Simple Church Minute 13--obedience in spiritual growth

13—obedience in spiritual growth

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            …if you try to go any further in life, you keep hitting the same old issues.  And you have to resolve that issue before you can grow anymore.

            I read these lines in a book by an author who isn’t a believer, and today I’m using them in a totally different context than he did, which is why I’m not giving the citation.*

In a believer’s life, this is a simple explanation of what growing spiritually is.  The Holy Spirit brings an issue of sin or obedience before you.  You can do things God’s way and change, or not.  If you choose not, you will find yourself stuck with regard to the Spirit while, in a different way, the same problem is brought up.  Once again, you have to choose God’s way or your own.  If you continue to refuse to repent and go God’s way on this issue, like the children of Israel in the desert, you can keep doing laps, and not get anywhere, and not be of use to God the way you could.  If you are in leadership, you’ll start getting by on what you can learn intellectually, or how you can entertain others, instead by the direction of the Holy Spirit.  You may begin to walk the road of false spirituality.  It may not show at first, or show to other persons, if one is cleaver, but it is not God’s best.  There is a secularly influenced Jewish doctrine called Divine Earthly Retribution, and many other people feel something similar.  The idea was that things are going well for a person, whether it is fame, money, or power, that person has God’s blessing, without regard to how ethical or unethical that person lives and works, without regard to how much they know it inside.  That idea wasn’t doctrinally valid in the Old Covenant, and even more so, it isn’t now for believers in the New.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, go to http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.

*When I posted this blips to the internet, it was over a year after writing it originally.  I no longer even remember who said this, now.