I don’t know about you but I’m a sucker for new year’s resolutions. In December and January, I sit down with my journal and come up with ten goals that I hope will shape my year. It’s so easy for these goals to be gobbled up by my work, my physical health and by my relationships. And it’s so easy for my spiritual growth to be neglected, or maybe just to assume that it will happen on its own.
Now you don’t need a list of ten goals to help you grow as a child of God, but you and I do need to have a concern for spiritual growth.
Over January we’ll be hearing from some of our friends from church who will share about different things that have helped them to grow as children of God.
To help us as we begin, I want to mention two brief things.
1. Why you need to be concerned with growth
God’s vision for you is to grow in maturity in Christ. You can see this quite clearly in Paul’s letter to the Colossians.
He (Jesus) is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. (Col 1.28)
The thing about Christian growth is that you will never simply arrive. There will always be more room to grow as a child of God. There are many, many other verses we could reflect on here. But pursuing maturity in Christ is something every Christian is called to do.
2. How growth happens
In the upcoming posts we will hear some really practical thoughts about a range of spiritual disciplines. Each of those spiritual disciplines (e.g. prayer, Bible reading, service, solitude) are an outworking of the gospel. This is so important to grasp.
Fundamentally, you can only grow as a child of God by the grace of the gospel.
Notice how Paul puts it in Titus 2.11–14:
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
Paul says that the grace of God doesn’t just save us, it changes us. It helps us to grow in godliness. To put it another way, the gospel isn’t just about knowing the ABC’s of the Christian life, it’s the power that will enable you to live out the A to Z’s of the Christian life.
As you look to 2020 and develop a plan to grow as a child of God, make sure you develop a habit of applying the grace of the gospel to your own heart.