Growing in Christ

Remember Ephesians 4:11-16?  The purpose of all those gifts and offices is to grow every Believer into maturity.  What we call "ministry" is not reserved for full-time Christians workers.  Look back at Matthew 28:19-20:  The disciples were to teach their disciples everything they had learned from Jesus.  The chain of discipleship should then extend from Jesus through the Eleven (and others) all the way down to you and me.  We have the teachings, but do we have the models?  True discipleship is not merely telling someone what they ought to believe and do, but living out before them what they ought to believe and do in order to show them what it looks like.  That's what Jesus was doing when He called the Twelve to be "with Him" in the midst of His on-going ministry.

As we share the Gospel and the Holy Spirit does His work, souls are born again.  But newborn (again) souls are infants in Christ.  If newborn babies were put right into a classroom setting to be taught basic survival skills, none of them would make it.  The Lord is more gracious with newborn (again) Believers, and many survive, but it is the rare soul that grows to maturity without the personal investment of some spiritual parent.  So for evangelism to obtain it's desired result, it must be combined with caring personal follow-up. So what would a caring spiritual parent do with a newborn Christian?

I introduced our Studies in the Gospel of John follow-up Bible study in the previous post.  It's a basic introduction to the foundations of our faith:  the Gospel (Lesson One), God's Love and Protection of Believers (Lesson Two), the Bible as our reliable source of all we know about God (Lesson Three) and an introduction to Christian Living (Lesson Four).  If you follow our method, you would have studied the first lesson with your new Timothy during your first follow-up meeting.  The remaining lessons are studied in successive meetings.

When we began this series of posts more than a year ago, we began with the Wheel Illustration.  We believe it is a succinct tool to describe the foundational needs of a growing Christian life.  There are many other things that could be added, that others have added, but we feel that these six elements encompass the most basic requirements for a Christian to continue growing in their relationship with and service to Christ.  When our new Believer has completed our Studies in the Gospel of John follow-up Bible study, we feel it's time to introduce them to the Wheel.  And it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves and check our own progress in each of these areas.

Ensuring that Christ is the center of our lives is just the first element of a growing Christian life.  Once we have entered into this new life in Christ, what must we do to deepen our walk with Christ?  And if the goal of our Christian development is to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29), how do we get Him from the center of our being to shine through all our conversation and conduct?  Again, the Wheel Illustration was designed to answer those questions in a simple but meaningful way.

As we saw last month, we listen to God and learn more about Him through His Word, recorded as our Bible.  The other side of that conversation is our words to Him, which we commonly call "prayer."  So the vertical spokes of the Wheel Illustration (The Word and Prayer) describe our two-way conversational relationship with God!

This is God's Creation. All that He has made is subject to Him and obligated to know and obey Him. He created all things in perfection and made Man lord under Him over all the earth and everything in it. Man was never permitted to do as he pleased, but was expected and required to live by God's way of life. Perfection, holiness, righteousness, these all mean to walk in God's ways. Anything else is imperfection, corruption, wickedness, because it is not what God Himself would do; it is not how God would act.