Grow Deep, Bear Fruit

Good morning everyone and welcome to church once again. This morning we are going to switch things up a little. I had planned on continuing on in John where we left off last week but really felt like we should go a different direction this morning. We have our business meeting after church today and so that means I would write a pastor’s report. As I was writing the report I realized I was writing a second sermon and so I felt like maybe God just wanted me to preach on that today. So, welcome to another Sunday where Noah changed his mind on a sermon once again on a Friday. As usual though, let’s pray together, that God would open our hearts and minds to what he has to say this morning and that we would learn more of what it means to follow after Jesus.

Prayer

Engage / Tension

Whenever I write a pastor’s report, it’s usually 90% looking back on the year and 10% looking forward to the year in front of us. As I looked back on this last year again, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I (like many of you) was still in this survival mode. Now, what do I mean by that? Well let’s talk about corn plants for a second. An article in Prairie Farmer explains what can happen to a corn plant throughout its growth cycle. The article says,

Imagine each plant has tiny cells inside running the factory. There’s a big gauge with three choices: luxury, optimal and survival. The controller, much like the engineer on a train, moves the dial to one of the three.

In luxury mode, the environment is better than normal, and plants go into overdrive. At the optimal setting, environmental conditions are normal, and there’s an absence of stress. If there’s stress, the controller turns the dial to survival mode.

This past year sure feels better than 2020, we got to do more things as a church together. Potlucks returned (Amen), we had some softball nights up at Flanagan and got to be out in the community in that way, and we also held our Trunk or Treat event. But I think there’s a good chance that many of us have just been in survival mode. We’re just trying to get through this still weird time of life.

But over the last few weeks I feel like for me personally I’m kind of coming out of that survival mode and perhaps many of us are. It’s almost like we have been underwater for a long time and we’re making our way back to the surface and we’re just about to break the water level.

(Think of when you see pictures of swimmers where the water tension is still over their face right before they break through)

Because of this, I found myself not wanting to really spend a ton of time looking back on the year, but instead choosing to look forward. You can say that this is vision casting for us as a church, what I envision us doing / becoming over the next year through the grace of God. There are two main thoughts that I feel like God has been pressing on my heart over the last month or so. They are 1) Grow Deep and 2) Bear Fruit. We’re going to look at both of these and see what they mean for us this year.

Grow Deep

1 Peter 1:22–2:3 NIV

22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you. 1 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

The first thing I want to point out from this passage is how the seed, the word of God is described here. The seed that is within us when we are born again is not perishable. It’s everlasting. While we go through periods of stress and times of doubt, we know that the word of God within us endures. It remains despite what may be happening around us. When you believe the truth of the gospel you are then able to love one another in a deep way. So this imperishable seed is at work within us but also through us to others.

In general the first part of this passage is getting at the main point of the Gospel. Believe the truth of Christ, obey the truth, and out of that you will have the living and enduring word of God to help you love others deeply.

Chapter two begins with “Therefore.” Remember the neat trick with reading scripture, whenever you read a therefore, you should go back and see what this part is there for. So Peter just said that when we obey the truth we are purified, we are able to love one another deeply, because we have been born again. So if that describes you, if you are a born again follower of Jesus, listen up, because here is what you should be doing.

Verse 1 tells us that we should get rid of certain things in our hearts. We should rid ourselves of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. One of the first parts of growing deep with God is to get rid of the junk, the sin, that would prevent us from growing deeper in our relationship with him. When we deceive others, when we are hypocrites, when we envy one another and talk bad about one another, we are not living in the way that God desires. These things belong to our old selves, who we were before we came to know Christ. Peter tells us to get rid of it, to cast if off. Think of it like nasty clothes that you have been wearing for months. Don’t sit in that nastiness, cast it off, throw it away.

I want to keep going with this illustration of a plant, so think of it as clearing the weeds away that were there when you first planted the seed. You don’t leave those weeds there when you plant a new type of flower, you remove them. If we want to grow deeper in God, we have to remove these weeds in our life that we have gotten used to.

The next thing that Peter tell us to do, is to crave pure spiritual milk. In order to grow deeper in our relationship with God we have to actually want to do that. We have to want to grow deeper, we have to long for it.

We can all decide that we are going to learn something new, but chances are unless it is information you actually want to learn you are going to do the bare minimum. And that is the opposite of what we want to do with our relationship with God. If we don’t have a desire, if we don’t long to know more of God’s heart, then we are not going to grow. Psalm 42:1 talks about what this kind of desire looks like.

Psalm 42:1 NIV

1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.

Does that describe your desire to know God? I know personally that often times we ebb and flow with this. Its a cyclical cycle, just as it was so often with the Israelites within the Old Testament. We have seasons where we want to know God more but over time it wanes and we find ourselves comfortable with where we are. Now there is something to be said about being content in God, but we also don’t want to be so content that we fail to seek him.

I have had people say it to me and I have heard others say it, in regards to your relationship with your spouse. They say, “Don’t stop dating your wife/husband.” What does that mean? It means, when you were dating you thought about them a lot probably. Always wanted to be around them, talking to them, listening to them. Then you get married and you might have this tendency to drift into a relationship that looks more like roommates. You live together, do things together, but for the most part that initial desire, that longing to be around one another fades. We don’t want that to happen in our relationship with God (or our marriages for that matter). We need to keep that desire, that longing to get to know God deeper.

Peter then says that when we have that desire, we are going to grow up in your salvation. Being a follower of Jesus should not be stagnant or lukewarm. John talks a lot about being lukewarm in the book of Revelation and it’s not what you want to be when it comes to your relationship with God. But when we yearn to know God better, we will grow deeper in our relationship with him. If you remember our “How to” series we did last year, remember we said that if you draw near to God, he will.... he will draw near to you. And one of the biggest reasons we have this desire to grow in God is because we have experienced what Peter talks about at the end of verse 3. We want to grow because we have tasted, we have seen that the Lord is good.

So the first part of my hope, my vision for us as a church this year is that we would grow deep. That we would cast off these sins in our life that are keeping us from wanting to know God deeper and that we would really establish our roots in God.

To help illustrate this, I brought a plant that Amy and I have had for a while. I actually used it in a children’s sermon when we first got it. Back then it was a tiny little plant and I really didn’t know if we would take good care of it and if it would survive longer than a few weeks, but it has. In fact, it has grown quite well. But if you can tell, the pot that we have for it in is just not quite helping the plant anymore. In a way this plant is in a bit of a survival mode, like what we mentioned at the beginning. It’s in a state where it really can’t grow a lot more simply because it doesn’t have the room to do it. At least twice a week Amy or I make a comment on the plant, that we really should put it in a different pot so that it can grow better and be more healthy.

I think, if you are like me, you might feel a bit like this plant. It might be because of what we have gone through with Covid, it might be because of personal things that are happening in your life, but you are just in that survival mode. Just trying to get by. And that might even be true about your relationship with God. There is so much happening in your life you wonder how on earth you can even grow deeper in God. I think, it begins with a realization that God desires for you to grow deeper in him. God longs for you just like the father longed for the prodigal son. We have to make that decision though, are we going to grow deeper in him? Or are we just going to be content with where we are? It doesn’t matter how long you have been following Jesus, you never arrive at the finish line. You never reach the maximum level of growth. We can always grow deeper in our relationship with God.

So we have to make a decision, do you want to grow closer to God? Do I want this plant to grow deeper and be healthier? Then it needs a bigger pot. And part of it is then just doing it.

(Plant flower in bigger pot, decide to grow closer to God)

Bear Fruit

John 15:5 NIV

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

I know we just talked about this a few weeks ago, but it also goes with what we talked about so much at Skwim. When we abide in Christ, when we stay connected to him, when we just grow in him, we are going to bear fruit.

Galatians 5:22–23 NIV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

While we all can grow fruit in these ways, there are also going to be a lot of ways that we grow fruit differently. That’s because we are all different parts of the same body. If we remain connected to the vine, if we grow deep in our relationship with God we are all going to bear fruit in different ways.