9/7/08 Neither Useless nor Unfruitful...
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For the past six months

we have been studying the concept of spiritual growth together.

For some of you

this may be the only topic you’ve ever heard me teach.

It is safe to say that none of us recall exactly where we started six months ago,

or how we eventually ended up where we did.

I’d like us to take one final week with this topic of Spiritual Growth

with the hopes of putting what we have looked at

back into some kind of over-all perspective.

I think this is especially crucial

given where we have been most recently in our study.

For the last half of our study

we have been using II Peter 1: 5-7

as our home base.

As you know if you have been with us recently

Peter uses this passage to share with us

the seven progressive steps of growth

that God seeks to lead each of us through

as we grow in our walk with our Lord.

Peter’s wording in this passage

has fascinated me for many years

because he very clearly intends

for us to understand

the progressive nature

of these seven qualities.

He says,

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge; and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

If Peter had simply wanted to list for us

some important qualities of successful Christian living

he would have said, Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, to your faith supply moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love...

But he didn’t.

Rather, he worded his letter in such a way

that it is impossible for us to miss

the progressive nature of these qualities.

Each quality lays the foundation

for the one that comes after it.

He begins, of course, with the assumption of a measure of faith within us.

Without our faith in the Person and work

of our Lord Jesus Christ

no enduring change is possible.

He alone can place within us

a new heart that loves God

and longs for righteousness.

He alone knows how to lead us through

our own personal growth program.

Then our God begins the growth process

where He must begin with each of us who come to Him -

He begins by seeking to build into our lives

a foundation of moral excellence.

He does this not because we must achieve and maintain

some predetermined level of performance before He will let us stay in the family,

and certainly not because His death only covered

those past sins in our lives

and we now need to take care of the future ones ourselves.

He builds into our life

a foundation of moral excellence

for two major reasons.

First, immorality in any form

always brings pain,

and suffering,

and hurt into the lives of those who are touched by it,

and our Lord loves us too much

to allow us to self-destruct without His seeking deliverance in our lives.

And second, everything else our Lord seeks to share with us

and accomplish through us

depends upon His being able

to establish a solid basis of moral excellence in our lives.

Do you realize the incredible advantages we have in being Christians

at this point in human history?

Here we are surrounded by a world

that has broken loose from all moral foundations.

Our culture no longer even understands

what moral right and wrong is,

much less how to live it.

Corruption is assumed in all branches

of government, business, and industry.

More often than not relationships in our culture

are driven by hatred, or lust, or fear, or anger, or resentment, or bitterness, or selfishness, or greed,

or a kind of self-centered user mentality

that leaves us all feeling victimized and afraid to trust those around us.

Everyone has an angle,

something they want.

But what a great time

to be God’s child in human history

because His handiwork in us

becomes so incredibly evident

so very quickly

against the backdrop of the world around us.

I like the way Paul says it in his comments in Philippians 2:15.

He tells us it is our calling...that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world...

Whether it’s in school,

or within the family,

or at work,

or in the neighborhood

moral integrity in our culture

stands out like a spotlight.

And it’s no wonder Peter tells us

that God’s rebuilding program in our lives

begins there.

Then Peter moves us on to knowledge,

and for our study

we have defined knowledge as:

Understanding gained through hands-on experience. It involves active interaction between the one learning

and the thing being learned.

It is that phase of our growth

in which we begin to discover

the basic operating principles

of life in the Kingdom of God.

Things like discovering that

our productivity in the kingdom is not the result of effort invested,

it is the by-product of character growth,

something we’ll come back to again this morning before we close.

And discovering that our weaknesses

are God’s greatest doorways

to His ability to reveal His strength in and through our lives.

And finding out that

true freedom can only be found in trusting the clearly marked boundaries

that our Lord has established in our lives.

And finding out that building true love relationships

are more important than our rights, our things, or our ideas.

And discovering that human authority is God’s special tool

through which He reveals His leadership to us.

Those and countless other operating principles of life

become a growing part of our walk with the king in this knowledge level.

From there Peter moves on to self-control

which we defined as

the ability to choose to do what is right

at those times when our emotions are lying to us.

And from there he moves us on to perseverance,

which we defined as the ability to exercise self-control as long as God asks us to.

And it’s obvious that this perseverance quality

is a very mature level of Christian living.

It requires a clear working knowledge

of the way in which God does His business in and through us,

and an uncompromising commitment to His goals in our lives.

From there we moved on to look at Godliness,

and for our study I suggested that godliness is the ability to do what is right even when there are no external reasons for doing so.

It is right living that is motivated

not so much by the consequences of our actions,

but rather right living that grows out of

an inner knowledge of who we really are.

It is that ability to look at evil

and find ourselves saying,

“That just isn’t who I am any more.

It doesn’t matter what the consequences may or may not be,

that whole behavior is completely inconsistent with the person I have become in Christ.”

And it involves the ability to look at the pain, and the suffering, and the confusion

in the lives of those around us

and to find ourselves thinking,

“I am a member of the physical Body of Jesus Christ on this earth,

and because I am,

under the leadership of His Spirit within me,

it’s my calling here and now

to do what I can do

to ease that pain and suffering.

I know I can’t do a lot,

but I also know I can do something,

and every time I do

it changes our world for the good and brings someone closer to His love.”

Then, the final two steps of growth we looked at

focus directly on our relationships with those around us.

Step #6 is Brotherly Kindness,

and we defined it as the ability to seek to meet the needs of our fellow Christians even when it conflicts with our personal rights, our possessions, or our ideas and beliefs.

It is the ability to put our relationship with the Christian next to us

above our own goals, preferences, and desires.

And then, finally, for the past two weeks

we have looked at the final step of growth on Peter’s list - LOVE.

And for our study we first defined it as choosing to relate to each human being we meet within the protective boundaries of the moral laws of God.

Paul’s comments to us in Romans 13:8-10 were our guide.

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

But then we didn’t stop there

because, even though righteous choices are the foundation upon which all true love is built,

the kind of love our Lord has for us

and asks us to show to those around us

goes so far beyond that.

It involves our choosing to reach out to the needs of those around us,

one person at a time,

telling them with our words, our actions, and our attitudes

the one thing they most desperately long to know

and yet fear to believe -

that they are people of incredible value and eternal worth.

OK, now that’s where we have been

for much of the past several months.

And there is a lot of good stuff in what we’ve seen -

a lot of value in understanding

where our Lord is taking us.

I don’t want to get us too far off track here,

but I do hope you realize

what is being revealed to us here.

This is not simply a list

of good qualities

we should be open to working on in our lives.

This is God’s way of sharing with us

His non-negotiable,

pre-determined agenda for our lives.

This is not something He wants to do in our lives,

it is something He is already actively involved in accomplishing.

This is where He is taking each one of us.

This is the blueprint of His active agenda for our lives.

And of course with this

we need to realize that God’s agenda

is not the only agenda active in our lives.

There is something else going on that is very likely warring against what God is seeking to do.

The big problem, obviously,

is that each of us also have our own personal agenda for ourselves.

Each of us have our own personal definition of success -

what it looks like,

how to achieve it.

Those definitions grow out of what we think we need to be happy,

how we view ourselves,

our abilities,

our weaknesses and so forth.

With most of us it involves some blend

of having a good public image,

having a personally acceptable level of affluence,

and having our relationships working the way we want them to work.

But no matter what our personal concept of success looks like,

all of us are actively engaged in perusing those things in life

that we feel will contribute to our success and fulfillment goals.

OK, now look at this.

Here we are

with our success goals firmly established

and our game plan in motion

for achieving those goals.

Then, if we are Christians,

we have our Lord with His goals for us also firmly established,

and His game plan in motion

for achieving the goals He knows

are essential for our true fulfillment in life.

And the two are often times

headed in completely opposite directions.

And there will be times when those two collide,

and they do so in a way that knocks us completely off our feet.

And as we lay there on our backs

looking up at the sky,

wondering what in the world just happened...and why,

the first words out of our mouth are,

‟God, what’s going on here?

Don’t You care about me?

Why did you let this happen?”

And sometimes, if we listen closely,

we’ll hear Him answer,

‟Because I love you far too much

to let you win.

What you think you need

is not what you really long for.

You’re looking for a place to hide,

I’m bring you to a place where you can heal,

you want to run away,

I want to make you strong

so that you can stand,

you want to look good

while I want you to be good.

And I love you too much

to let you have it your way.”

Part of the hazards of being united with a living God

who knows us perfectly

is that He does not play our games,

and He doesn’t play by our rules.

And at those times in my own life

when I find myself wondering

what in the world’s going on

it sometimes helps me

to go back and look once again

at this rather remarkable agenda

established for me by my God

and try to understand

what He’s working on in my life:

But that isn’t where I want to leave us

with this summery,

because there is one more danger

with a list like this

that I want to address one final time.

I know how we are with lists -

we look at them as qualifications for membership,

or God’s means by which He measures

how we’re doing.

In other words, we are incredibly vulnerable to viewing the list

as the goal or central purpose

of God’s life with us.

You know how it is,

our parents spent 18 years trying to get us to shape up and behave,

and then once they gave up

we assume that God has just taken over the job

and is now trying to do the same thing.

But look at the way Peter

ends this list.

He doesn’t end with some sort of divine parental threat,

he ends with the most remarkable promise.

In II Peter 1:8 Peter says:

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now for that to make sense

I need to tell you that this phrase ‟true knowledge”

is that same word ‟epignosis”

that we spent so much time on

early in our study.

It is that very special word

used by the New Testament writers

to describe the kind of personal,

intimate friendship with God

that only the Christian can experience.

It is what we are here for - the ongoing discovery of our God’s love for us.

And it is to aid our discovery of that love

that our Lord calls us into this growth process we’ve looked at in such detail

during the past six months.

But what I want us to end with here

is this truly remarkable promise our God makes to all those

who accept His invitation to trust Him and His goals for our lives.

If these qualities are yours and are increasing they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in your friendship with the King.

When I discovered this passage in Peter during my mid 20's

the impact it had on my life

was far beyond anything I had at first anticipated.

The more I wrestled with what Peter was saying

the more God’s involvement in my life began to make sense.

At that point in my life

I was very much at the first step in my pilgrimage with the King,

trying to understand moral excellence,

and even more, trying to understand how it could become a growing reality in my life.

But there was something that God accomplished in my life through this passage,

something that literally altered the course of my life forever.

When I saw what Peter was saying in that 8^th verse,

“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”,

it deeply affected the outlook I had on my own future.

In fact, I rephrased Peter’s words to myself this way.

“If that’s true, what God is telling me is that if I focus on my character He’ll take care of my career.”

If I would be willing to keep my conscious life goal on His reshaping process in me,

getting to know Him better and becoming a partaker of the divine nature,

He would guarantee that my life would be as useful and productive as it could possibly be -

that He would personally bring about

whatever results He wanted to bring about.

And for the past 40 years

mostly what I’ve wanted to do

is to correctly understand the true nature of the grace of God,

and what it really means to live with God on the basis of faith in Christ.

In other words,

rather than trying to figure out how to be “successful”

I’ve chosen to focus on how to simply be the person He wants me to be.

Though most of you don’t realize it,

those choices on my part

have had a significant impact on us as a church.

I very much want to be faithful in my role as your teacher here,

but I never have had any real “success” goals for us as a church.

I’m far more concerned about whether we are faithful with whatever role God has assigned to us here in our community

than I am concerned about whether we are successful.

But now at this point, as I look back,

I can appreciate as never before

how absolutely faithful my Lord has been

in keeping that promise He made to me through Peter.

2PE 1:8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Certainly there was a time earlier in my life

when I assumed that effectiveness and fulfillment in my Christian walk

could be measured by how many, how big, how much...

I assumed that being useful and fruitful

had something to do with size and numbers.

But I could not have been more wrong.

For you see, when I finally stopped listening to cultural voices around me,

and started listening very, very carefully to the voice of my Lord Jesus Christ,

and when I heard Him telling me that my highest calling in life

was that of learning how to love those around me,

and then when I realized that love could only happen one person at a time

both my life and my calling and purpose here and now began to make sense.

And once I finally understood this -

that the highest calling in my life

is learning how to love one person at a time,

I started looking for those individuals He had for me to love - one person at a time.

And as I have accepted that calling

the satisfaction and fulfillment I have found in life

has been above and beyond anything I could ever have hoped for.

And with each person He brings

that process of loving takes on its own unique form and shape.

About two years ago

I received an e-mail from a 19 year old young man who didn’t even know my name.

He had a friend who knew me

and who had given him my e-mail address.

His friend had told him I was somebody safe,

somebody who might be able to help.

In that e-mail he said in part,

“I feel that I am gay ...I am a Christian and I believe in Jesus Christ, but am completely conflicted as to what effect my orientation has on my faith. ...So ANY assistance, insight, ideas, or random thoughts you may have would be so much appreciated. I can’t live like this much longer...”

That note began a correspondence between the two of us

that continued, at times on a daily basis, for most of the next year.

There was one point in our correspondence

when, by his own admission, he became so afraid of some of the ideas we were exchanging

that he broke off all communications with me.

But in the end the changes that took place in his life

have been one of the most remarkable redemptive works of God I’ve ever seen personally.

For me that extended correspondence

was simply part of my calling as God’s child

to love the people He gives me

one person at a time.

Just recently, as the result of what has, for me, been a surprising and unexpected turn of events,

that entire series of correspondence

has ended up in the hands of several Christian book publishers

who are giving some consideration to publishing them.

And I know exactly how our minds work.

When we hear that news

our minds automatically think, “Oh, yes well obviously THAT’s what God was doing -

that was His big plan, His purpose for this whole thing.”

In other words,

we tend to believe that we can justify our actions

on the basis of the results.

If the results make sense to us

then the actions are justified.

Folks, that isn’t the way it works,

and if we ever start making our decisions about love

on the basis of expected results

we’re not really loving,

we’re simply playing one more religious game.

The truth is, I now believe the possibility of those letters ever being published is remote,

but even if they are it changes nothing,

and it certainly isn’t a justification for my love choices toward that young man.

Let me put it this way -

if we ever love on the basis of expectations -

expectations of how the other person will respond,

or expectations of how they will change,

or expectations of what God will do with our actions and choices,

then it is not love,

it’s simply a bargaining tool we use to get what we want.

The kind of love God calls us to

has no expectations,

and to be honest, much of the time we never see the results we hope for.

But it doesn’t matter

because that isn’t why we love.

We love because our God has called us to love,

because it is in every way the highest expression of His life in and through us,

and whatever He chooses to do with that love is none of our business,

it’s completely up to Him.

And we also love

because He has told us

that, no matter what results we may or may not see,

our fulfillment of that calling

is the only thing that truly has the ability

to give us both an absolute assurance

and an abiding sense that our lives are both useful and productive in the Kingdom of God.