Still Growing
Still Growing - Sermon Notes
Today, we are continuing our series, “Asking For A Friend”. In this series we will answer your questions regarding the church, God, faith, theology or anything else that comes up!
Here is the question we will focus on this week and next: How Can I Grow As A Believer?
As a reminder, you can write your questions and drop them in the baskets or you can send them to me via email.
To answer this question, the Lord led me to 4T’s to explain this today. We will discover our answer by discussing trials, tribulation, traditions and transformation.
He Will Test Us
First, let’s look at trials:
The definition is - a test of the performance, qualities, or suitability of someone or something.
Deuteronomy 8:1-5 (NIV)
Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.
You may be saying to yourself, God doesn’t test us, the Bible says so! Actually, most people mistake what Jesus said in Matthew 4:7 (NIV) - Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
Jesus is referencing Deuteronomy 6:16 here. It was right after we were reminded to Love the Lord our God only and keep His commands. Just as the people of Israel tested the Lord all the time by their disobedience and disbelief, we test Him in the same ways today.
Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV)
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Jeremiah 17:9-10 (NIV)
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
James 1:2-8,12 (NIV)
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
So, we can see here and throughout our history as believers that the Lord allows testing to help us see how we need Him.
Persecution & Suffering
The definition of tribulation - a state of great trouble or suffering.
Jesus is called “the suffering servant”. He was persecuted and attacked by the very people He was here to save.
John 15:18-21 NIV
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.”
Jesus and the bible don’t sugar-coat the fact that we will suffer and face persecution. He prepares us for it by telling us in advance and reminding us that we won’t face it alone. We have the Holy Spirit living in us.
Acts 14:22b (NIV)
“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,”
This was right after Paul was attacked by a large mob who threw large stones at him and left him for dead.
Here are some reminders about Suffering -
- It’s multifaceted
We will experience physical, emotional, mental and spiritual suffering in our lives, sometimes more than one of these at once.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NIV)
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
- It should be processed in community
The church is not meant to be a loosely bound association of functional Lone Rangers. Paul confronts that type of thinking when he writes, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
The church is meant to be a refuge for those suffering. When a member is hurting, the church applies the bandages; when a member is down, the church encourages; when a member is in need, the church comes alongside to help.
- Suffering equips us for ministry
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:4 that God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
What is the link between experiencing suffering and equipping for ministry? David Powlison answers this way:
When you’ve passed through your own fiery trials, and found God to be true to what he says, you have real help to offer. You have firsthand experience of both his sustaining grace and his purposeful design. He has kept you through pain; he has reshaped you more into his image. . . . What you are experiencing from God, you can give away in increasing measure to others. You are learning both the tenderness and the clarity necessary to help sanctify another person’s deepest distress. (Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 166)
- Suffering is a battleground
Wherever there is suffering, there is a battle — a battle for your soul. The book of Job shows us there can be two ways to respond to suffering: one that curses God because of suffering and one that praises God, even in the midst of suffering (Job 2:9–10).
- Suffering prepares us for more glory
God says a lot about suffering in Scripture so that you know where to look when the pain comes to you.
One of the counterintuitive truths about suffering is that it prepares Christians for more glory. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17–18, “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
These verses are like sandpaper on our modern sentiments about suffering. We naturally try to avoid suffering at all costs. But God brings suffering in our lives for the sake of our eternal joy and even glory.
Closing
Rather than trying to escape or be raptured from our current situation or circumstances, we must choose to press on and be present in every moment, every opportunity that the Lord brings us to be a light for Him and bring Him glory.
Philippians 1:12 (NIV)
“Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.”
Philippians 1:19-26 (NIV)
“for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.”
What are you going through right now? What is your mission and purpose from Jesus?
What is stopping you from allowing this pressure to refine you?
Zechariah 13:9 (NIV)
“This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’ ”