Growing in Knowledge

Content library Growing in Knowledge
Share
Share

Southeast Christian Church

Oct 7, 2022

In marriage, the more facts you know about your spouse, the more likely you are to have a successful marriage. But it seems that's exactly what Paul is saying about our relationship with Christ too. The more we know about God, the more we're connected to God, and at the baseline of knowing God is knowing Scripture. Are you growing in knowledge on a regular basis? Because if you are, God's not done working in your life.

When you grow in knowledge of the Lord and realize all his promises are true throughout Scripture, we discover that we can trust in all his words. When you place your faith on Christ, your sin goes onto the cross and the perfection of Jesus goes on to you, so that when the Father looks at you, he does not see the sins you have committed. He only sees instead the righteousness, holiness, and perfection of Jesus Christ. Upon baptism, the Holy Spirit is placed inside you to begin his good work that will be finished on the day that Jesus returns. If you lack self-confidence, you don't need a self-help book, you don't even need a good church service, you need the power of God to save your soul and begin a good work inside you.

Satan, our enemy, wants you to give up. He wants you to think that what you face is final, that God cannot redeem it, and that everything will always be this way. But God is not done with your marriage. God is not done with your addiction. God is not done with your dating. God is not done with your career. God is not done with your grief. You may not know how or when it will end but, you know, because of the empty tomb that Philippians 1 is true: God is not done!

Reflection/Discussion Question: What area of your life to do you need to remember that God is not finished with?

Community tags

This content has 0 tags that match your profile.

Purpose

Growing in Faith

Spiritual Disciplines

Comments

To leave a comment, login or sign up.

Related Content

0

Love Makes You Committed

When you get married, you are declaring your love for your spouse, but that love is always backed up by a commitment to continue loving them through every season of life. You know that when someone tells you that they love you, but doesn’t commit to living out that love, then the declaration of love was just a fleeting emotion. Our relationship with Jesus is the same. If we love Jesus, we will be committed to a life of loving him. If we love Jesus, we will be committed to the work of loving other people (and it will be work). If you’ve been married for any length of time, you know that loving people is hard work. If the people with whom you have an emotional connection can be difficult to love, imagine how hard it is to love your enemies. But if we love Jesus, we will love even our worst enemies. Love is a commitment, not a feeling. We don’t love Jesus when it’s easy, convenient, or sensible. We love Jesus always — no matter what. It means we are committed to loving the people that he loves. We are committed to rooting out sin in our lives. We are committed to obeying his commandments. A life marked by the love of Jesus is one that will consistently be marked by an unwavering commitment to Jesus’s way. Reflection/Discussion Question: What gets in the way of committing yourself to Jesus?

0

Accept What Jesus Offers

Jesus died on the cross while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8), so we can be sure that his gift of peace is just like his gift of eternal life: free. The trouble with gifts is that they need to be accepted in order to be used, enjoyed, or experienced. Jesus offers us his peace through the gift of the Holy Spirit, but if we don’t accept his gift, we will never experience his peace. This is why so many Christians aren’t living in peace, but are instead mirroring the dissension, anxiety, and chaos of the world. They may have come up out of the waters of baptism declaring themselves a new creation in Christ, but they haven’t turned their focus away from the world and onto Christ. While his peace isn’t dependent upon our working for it, our experience of his peace is dependent upon our turning toward it. How do we turn toward Christ’s gift of peace? Philippians 4:4-6 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (NIV). Because of what Jesus has done, we can turn and rejoice in him always. We can give everything to God in prayer and petition and we can have a genuine heart of thankfulness. When we take this posture of submission to Jesus in the midst of our circumstances, we fully receive his peace that “transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Reflection/Discussion Question: How can you rejoice in the Lord in the midst of your current circumstances?