Are you growing?
Sang Won Sur
I just ran across a devotional by A.W. Tozer that drove the message
that's in my heart. The question is . . . for those of you that have
accepted Jesus and confidently call yourselves Christians -- are you
growing?
Are you becoming more like Christ?
Is your church (the members of your congregation) hearing the voice of
God? (Do you see them being led by the Holy Spirit?)
Is your life led by you, or are you humbly seeking His guidance?
Check out the devotional below -- and honestly try to assess yourselves.
If you feel you need some help in this area, please speak with me.
(Note: if all planning for the joint Korean/English-speaking young
adults service comes to fruition, the group I'll be leading will focus
on discipleship -- how to become more like Christ and have a deeper
relationship with God -- [I will tell you it'll be more work than the
other small groups] -- stay tuned).
Growing Passionate Servant for Jesus,
-Sang
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Are We Learning?
A Devotional by A.W. Tozer
When we become Christians we enter the school of Christ. We come under
the direct tutelage of the Holy
Spirit and should move normally upward by stages toward spiritual
perfection. But the truth is most of us do
not.
When the children of Israel came out of Egypt they became students in
God’s school of experience, but they were slow to learn
and sometimes they did not learn at all or forgot at critical moments
all that they had learned. The Old Testament is helpful
reading, not because of any worthy qualities it reveals about Israel
but because in it we see the great kindness and long-suffering
of God toward a dull and wrongheaded people who managed to go through
school without learning anything.
Because Israel could not or would not learn from experience they were
at various times defeated, oppressed, dispossessed, and at
last they were rejected outright and dispersed throughout the world.
The presence of Jews in every corner of the world is a witness
to this.
That Israel should have learned and did not is no proof that they were
more obtuse than the rest of us; it proves rather that they
were very much like us. Instead of smugly condemning a nation for its
folly we had better consider ourselves lest we also fall. For
the record of the church is no better than that of Israel. Before the
last book of the New Testament had been finished the church
had started through the same cycle of learning and forgetting, rising
and falling, sinning and repenting that had marked Israel in
earlier times. And after the passing of 1,900 years we are still at it.
Verse
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:29
Thought
The current state of evangelicalism in the United States in some ways
resembles that of Israel of old. We seem to be more influenced by
our culture than influencing it; declining understanding of Scripture;
ignorance of deeper life living; increased social activism and
decreased emphasis on life-changing new birth. Are we unwilling to
learn or simply learning the wrong things?
Prayer
Lord, You invite me to learn from You. Oh, may I draw near to listen
and learn from You!