When I was at school, I learned about two dimensional and three dimensional shapes. I always liked two dimensional shapes (squares, rectangles, circles etc.) more than their three dimensional counterparts (cubes, cuboids and spheres) because they were easier for me to visualise when I was counting corners and faces! We can be equally simplistic in our understanding of the faith, failing to appreciate complexity or to embrace mystery. When we are being childish, we tend to see everything in black and white and fail to understand there can be shades of grey (or even colours!) We want God to be predictable and tame and rebel against the fact that His judgments are unsearchable and His paths beyond tracing out! (Rom 11:33)

For us to grow, we have to accept that there are questions we are not skilled to understand (let alone answer!) If we fail to appreciate the complexity of life and treat serious problems as though they are inconsequential, the consequences will be devastating. Jeremiah warned against those ‘who dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.’ (Jer 6:14) We cannot simply count our progress on the Christian way by the number of years we have been walking on it. Have we really learned the lessons God wants us to learn or are we simply going round in circles? For us to grow, we have to recognise and understand the depth of our desire for independence and the fact that sin is deeply embedded in our natures. Christian discipleship is totally radical, involving daily dying. (Luke 9:23)

Learning to hold truth in tension with not knowing requires great skill, rather like a juggler. We have to be content at times to simply leave our questions with God and embrace the mystery.

‘When the Father long to show
The love He wanted us to know
He sent His only Son and so
Became a holy embryo.

That is the Mystery
More than you can see
Give up on your pondering
And fall down on your knees

A fiction as fantastic and wild
A mother made by her own child
A hopeless babe who cried
Was God Incarnate and man deified

Because the fall did devastate
Creator must now recreate
So to take our sin
Was made like us so we could be like him.’ (Michael Card, ‘To The Mystery’)

A worldview (in German, ‘Weltanschauung’) is how we actually view the world and what we really believe to be the way things are. It ‘refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets the world and interacts with it.’ The predominant worldview in our modern Western society is secular humanism which is antagonistic to God and refuses to take Him seriously. That means we all grow up exposed to wrong thinking whereby the selfishness which is at such odds with God’s way of living is promoted as being the proper way to live: ‘you’ve got to look after number one!’ is the mantra we hear all around us on a daily basis.

For us to grow spiritually, we have to realise that the worldview to which we have been exposed every day is false and we need to have our minds renewed so that we can learn to think God’s thoughts, to think like God thinks, and to allow the mind of Christ to dwell in us. (Rom 12:2) Far from being out of touch with reality, Christians are really people who are completely in touch with reality, because they are in touch with the God of reality. This is where the whole idea of paradox comes to the forefront, however, for how God acts in the world defies our reasoning and common sense and if we desperately try to hold on to human reasoning and common sense without ever making room for faith, we will not grow up.

In God’s kingdom, the first will be last (Matthew 19:30), the least will be the greatest (Luke 9:38), life comes through surrender and death (Mark 8:36, John 12:24-25), God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom and His weakness stronger than man’s strength. (1 Corinthians 1:25) For us to grow up, we have to accept God’s way of doing things (even if this doesn’t make any sense to us!) and respond to Him by faith. When challenged to do something God’s way (eg to forgive a hurt, or to tithe our income, or to turn the other cheek), we have, in essence, to say ‘I don’t see how this way of doing things can work, God, but if that’s what You tell me to do, that’s what I will do.’ If we decide we will do it our way and not obey God because His way seems frankly ludicrous to us, we will never grow up… and we will miss out on the miraculous at the same time, for God’s ways works precisely because He works, and He does that in ways that are marvellous to behold!

The first sign of immaturity we looked at last night is one any parent of a toddler is very familiar with! – namely, wanting our own way. This facet of our characters is, sadly, not limited to temper tantrums known as the ‘terrible twos’ (we learn to hide this more effectively than the toddler!),  for original sin runs through our veins, which means we all ultimately want our own way more than we want anyone else’s way and certainly more than we want God’s way. Maturity is a life-long process of learning to put God’s will before our own, hence the need to pray daily ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’, as Jesus taught us. (Matt 6:10) Whilst we initially begin our Christian journey with immense thankfulness for all God has done, there generally comes a stage when we are demanding and selfish, wanting God to answer our prayers exactly as we deem fit. If we are to mature beyond this phase, we need to soak ourselves in the Biblical revelation of who God is and accepting that God is wiser than we are and that He knows best. He is not only our Saviour and Friend, He is our Lord and Master (1 Cor 6:19-20) and we are commanded to no longer live as we used to live, ‘gratifying the cravings of our fleshand following its desires and thoughts.’ (Eph 2:3) Instead, we are  ‘to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.’ (Eph 4:22-24) That way, we can learn to accept God’s ways as wiser than our ways (Is 55:8-9) and understand that even when He says ‘no’ to us, it is not out of malice or a desire to harm us, but arises from His loving omniscience which sees much farther than we can!

Last night’s sermon continued the series ‘Growing Up In God’, looking at leaving childish ways behind. (1 Cor 13:11) One of the best ways we can learn maturity is to look at the opposite and learn from it! After all, there never has been any such thing as a ‘perfect church’, for churches are made up of sinful people saved by grace and this growing up is an ongoing process. Most of the New Testament was written to correct wrong thinking and wrong behaviour: Paul wrote to the Galatians because they were trying to add salvation by works to salvation by grace and he had heard that they wanted to walk by works rather than by faith. He wrote to the Corinthian church about problems they were having with people pleasers and fitting in with their culture and with sexual immorality and church discipline. He wrote to the Ephesians because they needed to get back to the basics of their first love and understand how their walk with God shaped their everyday actions. He wrote to the Thessalonians because they were getting a wrong idea about the Second Coming of the Lord and were just sitting back passively waiting for this to happen instead of understanding what they needed to be doing right now.  He wrote to the Romans about how God’s plans were worked out throughout all history for both Jews and Gentiles and also dealt with practical problems such as eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. He wrote to Timothy and Titus to help them know how to deal with problems in the church so that they could lead well. As Eugene Peterson says, “These churches were a mess and Paul wrote his letters to them to try to clear up the mess.”! (‘Practise Resurrection’ P 16)

Growing up is a process, a movement from the ‘pure spiritual milk’ we crave as newborns in Christ (1 Pet 2:2) to the solid food we need as we grow. (Heb 5:14) We will never reach the stage of maturity defined by the dictionary as ‘having reached the most advanced stage in a process’ until Christ comes (1 John 3:2) and so in some respects we are all at different stages of development. Our attitude to growth is often one of impatience and frustration: we can become impatient with ourselves and with other people. The only effective long-term solution to this attitude is love: ‘Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.’ (1 Peter 4:8) Love is like the throw over an old, stained sofa: it covers over the mistakes and problems and helps us to live in the real world, where people make mistakes and fail on a daily basis without giving up. If we are to grow up and leave childish ways behind us, we need to understand that real growth is a slow process that will always involve grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, not simply self-effort and legalistic rules.

The Sunday School had a great time tonight learning about Noah’s ark and making their own picture:

Even the helpers got rather messy!

It was worth it in the end, though!

Dave spoke this morning from Hebrews 11 and Ephesians 1:15-18, looking at the topic of who are saints. Often in our modern thinking, a saint is perceived  as one who has led a holy life, done great things for God (including miracles), suffered greatly… and who is (invariably) dead! The term is often used as ‘a posthumous reward for faithful service’, but this is certainly not the Biblical definition of the word. A saint, to the New Testament writers, is one set apart for God, one made holy by the blood of Jesus, not by their own merit, valour or faithfulness.

The term is used almost 50 times in the New Testament, first of all in Acts 9:13 and finally in Revelation 19:18. In Hebrews 11, many saints from the Old Testament are listed, but again, though these were people of faith, they were by no means perfect (the list includes Moses and David, who were murderers, Gideon who was a coward, Samson who was a womaniser and Rahab who was a prostitute!) It is not enough to consider a holy person to be one whose life is dedicated to God per se, for Saul of Tarsus is the classic example of one who was zealous for God but who persecuted the church! Only when he received the good news of Christ personally did he become a saint.

There are undoubtedly responsibilities placed on us as believers: to live our lives to glorify God and to be separated from the world, for example, but it is the presence of God within us by His Spirit which gives us the power to live this life. All of us are ‘ordinary’ in ourselves, but we become extraordinary through God’s work within us. God has chosen us to be saints before the creation of the world so that we can live holy and blameless lives (Eph 1:4) and His work in us has made us to be sons and daughters of the living God. (Gal 4:4) As we recognise our true identity in God, we can live as saints now, not waiting for a future canonisation! As the old hymn declares, ‘I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in!’