Lessons I've Learned About Growth Part 2- Keys to Healthy Growth - Wesley Hursh

Lesson Transcript

All right, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. As David shared, I'm going to be sharing part two on lessons I've learned about growth. And I had a question. How many of you want to go run a marathon this afternoon? Brayden does. How many of you think you could actually do it? Nobody? Well, there was a man that tried to run a marathon without training. And amazingly enough, he actually accomplished it, but he just about died. Running a marathon takes preparation. It takes time. It takes skills.

Learning how to run. There's all kinds of stuff that goes into preparing to run a marathon. Well, Paul Likens our Christian life as a race. So if we're going to run the race of life, there needs to be work and effort put into it. We can't just expect it's all going to be easy. So this morning, I'm going to be talking about keys to healthy growth and the importance of putting the work into growth. But before we get into that, I want to do just a little bit of recap from last time.

We talked about the importance of growth. If we're not growing, we're most likely regressing. Christian life is moving forward. It's a progress. And so we need to be growing. We also talked about growth doesn't happen automatically. Regression does. We don't have to put any effort in to become a worse person. That kind of just can happen. But if we're going to grow spiritually and become healthier spiritually, it's going to take intentional work and effort. Also, whether we grow or we regress is our choice.

We get to decide that. And if we grow, we will be fruitful. There's a lot of work that goes into growth, but we have the promise that if we do grow, we will be fruitful. So keys to healthy growth, there's probably a whole list we can make of it, of different keys. I have five that I'm going to talk about, and these five were ones that have been a part of my journey, things I've learned and wrestled through and am learning. The first one is we have to be convinced that growth is important.

And we talked about this last time, so I'm not going to spend much time on this one. But if we don't think that growth is important, we're going to have a really hard time putting the work into growth that is required. It's a little bit like when you were a child, your mom and dad said, "You have to learn to play the piano because it's good discipline for you. It's great for you to be able to do." And you just see zero value in learning the piano.

You're just going to have a really hard time putting the work into it. And same way with growth in the Christian life. If we don't see it as important, it's going to be hard for us to put the work into it. And the second key I have is we need to understand how growth happens.

And this is something that, because of my lack of understanding about this over the good number of years of my life, I got to a point in life where I could never quite decide which it was, but either that predestination was actually a thing or that God didn't exist. And I'll explain a little bit more why that was. There's a number of different ideas out there about how growth happens.

One of them is probably the first one that I kind of was fed is that we're just human, so we always have things we won't be able to overcome. We just need to try and not be too bad. But if you have an anger problem, you just always will have an anger problem. If you have an impatience problem, you just always will have an impatience problem. Those types of people that talked about that, they often confessed the same thing over and over and over for years. They never conquered it.

But for me, having a sensitive conscience, as time went on, something didn't feel right with that mentality. There's things in life that Jesus said, "If these are part of your life, you're not going to inherit the kingdom of God." And so I couldn't reconcile the thing that, well, we just have to live with it because we're human. The second idea is when we become a Christian, our bad habits and addictions, our sins will just go away. That was not my experience.

And because people talked about that and said, "That's how it is," it caused me to question whether I was a Christian or not. I still have these problems, these things that I can't seem to overcome. And if it's supposed to happen when we're converted, we become new creatures, that we become a new man. And that wasn't my experience at all. Those things disappeared. So I questioned where my life was at with God. The third idea that's out there is it's all God's responsibility.

This one's probably the one that caused me the most difficulty in life. I had people tell me that it's God's job. We're just these poor, depraved humans. There's nothing we can do. If we're really serious about overcoming and growing, then we can maybe pray about it and tell God that we really want to overcome this. If we're really serious, we can fast and pray.

And if we're really serious, we can do something like go out in the woods or in a mountain somewhere for a longer period of time and tell God how serious we are. And then God will take away all our problems and the areas where we need to grow in and overcome. Well, I tried all that, and nothing improved.

And so the conclusion I was coming to was that either there isn't a God and the whole thing is a hoax because nothing's happening, nothing positive is happening in my life, or else predestination is a thing, and I'm predestined to damnation. It's just the way it is. So that's an unhealthy idea, a way to think about it. Another one, it's all our responsibility. That's not as common of one, but it's out there. God doesn't play a part in our spiritual life and our growth.

And the last one is God and us join forces and work together to move forward. And it was after moving here to Chambersburg that I started understanding this more, that it's a joint effort. And looking back, I wonder sometimes how I could not think of this on my own. But David mentioned it this morning in communion when what he shared there about the man sitting in his own prison. When we're fed a certain way of thinking, it's easy for us to get stuck in our own heads and not be able to think outside of that box.

And that was definitely how it was for me. So I very much have come to believe that God and us have joint effort, and Scripture backs that up. I'm not going to look at a whole lot of verses, but what's God's part? Just a few verses we'll look at. John 15:1-2, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that he may bear more fruit, that it may bear more fruit." So God prunes us when we're bearing fruit. He prunes us. He works with us to help us bear more fruit. Another verse is that same chapter, John 15:5, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I am in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing." So there it would seem to be like we can't do anything. Jesus said, "Without me you can't do anything." And that's true.

We need God's help. We need Jesus. But also, like it says in the prior verse, that we need to—I slipped my mind what that was. We need to be bearing fruit, and then he will help us bear more fruit. And then we need to abide in him as well. And then we know that Jesus came to earth, showed us how to live. He died, rose again so that we can be one with God, that we can live above sin. And what's our part?

We hear a lot of talk about God's responsibility, but often our responsibility gets shoved under the rug or ignored. And I'm going to read just a couple of verses I read last time in 2 Peter, 1:3, and then verse 5 and 7. "His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue.

For this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to brotherly kindness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love." So God's given us everything we need to live a godly life. He's given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. It's our job. It's our responsibility to add all these other things to our lives. It's practicing, a daily practice.

I have another verse in 1 Timothy 4:7-8, "But reject profane and old-wise fables and exercise yourself toward godliness. For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come." So just like physical exercise does us good, it says here in Timothy, Paul's saying that we should exercise ourselves towards godliness as well. Another thing that Jesus said is that we're going to be judged by the way we live our lives.

But if we can't do anything about how we live our lives, like if it's not my choice in how I live my life, if it's Jesus does it through me, as some people say, then that would be a really unfair God to judge me according to how I live my life if I don't have any choice in it. So we have a part to play. We work alongside of God. He's given us everything we need to grow in his likeness, and we're responsible to utilize and implement them. So what are some things that we can do to grow?

And this also could be a big list, and I just put a couple down. Prayer is one thing. We can pray. We can fast. One thing I've found very helpful is being part of a discipleship group and being around people that I can be open and honest with and share with. That's been extremely helpful for me in my journey. Another one is I know a number of brothers have done this in different periods of their life, is keep a daily or weekly list of the times we failed.

And I know that sounds kind of negative or depressing, but it's easy to go through a week and look back and say, maybe at our discipleship group or person we're talking to, we're like, "Yeah, I kind of got impatient. I don't know. It's probably two times this week I really got impatient with somebody or I got angry or whatever else you struggle with." But when you actually write down how often you do it, it can be a little bit shocking. So I think it's helpful to write down the times we do.

It does a couple of things for us. It makes us aware of how often we actually do it. But then it also helps us to know what the circumstances were surrounding that failure. So if I never write anything down, I'll most likely forget what all was happening in the situation when I got impatient or when I got angry or whatever else. But if we write down that I got angry, you're more likely to remember what the circumstances were.

And then we can be aware of what kind of situations we're most vulnerable when we're most likely to fail, and we can be on guard when we get into a situation like that. It's another thing I've found very helpful. The fifth one I have is take ownership. Circumstances, other people, they can make life miserable for us. They can affect us good and bad ways. But if we put all the blame on God or other people or circumstances, that kind of closes the door to us figuring out what we can do, what our part is.

And we just sit there and roll around in the misery. And there's actually probably things we could do to improve life and to grow ourselves in spite of the difficulties that maybe circumstances or other people are creating. So key number three, we need to focus on the right things. I think this is one that is essential for healthy growth. When it comes to growth, there's a lot of different things we can think about.

If you just stop and think a little bit about all the different good things that we can do in life, from the spiritual side to just the good things we can do in life for the kingdom, for other people, there's a thousand different things that we could focus on. We could focus on being, "Well, I want to be a good leader. I want to be a good singer, be a good communicator.

I want to be a good runner, writer, employer, musician, whatever else you want to put in there." We lump all that kind of stuff with things like, "I want to be merciful, patient, gentle, forgiving, honest, self-controlled, meek, content, kind, compassionate, generous, humble, long-suffering." But there's a couple of problems when we just lump all good things together in a pile. For one, there's a hierarchy in things that Jesus taught.

And also, there's just a lot of good things, and we can't all accomplish everything. One of the problems that we can face when we lump everything on a big pile is we can easily become overwhelmed. We see all the good things that we could be learning to do, and then we try to put energy. It's like, "Wow, I should really learn how to do this.

I put energy into this, and then something else comes up that I think, 'Well, maybe this is even more important.'" So I try putting energy into that, and we bounce back and forth and pursue all kinds of different things. And we don't get very far on anything. And then it's easy for us to get discouraged and think, "Well, I don't know. I guess I'm just not smart enough for this or not good enough. I don't know if I'll ever get anywhere." And it can just be very discouraging.

So it's important that we separate out the things that are primary importance and the things that are secondary importance. And the second thing that can happen when we pile everything together is we can end up spending most of our time and energy focusing on things that are of secondary importance at the expense of the most important things. We can ask the question, "Well, what are the most important things?" And we'll look at some verses that talk about that. Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 13:1-8.

He says, "Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I be still all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." So Paul obviously thinks that love is the most important thing.

Those other things he lists there, they were part of Jesus' life. He didn't give his body to be burned, but he died. They're all good things, but Paul says if we don't have love, it doesn't do anything for us. And some people take that and say, "Well, yeah, so it's all about having love in my heart. If I love my enemy, I can still kill him as long as I love him." But let's read verses 4-8, where it talks about how love behaves itself. "Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself.

It's not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. Thinks no evil. Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails, but whether there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away." I was thinking about love, and I think Paul does a good job describing what love looks like.

But then I was also thinking of other virtues. Kevin had a message a while back on, I think he had a list of 30 different virtues. And I was thinking about some of them.

I was like, "I don't know if we can really say we have love if we're not merciful, if we're not patient, if we're not gentle, if we're not forgiving, if we're not honest, if we're not meek, if we're not compassionate, if we're not humble, if we're not long-suffering, if we're not kind." I don't see how we can actually say we have love if we don't have if those other things aren't a part of our life as well.

And as I thought about that, I believe what it comes down to is our way of being is the most important things to focus on. Do we have these virtues in our lives? And I think a great example of how this gets played out in life, how our way of being affects what we do, is in Matthew 25:31-46. It says, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on his right hand, 'Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me.

I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or naked and clothe you?

Or when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?' And the king will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.'" Notice, they didn't come to Jesus with the whole list of things that they had done. They didn't come to Jesus saying, "Yeah, we did this and we took care of people and we clothed the naked." It was just evidently their way of being. It's who they were.

It's because they had love, like Paul talked about, that it was just what came out of their life because of what was inside. And Jesus made his decision as to whether they inherit eternal life, the kingdom of God or not, based on the small acts of kindness that they had shown to people. Their care and love for people flowed out of who they were. And then I was thinking about a couple of examples of where people focused on maybe secondary things or even less.

And that is Matthew 23:23-24, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tie the mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides who strain out a knot and swallow a camel." And that passage, that chapter, there's a bunch of other woes that Jesus gives to the Pharisees for all the stuff they're doing. And you have the Pharisee with the publican and their prayers.

Pharisee's like, "Oh, thank God I'm not like that publican over there. I fast twice a week and I tithe." He was bragging about all the things he does that's better than this other publican and. But Jesus said the publican went home justified and not the Pharisee. Another passage, Bruce mentioned it in Sunday school, Matthew 7:21-23, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven,' but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.'" Here we have people quite opposite from the previous judgment scene that we read about. Here you have people coming to Jesus and saying, "Yeah, well, we did all kinds of stuff that you did. We cast out demons. We did lots of wonders.

Did all these big things." And he's like, "I'm sorry. I don't know who you are." One of the challenges we face, and it's obvious it's not a new thing because as is proved in the verses we just read, but as society pushes us to focus on how great of things we do, too often a person's worth is based on what they've accomplished or are accomplishing. And we all want to be of value in life. We all want to make a difference.

So when society's metric is how great of things we've done, it's extremely easy for us as Christians to adopt that same metric. And that can be a very dangerous trap. For one, it's an unbiblical metric, as we already talked about. The other reason it can be dangerous is because we can deceive ourselves into thinking we're a great person when in reality, by Jesus' metric, we're not.

Just like the people that came to Jesus and said, "Well, we've done all these great things." And he's like, "I don't know you." They were deceived. They thought they had done all these great things and that they should be great people. The other thing that can happen is not everyone has the ability to do great things by those metrics. When you think of the popular, famous people in the US, think of people with big nonprofit organizations that are helping people all over the world.

You think of famous authors, singers, businessmen. You can just go down the list. That's what the world lifts up. That's what society pushes us to base someone's value on is how big of things are they accomplishing. And most of the world can't accomplish a lot of those big things. And so if we're using the same metric society does, we're eliminating the potential for a lot of people to be great in God's eyes, and that's not how God's kingdom works. What does that mean?

That we shouldn't pursue big, visibly impactful things? No, I think it's great to do what we can to impact the world, build God's kingdom. But we have to remember that's not Jesus' metric. And I believe a big contributor to the downfall of so many leaders is just crazy how often we hear these leaders of mega churches, apologists that were incredibly good at defending Christianity, big business leaders, you name it, how often they fail. They fall.

And I think a big contributor to that is their focus shifts from their way of being or becoming like Jesus to how great of things they're doing. And then it goes to their heads and they end up being careless in their way of being. And one of the really cool things about our way of being being the focus of our growth is we really don't have to add that much to our schedule. It's more a matter of changing how we do what we do, not necessarily how much or how great of things we do.

And that means anyone, regardless of personality, age, stage of life, country of residence, or financial status, etc., can accomplish it. You take anybody anywhere that has a sound mind, they can become a great person in God's kingdom. I know maybe some others, especially from the push from society that we have today, maybe they struggle with just being at home and taking care of children and cleaning the house and washing dishes.

But they can become a great person in God's kingdom by Jesus' metric, by the things that they do every day, the way they relate to their children, their husband, their neighbors. They can grow in becoming more patient, loving, merciful, gentle, forgiving, honest. Everybody has that ability. And I just think it's amazing that Jesus' metric is something that everybody can attain. So the fourth one is we need to remember that growth takes time. In our world today, everything's about speed. We need an instant.

We have microwaves because oven would take way too long and much worse building a fire to heat food up. That'd be terrible. Actually, it's really good. But when it comes to healthy spiritual growth, most times there's nothing instant about it. It's a journey. It's a lifelong journey. It's a little bit like when we start school. We don't start first grade doing algebra.

We spend the first seven or eight years learning basic arithmetic operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, and things like that that we're going to need to know in order to do algebra later on. And my tendency is when I decide that I should really accomplish something, I go all out from day one. I want to start from where I should be, not where I am. And that's one excellent way to ensure failure.

If you knew how many times I decided I was going to work out or I was going to run and I'm going to push myself, I'm going to be really disciplined, I'm going to do this right, and then I go a little bit too hard, too fast, and then for several days I'm semi out of commission, you would probably laugh. It takes time.

And the problem when we do that, when we try to push too fast and think we have to be where we should be instead of starting where we are and we overexert ourselves, it can make it really hard to try again. When this happens, there's very little inspiration to try again. And that's not a nice place to be.

Now, the fact that it takes time doesn't mean that we can be lazy about it and we can just sit back and relax and be like, "Well, yeah, it takes time, so I'll not really work at it." One of the things I've found for me personally that's been helpful, and maybe some of you won't identify with this, maybe some of you it's the opposite way, but I've found it really helpful in thinking about becoming like Jesus to think of it as that, that I am becoming my goal is to become like Jesus, not my goal is to be like Jesus.

I'm never fully going to be like Jesus. And so that feels like this big thing, like, "Am I making progress? Am I not?" But if I look at it as I am becoming like Jesus, it's something that's attainable. It's something that we can see improvement. So for whatever that's worth, if it's helpful for you, take it. If not, leave it. The other thing to remember is, so we often have role models in our lives, people we look up to.

And we can look at somebody and say, "Wow, if I could just be like them, that would be great." And then just, "Man, I'm not making much progress." We have to remember our role model might have 15 or even 50 years more experience and more time that they worked on their lives. So we need to remember that growth takes time. It's not going to be an instant thing. It's just going to take lots of time and work. Then the fifth one I have, fifth key, is accept our personality and giftings.

It's important to remember that we're not all made the same and embrace that fact. God designed it that way. And we'll read another passage in First Corinthians 12:14-26, "For in fact, the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing?

If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them in the body, just as he pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet. I have no need of you. No, much rather those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary.

And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor. And our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to the part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it." So we have a body with lots of different parts. And I'm not going to get into who's the unpresentable parts and what I'll let you figure that out and decide for yourselves. But I just found that interesting that it was the parts that seem maybe the weakest in the, I think the King James Version says, "Uncommonly parts get the greater honor." What all that means, like I said, I'll let that up to you to decide. I just found that fascinating.

So while it's good for us to have role models in life and we should learn from them, I think it's important to remember that we don't all have the same gifts or personality. We can learn a lot from people with different gifts and personalities in us. But I think it's important for us to have role models that have similar giftings and personalities to us.

If we try to be like, or especially if we try to do everything like somebody with completely different personality and giftings, we're likely going to end up pretty discouraged and not actually fulfilling the role that God created us to fill. It's a little bit like we could say a rabbit watching a squirrel. There's some core principles that apply. One is to outrun the predator. Another one is don't run in a straight line. Another one's get out of sight, etc. But the way they work that out looks different.

If the squirrel or if the rabbit looks at the squirrel climbing the tree and says, "You know what? That's really the best way to do it, is climb a tree," he's probably going to end in destruction. And it's the same way for us. There's core principles that apply to every human, and we can learn those from everybody.

But God created us different, and we need to learn what our gifts are and what role God has for us to fill and not compare ourselves and say, "Well, I can't write like David can," or, "I can't be a whiz on the historic faith website and creating new stuff like Dale and Jason and Daniel," and I could go on down the list. I could say, "Well, I just can't do that, and so I guess I'm just not of much value." And that's not the case. There's different roles. God created us all different.

And if we were all the same, we'd have other issues. So embrace your gift and your role that God's created you to fill. So in conclusion, be convinced that growth is important. Understand how growth happens. Focus on the right things. Remember that growth takes time. And accept and embrace your personality and giftings. Pursue growth. It's worth it. We'll bear more fruit, and we have that promise that if we bear fruit, God will prune us to help us bear more fruit.

So embrace the journey of growth and enjoy it as hard as it may be sometimes.