Sermon Central
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It's Time To G.r.o.w. Up!
Contributed by Tony Searles on Apr 26, 2002 (message contributor)
Summary: This is a practical message about growth and maturity in Christ, and how to begin to grow in God.
Stand & Read - 1 Peter 2:1-3
“Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, [2] like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, [3] if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.”
“It’s Time To G.R.O.W. Up!”
Prayer…
We have heard it said to us once or twice before…
“Grow Up!”
-It hurt, but yet, we knew that it was true…
You were younger…doing what children or teens do…and some misunderstanding or “out-of-touch” adult would snarl those hurtful words at you…”GROW UP!”
-Most likely, we acted as though they didn’t apply to us…or it didn’t matter…
-Maybe we knew it was true, but yet…it is too fun to act young and foolish…
-Sometimes, when we knew that those words applied to us, we would ponder them in the quietness of our bedroom that evening…
In any event, we have been faced with this truth…that we needed to “GROW UP!”
We know that it is necessary…
We know that we must, but yet, we do our best to avoid it…the inevitable…growing up…
-It almost strikes fear into us because we know that with maturity comes responsibility and then comes the demand for results, or fruit from our lives saying that we are indeed, GROWN UP!
Well…here we are today, hearing those words again…”GROW UP”!
All coming from the Written Word of God in I Peter 2…
Yet this time it is very different than before…
Why is that?
-Because rather than an old aunt who growls that phrase at you; or a crotchety, old and angry man saying it…this time, it is GOD!!!
-These words are from the lips of the one who knows you inside and out…
-The source of these words is the Almighty and All-Powerful, LIVING God who holds the world in His hands…
And we know that when they come from His lips…they are just and true…
"For His eyes are upon the ways of a man, And He sees all his steps.”
You see…what God sees is the truth…
He sees through the façades and the pretences that we put up for others to see…
And while everyone may believe that we are GROWN UP, God sees that there is a LACK of maturity…
“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
The Word also tells us that it does see deep within us…to our core.
It is active in our lives and is a piercing tool, which CAN divide and discern the masqueraded actions of men…
It “judges” us, as it says in Hebrews…therefore, we must take heed to what it may say today to us this morning…
I believe we need to hear this because we do something with information that we do not want to hear…we do not want to listen to…or even put into action in our lives…
What do we do with that information and those cutting words???
-We disregard them…
-We discredit them…
-We make reason for “short comings” and failures…playing the blame game…
-We out-right, ignore and turn a deaf ear to the advice…
While that may be just fine when it is a mad old man yelling at you, or that irritating aunt…it is NOT good advice to take when it is God speaking to you today!
The advice that IS good to take when God speaks to you…LISTEN TO IT, and CHANGE YOUR WAYS so that they might coincide with God’s will for your life!
You see, throughout the Word of God we are instructed, “Not to be deceived”.
Why would we continually need to hear that unless, we humans in our frailty, would continually allow for things that are spoken to us, FROM GOD, to be pushed under the rug and not heeded???
-We have terrible habits of not listening to what we don’t want to hear, UNTIL we are forced to change…
Example…
Eating better…when we have a life-threatening heart attack…
Managing the money better…when we almost loose the house…
Treating our wives better…when she threatens to leave you…
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”
This comes to us to warn us to not allow for deception to jade our thinking…
Because if we were to continue on in our paths of deception, we will reap the harvest of the laboring in deception…
Don’t be deceived, because God is not mocked…what He says it true, and the fruit will be the evidence of such truth…
