Week 29 / Adventure 3 Well we got back to town just in time to see everything being taken down from the celebration at New Harvest celebrating their 70th anniversary. Thank you Rebecca Przybylski, Josh Przybylski, Sharon McQueary, and all the other leadership for doing such a great job leading this community in growth and healing. We pray Gods blessings over all of you, and thank God for each one of you. This week Mike got back to his series on Hebrews where we are told to be mature in Christ and not remain babies, along with the Vine and the Branches teaching on the Fruit. We all love babies. They are so cute. But they are also very demanding. Life is all about them. They are unable to contribute anything to anyone else. The same thing happens when Christians dont grow up. They get stuck in the all about me mode, resulting in I dont like this and i dont like that in their church. Just as you cant leave a room full of babies alone to take care of themselves, new Christians need to be given help to grow to maturity and bear fruit. He also used Collosions 1 as an example, comparing Collosae with Detroit. At one time both were very powerful cities, both lost their influence. To give hope to the people of Detroit he went on to say that even though Collosae itself had lost influence, the church there did not. Paul praises them for being faithful in consistently displaying Christlikeness in spite of their circumstances. He reminds them that they are Holy people. A better translation of Holy here would be saints. One definition of a saint is someone who is life giving. He warns against the false teachers of the day who claimed that all you need is knowledge, wisdom, understanding. Paul uses these same terms in talking to the Collosians to teach them that those things are practical, not theoretical. We are to be mature fruit. Immature fruit brings no sustanence. It tastes bitter. God desires so much more for us. Grapes do not grow on the vine to stay there, they are there to provide nourishment for others. We need to mature before we can give life to others, feeding people who are starving for God. We can not stay babies. This takes time and work. The true test of Christianity is not whether it pleases us or is comfortable. The true test is this: is it true? is it real? Does it do what it says it will do? Young people are leaving the church (as a whole) because they are not seeing true fruit being displayed by its people. They want more than just facts and rules. They need to know and see our faith is real and true, not just a surface knowledge. So, back to the first message on the Vine and the Branches, we need to let God the Gardener tend to us, so that we will grow in Jesus the Vine and produce healthy mature fruit, not to just sit on the vine, but to be used to feed others and bring them to maturity in Christ. As summer wears on we see what happens when we dont tend to our gardens.............the weeds take over. Let God the Gardener tend to you, even if the pruining hurts a little. He knows what Hes doing. The result will be a bountiful harvest.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 22:54:30 +0000
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