March 30, 2008
Growing in Christ - Grow or Waste Your Life

Steve Lane

A. Review/Spiritual Growth

I have a fear of wasting my life. How did I spend it?
Grow or waste your life.

What's going on in your life? Do what it takes. Get your eyes on the prize!

Philippians 3: 12 - 20
Philippians 4: 1
Are you pressing on toward the goal?

Philippians 1: 20 - 21
Has your core purpose changed?

2 Peter 1: 3 - 4
2 Peter 1: 10 - 11
Do you want to be useful in the Kingdom?

Maturing in our relationships is a sign and a fruit of spiritual growth.
Feeling a responsibility for others' spiritual growth...

B. God's Core Purpose, plus Prayer Equals Spiritual Growth

We get the joy of service, and He gets the glory due His Name.

John 15: 11
Isaiah 26: 8 - 9
Romans 8: 5
Philippians 3: 7 - 10
1 Samuel 2: 35
The great convergence of this prayer - our total weakness and His awesome power
We put off prayer for other important matters, and the day comes to naught - wasted.

By God's design, it is prayer that brings joy to us and glory to God.
Do not pray out of duty, but for the joy to be found there.

Matthew 9: 37 - 38
He is telling us to ask for what He already wants to do.

"When we depend upon organizations, we get what organizations can do;
When we depend upon education, we get what education can do;
When we depend on man, we get what man can do;
But, when we depend upon prayer, we get what God can do."

-A. C. Dixon
"Nothing exalts Him more than the collapse of self-reliance, which issues in passionate prayer for help"

-Piper

Psalm 50: 15
John 15: 5

A change He must wrought in us... yet, I am called to persuade you...

Do we weep over our lost neighbors, friends and family?
Ask God to break our hearts.

'Devoted to' was firmly attached to prayer in the early church.
Acts 1: 14
Acts 2: 42
Romans 12: 12
Ephesians 6: 18
Colossians 4: 2

C. Conclusion

...and we will be fulfilling the purpose for which we were made.
Philippians 3: 7 - 14