The Forward Church Rewind Podcast

Growing in Christ doesn’t mean that trials won’t come, it doesn’t mean that the storms of life won’t hit us, it does mean that when the storms hit, they won’t drag us under or throw us off course in the same way. As we grow, we become more anchored to the truths of who God is and who we are in Christ. As we mature the trails and test of life, instead of pushing us away from Jesus, draw us closer to Him, make us more like Him.

The first marker of Christlike maturity that Paul identifies in Ephesians 4 is humility. To grow in Christ is to grow in your understanding of just how far short of the goal of Christlikeness you fall and how incapable you are of achieving that goal on your own you are. As you grow in humility it leads you to be gentler and more forgiving with others. As you grow in your awareness of how patient God is with you, it makes you more patient towards others more able to bear with others, which makes unity with other fallible and faltering followers of Jesus more attainable.

If you wanted to sum up what Christian maturity looks like in one word it would be Jesus. If we were to reach full maturity it would look like us living our lives like Jesus would live them. Ephesians 4 shows us a glimpse of what this look like, how God gets us there and it reminds us that the journey to maturity isn’t meant to be taken alone.

For three years the land of Israel has been without rain as punishment for their idol worship. The results of this type of drought would have been catastrophic to the people. Yet, despite the discipline God had placed his people under, they still wavered over whether God alone was truly God. To ultimately show God’s power and Baal’s impotence it would take the obedience, boldness, faith, and prayers of Elijah in concert with God displaying his mighty power to move the people to acknowledge God as God. Imagine what it must have been like for Elijah to stare down King Ahab, or stand-alone against the prophets of Baal, it must have been nerve wracking. But, because of his obedience and faith God answered the prayers of Elijah, and shows his glory and power as the one and only real God to the people.

The story of Jonah is a story of a miracle. We think that the miracle here is a big fish swallowing a human being and vomiting him up. While that is wild, it’s not the greatest miracle here. What the book shows from beginning to end is the mercy of God on undeserving people. It also forces us to ask some questions of ourselves. How do we respond to God’s mercy? Do we throw ourselves at Him in dependence? Do we celebrate when God’s mercy is displayed in the lives of others? Through a surprisingly comical story, we learn that God’s mercy shows up in unexpected places to undeserving people.

The story of Abraham travelling to Mt. Moriah is one of the most challenging, and most gripping stories in all of Scripture. Can you imagine travelling three days with the son you love, the son you waited so long for, knowing the whole time that you were heading towards a place where you had been called to sacrifice him? What must it have been like to build the altar, to bind his hands, to come to the point where he even began to draw the blade that would take the life of this loved and promised son? Yet Abraham obeyed God, not withholding anything back from him. He obeyed God because he trusted in him believing that the merciful and just God he served would somehow spare the life of his son. In the end the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, points us to the even greater story of God’s willingness to sacrifice his one and only son on our behalf and in light of how he proved his love for us in giving up his one and only son, it challenges us to consider why we wouldn’t trust him no matter what he calls us to.

Imagine the scene, 15-20,000 hungry men, women, and children in need of something to eat. Many of us struggle with the idea of hosting and feeding 15-20 people with plenty of advance notice and an almost limitless number of places to get food from. In this story Jesus tasks his disciples to figure out how to feed all these people with next to no resources. No grocery stores, no restaurants, and no money, nothing but five loaves and two fishes they get from a small boy who had packed a lunch. But when you have Jesus, it isn’t about the resources you bring to the table. All Jesus needs is for us to be obedient. When we give him whatever we have, he’s able to shatter our pint-sized expectations, overcome our seemingly insurmountable challenges and make the little we have to offer more than enough to accomplish all he wants to do.