggling to get free; they’ve settled into a spiritual slumber. If they have been in this sleep for some time, perhaps they believe that there is no more growth to be had or even that following Christ is a shallow, hollow thing. The expectation of growth may be abandoned. Pride may be asserting, “I’ve arrived spiritually and there’s really not much more growing to do.”
So Hebrews exhorts us to “leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity”
1) The performance trap
And those who can “stuff the stat sheet” with big numbers are celebrated, heralded as “marquis players,” and given awards
we completed “quiet times”this week
we passed Christian literature to others
how often we shared the gospel
We can fall into the performance trap, thinking that spiritual growth and discipleship look like good performance and success.
2) Judging by the wrong standards
Jonathan Edwards’s eighth resolution
Resolved, To act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings, as others, and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.