Sermon: Growing Together
This week was our fourth week of the Recovery series. Brandon Clements led us through a sermon about Growing Together from Psalms 139:23-24. Here is a quick recap of this week’s Gathering:
As Christians, we are called to live in community. Joseph Hellerman put it this way “It is a simple but profound biblical reality that we both grow and thrive together, or we do not grow much at all.” Community is one of the chief ways God searches our hearts and exposes our sin.
4 Ways to Grow Together
1. Start with a gospel-driven self-suspicion.
In 1 Timothy 1:15, Paul tells us that he sees himself as the foremost sinner in the world. He knows the gospel means we are more wicked than we’ll ever know, but more loved than we’ll ever imagine. Gospel-driven self-suspicion is a gift that will contribute to your joy. There’s a whole lot of freedom that comes with not having to be defensive or right all the time.
2. Expose the full truth about yourself to Christian community.
God has designed our souls in such a way that we find vitality, relief, and healing through bearing our souls to others. James 5:16 tells us that there is a direct connection between confession and healing. Being in the light with community is a necessary part of going to war on our sin issues and pursuing healing from our scars.
3. Love people enough to tell them the truth.
We all have blind spots that are difficult for us to see in ourselves. We are often deceived and tricked. To combat this, we want to grow into a community that can lovingly speak into the things we see in each other’s lives. We want to love people enough to call out their sin.
4. Ask for input (and receive it with gospel-motivated humility)
In our culture it is very difficult for others to call us out in our sin, especially in the South. So in order to help foster community, we want to invite people in and ask for their input. When you combine the humility of one person who can’t see themselves clearly and the willingness to speak truth in love by another Christian--that’s the church and it’s beautiful.
Songs
Lord I need You by Chris Tomlin
Fix My Eyes by Kings Kaleidoscope
Rock of Ages by Chris Rice
All I Have Is Christ by Sovereign Grace Music