Tonight’s sermon looked at being rooted and built up in Christ, with reference to Col 2:6-15.

God wants us to start well by faith and to continue by faith. In that sense, growing up spiritually is not the same as growing up naturally, for as parents we teach our children to be independent as a necessary part of the maturing process, but we can never become independent of God. Continuing in Christ means we walk by faith continually and accept His Lordship. We are to be rooted and built up in Him. Jer 17:7-8 and Ps 1:3 remind us of a tree with good roots and the Casting Crowns’ album ‘Thrive’ has a good picture of a tree which digs deep in order to grow tall:

We have to have roots that are firmly established in who Christ is and what He has done for us; we have to be grounded and rooted in His love. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was ‘I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ (Eph 3:17-19) If we are to be able to withstand the storms and the droughts, we have to be able to rest secure and unshaken on the love of Christ. We need to have a firm foundation with deep roots – the word ‘rooted’ has connections with the idea of stability – but we need also to be growing upwards towards the light.

Being strengthened in faith means to have our faith muscles constantly developed. The amazing thing about muscles is that they have memory and as we apply the things we are taught to our everyday lives, as we take God’s Word and believe it not only for other people, or for the saints in the Bible, or the missionaries of the past, but for ourselves, for now, for our situations, we can move on to bigger things. The more we see God stretch our faith, the more thankful we become when He answers our prayers and demonstrates His reality in our lives. Overflowing with thankfulness is a key sign of maturity (see Eph 5:20, 1 Thess 5:18).

For us to grow up, we have to be aware of the pitfalls which abound. Hollow and deceptive philosophies often sound attractive and plausible, but do not provide lasting satisfaction and fulfilment. Paul reminds us that we have an enemy who wants to seduce us (2 Cor 11:3) and we can only defeat his schemes if we are secure in who Christ is and in what He has done. Col 2:9-15 vividly demonstrate Christ’s deity and the power and efficacy of all He has done on the Cross. Far from being an ignominious defeat, the Cross showed that Satan no longer has any hold on us.

When we realise that we have been given fullness in Christ – in whom all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form – our lives can be revolutionised. Our part, then, is to enter into everything that Christ has done for us so that His life in us becomes the growth medium. In Galatians 2:20, Paul says ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ This is the secret to real growth in God: it’s not our life, but Christ’s life living in us, a life lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us, a complete identification with Him brought about by the fact that ‘Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it.’ (Gal 2:20, The Message)

At the service at Cherry Tree Court this morning, Stephen spoke about what we as Christians can do to become more like Jesus? Phil 3:7-11 offers us clues. Change in our behaviour always starts with a radical new way of thinking (Rom 12:1-2); transformation of the mind is required if we are to change. If we want to be more like Christ, we have to see Him as He is and spend time with Him.

God has blessed us enormously (Eph 1:3), but we need to learn about the spiritual treasure we have in Him, which includes freedom in Christ, free access to God’s rich spiritual resources and His immeasurable love. We need to draw on all the riches available to us in Christ.

2 Cor 5:17 reminds us that we are new creations in Christ. We need to be a humble, loving, pure and grace-giving people who will admit to mistakes and repent of our sins. When we discover our weaknesses, we can draw on God’s strength and power. We need both a personal relationship with God and to be part of His church if we are to keep growing. Other things that will help us to become more like Christ include prayer, reading the Word, giving, fasting and spending time alone with Christ. We need to continually be growing and changing!

Last night the ‘Churches Together’ meeting was held at Furlong Road Methodist Church and was attended by people from a variety of local churches:

It was good to worship and pray together, as well as to find out all kinds of obscure facts about each other! For example, I discovered that Eileen likes pickled onions, Amy-Jo from the Salvation Army has read all the ‘Harry Potter’ books in English and Dutch, Debbie has been skiing and Andrea is grumpy in the mornings! Not only is it good to get to know each other in this way, Karen (the minister from Furlong Road) used this to remind us of Jesus’s Great Commission (see Matt 28:16-20).

Sometimes we feel daunted by this task and do not feel ourselves to be evangelists. All of us can, however, talk to people and have people we meet on a regular basis in a variety of settings (at school, at work, when we are shopping, when we are at the gym etc.)  These people often need a listening ear and friendship. When we allow people to talk and we listen to them, we create an atmosphere where we can later share the Gospel with them. We have to be intentional, acting as a guest in their environments, consistent, offering pastoral care (which is all about listening and caring.) When we see a need, we can then do something about it, for love in action is evangelism just as much as open-air meetings or large crusades. All of us are called to witness to Christ and this is best done in the context of personal relationships.

The next ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be on Saturday 19th July at 6 p.m.  at the Salvation Army church on Straight Lane.

John was keen that we can distinguish between truth and lies (1 John 2:18-29) and it is clear from 1 John 2:19 that the lies he was talking about (denying the Father and the Son) originated within the church. Heresy (‘belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine’) is not the same as unbelief; it is a ‘form of that faith that is held ultimately to be subversive or destructive, and thus indirectly leads to such unbelief. Unbelief is the outcome, but not the form, of heresy.’ (Alister McGrath, ‘Heresy’ P 33) Heresy is like a Trojan horse, smuggling untruth into the church, and John is keen that we are not led astray. (1 John 2:26)

Over the years, many heresies have been condemned as deviating from orthodoxy (accepted or authorised doctrines or beliefs). These (Gnosticism, Docetism, Arianism, Modalism, Pelagianism etc.) often focussed on trying to explain the nature of God. Heresies often arose because people either accepted Christ’s deity but could not accept His humanity or vice versa; some led to the idea that Christians worship three gods (a view still held by Muslims, for example.) Many of the analogies we use to explain the doctrine of the Trinity are actually heretical in some form or other! We have to be content to accept the limits of our understanding and to remain within the revelation of Scripture. A useful diagram shows us that often we cannot go beyond the obvious:

We may think that heresy is no longer relevant to us, but ‘what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’ (Eccl 1:11) We need to understand that we have an enemy who tries to outwit us (2 Cor 2:11). We can be led astray when we want to fit our beliefs into our culture rather than being transformed by God (Rom 12:1-2), when we feel marginalised and try to embrace the broad path which leads to destruction (Matt 7:13-14) or when we try to accommodate other beliefs without standing up for truth. We need to understand that God has given us all we need to live by the truth and seek to allow that truth to define us and our behaviour in every way.

Paul wrote ‘To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law.To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.‘ (1 Cor 9:21-23) The message of the Gospel never changes, but the methods we use to spread that Gospel may well have to change!

To that end, GPCC has now entered the realm of Facebook! For those of you not familiar with Facebook (which includes me!), this  a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. It can be accessed wherever there is Internet access (eg on computers,tablets,  mobile phones etc.), so is highly popular with people who clearly have a God-given need to be in communication with others! There are obviously advantages and disadvantages to this social networking site, but the aim as far as our church is concerned is simply to keep as wide an audience as possible informed about what is happening here.

So, if you are already connected to Facebook, you can view information from church via Facebook. Look us up (GPCC Facebook should find us.) You can ‘like’ this page and let your friends know about it. It’s up to you. Have fun!