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South Bay SDA Church

Eric Nelson

Spiritual Growth

Dear God, we need your presence here with us today more than we understand.

We can do nothing without you, and I ask that through the power of the Holy Spirit we will understand your will for each 1 of us individually more because of our time together.

I pray that our church family will draw together, will press together for the upbuilding of your kingdom.

Please bless the words of Scripture, help me to understand them more, help me to be able to explain them more today.

We ask for these gifts in the name of Jesus.

If you want to open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4.

Title of our message today is spiritual growth.

And we're going to begin and end in Ephesians chapter 4.

So keep a finger there or a marker there.

We're going to start by looking at verse 14 and 15.

There are lots of texts in the Bible about spiritual growth.

We're to grow in faith, we're to grow in love.

LaFleur reading that for us this morning.

Let's look at 1 other Ephesians chapter 4.

I will read in your hearing verse 14 and 15 that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie and wait to deceive.

But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.

Let's ask some questions about this passage.

And in how many areas of Christian life does Jesus want us to grow?

Perhaps all the graces of the Spirit or all the graces Jesus mentioned in the Beatitudes or...

Jesus wants All of us in all of these areas to grow up, grow up into whom?

That's kind of an interesting mental picture, isn't it?

I asked Rachel, you know, what she thought that meant.

You know, What does it mean that you grow up into someone?

And she had this picture in her mind that you kind of...

And as you're slowly growing, the mold pushes on you and you can't grow in some areas you can grow in others and you're growing up into this mold kind of like go along with plants here's some molds that you can buy from Japan I found this on the Internet I thought it was amusing goes right along with our theme of plants and our theme of love see they're shaped like little hearts So you now can get some molds and you can put them around your cucumbers and your salads will now be more loving.

Look at Ephesians chapter 04.10 04.10 The kind of spiritual growth that's referred to also is connected to something and that is speaking the truth.

Do you know there is a false idea of spiritual growth out there that does not involve speaking the truth but involves a lot of love.

Maybe you're familiar with this the idea that we can love everyone.

I met him just this last Thursday, and he wants to love everybody.

But unfortunately, the way he manages that is by not believing anything, ever, about anything and not believing that anybody else should believe anything specific either.

It's a very strange conversation with him.

That's trying to be loving without the truth.

On the other hand, I will confess to you that I'm probably in the other extreme.

And the kind of spiritual growth Jesus wants us to have leads each of us to speak the truth in love all the time to everyone, especially in the church.

We talked about that a little bit in Sabbath school.

Specifically, if you look at the context, verse 14 speaking the truth has to do with speaking about true doctrine.

We don't want to be teaching false doctrine or have false teaching presented because It can lead to a false type of spiritual growth that makes people perhaps feel good, but they're not really spiritually growing.

We want to be sure that we're speaking the truth in love.

What happens in this verse if someone doesn't grow up?

Every wind of doctrine kind of blows them this way and that, doesn't it?

Do you think there will be more winds of doctrine in our church as we approach the end of time?

So what do we need to be doing now we need to be growing up we don't want to remain as children.

34.15 We're going to spend this morning looking at 4 mechanisms of spiritual growth if you will they probably only vaguely correspond to the soil the air the food for the plant and the water but there's 4 of them anyway and 2 of them are very familiar to you I'm sure you've heard sermons about them before 2 of them I'm betting are unfamiliar and so we're going to spend more time on the first 1 in the last 1 that are probably more unfamiliar if you will in each 1 I will share perhaps some practical suggestions that may be helpful for someone I know they've been helpful for me.

05.22 I again want to say that none of these things can force spiritual growth can any of us decide that I am now going to grow up.

We can't force ourselves to grow just like the plant can't force itself to grow but we can receive the mechanisms of spiritual growth if you will that Jesus wants to give us and so we're going to look at 4 of those this morning turn to Deuteronomy chapter 5 6 I'm sorry Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 and we'll start looking at verse 5.

Deuteronomy 6 verse 5, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, or with all thy might, depending on your translation.

He said this commandment is the number 1 most important commandment in the entire law.

This is the number 1 most important commandment.

How do you know if someone loves someone else?

I like watching people and I have permission from Mindy and Garrett to talk about them.

They've been married for a year, but it kind of doesn't seem like that, right?

And I was watching them at the church camp out.

And there are 3 ways I came up with that I can tell they love each other.

The first 1 is, they're always together, right?

Second 1 was, when they were together, there wasn't much space between them, right?

You know, they were always holding hands or sitting as close as they could around the campfire.

When Mindy was speaking, Garrett was always paying attention.

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