Teaching on Growing - Monday Night 10/2/06

GROWING

I can remember when I purchased this CD and started listening to the individual tracks. They all seemed to have touched my heart because all of them were relating to “today”, not the day of the week, but the “now” times of the present day. As I came upon this track entitled “Growing” for some reason I kept coming back to it playing it over and over again – did God have a word in it for me? Maybe so.

Can you remember back to the time, maybe even the month, day and year, and possibly the event that led you to HIM .... the time when He knocked at the door to your heart....maybe you left your heart open just a tiny bit, maybe just even a tiny crack, just like the door in your home to let in a quiet gentle breeze. He tapped ever so lightly and you heard Him and you let Him into your heart, your soul, your life in a way that you never had before. Can you remember how happy, how on-fire you were, you were so different, you had such joy in your heart, you were on top of the mountain, on top of the world...you never thought you could ever feel this way about the closeness of you and Jesus!!! It seemed also like such a long time that you were honeymooning with the Lord!!!! You were on an all-time Christian “high”.

Then somewhere, sometime, something changed....the Lord was ready to begin the “work in progress” in you. Maybe there were some areas in your life that weren’t quite the way He had wanted them to be. And so He started to show you, bit by bit, tiny pieces at a time, breaking you and refitting you to the image He saw in you. How many times did you pull the other way...because it was too much work to change, maybe too much pain to go through for Him...but He saw the ultimate goal....He saw the end result, even if you didn’t...like a beautiful tapestry, a work of art created after many painstaking hours of sacrifice.

How many of these old ways did He have to help you work on, to rebuild a brand new you...with a different and new loving heart, a brighter set of new eyes to see all His people and the world He created.

Growing – I am sure that sometimes we don’t like it – because that means we have to do the changing in something about ourselves. It’s always that we are the ones called to do the changing and not someone else. Sometimes we crawl at this and set our pace like a snail and we take on the “old” push and pull syndrome with God. But the Lord just sits patiently, always there but in “wait mode” until we get what He wants us to learn. Times like this we may feel that He has left us, abandoned us because we don’t hear Him or feel His presence. He is quiet, because we struggle with the area He wants to change in us, of course for the better in us.

I know there have been times in my life when growing was too painful....it was just easier to stay the way I was – comfortable, not pushing my boundaries – I was happy the way I was, BUT GOD WAS NOT!!!!

Being a Christian is hard work – it is a journey that may take a lifetime to learn and accomplish and sometimes the process is a short one and sometimes a long one. God never said it would be easy – but like I said, He sees the ultimate best in each of us and asks us to come to Him in wholeness. Sometimes we have to come to Him in broken-ness so that He can start the process of refining us like gold. If we can just try to do that, our reward will be great!!

This prayer group is an example of growing. We may have been comfortable and complacent with the ways things might have been. But I believe God has something better for us .... but this will involve change – so we come to Him in our broken-ness, ready to be strengthened with new ideas, new gifts and a stronger faith to what He is calling us to.

Can we accept His call? I hope so.
We’re growing