Growing Spiritually: Action, Authenticity, and Accountability

1) "You know, sometimes we can be a Christian for a very long time, but guess what? We can fail to grow up. We might grow old without growing up. And that would just be an, that would be an absolute shame. So James, the brother of Jesus, as he's writing the book of James, one of his things that he's calling us to do is to grow up. So today we're going to look at how do we grow up? What's the process? How do we grow up? And in looking at that, we're going to talk about three aspects of growing up that help us reach spiritual maturity. One of the aspects is going to be accepting God's word. The next is going to be to act on the word of God. And the third is going to be to authenticate the word of God." [39:03] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "The mouth says the overflow of the heart. What's going on in the heart normally comes out the mouth. Oh, no, no, that's not really true. Yes, it is. If there's deception in your heart, the deception will come out of your mouth. There's lies in your heart. The lies will come out of your mouth. There's anger in your heart. The anger's going to come out of your mouth. And he starts this with, with being what? Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angered. And he goes, and now he's going to tell you why. He says, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God." [43:28] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "Meekness is power under control. You have all that power that you need, but how are you using it? When we receive this from the Lord, we've got to understand that we don't see the whole picture. God is explaining to us through his word and through the Holy Spirit that we've had. When James is talking about brothers, he's talking about brothers who believe. The second someone believes, they have the Holy Spirit within them. And the Holy Spirit and God's word within us equips us to live and act different. So we need to receive that word with all meekness. And it's this implanted word that we've got from the Holy Spirit, from God's word, which is able to save your soul." [47:18] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "We grow up by acting on the word of God. Not just hearing it, but acting on it. We grow up. I don't know if you guys ever saw this or not, ever experienced this, but have you ever been to a grocery store where you see this little kid and they're throwing an absolute temper tantrum? Tell me you've never seen it at a grocery store, right? All of us have seen it. We've either seen it or we were their parent and that was our kid, right? And we're like, ah. And have you ever thought, when you see this kid acting crazy, have you ever thought, well, somebody just spanked that kid, you know? But what's going on? That kid is throwing a whole temper tantrum. We want to look at that kid and say, what? Grow up. We want that kid to act like an adult. Act older." [53:53] (48 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "When you don't live out what you see in God's word, guess what happens? You're getting the small side of the brownie. You're getting cheated. You're cheating yourself. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and is not a doer, what's he like? I love that he uses a man, not a woman here. You guys are going to notice that, right? He is like a man who looks intently at his face in the mirror, right? Because if it was a woman, it would be different, right? Because women like take a little bit more time. But a man, what does he do? He intently looks at his face in the mirror and goes away and at once forgot what he looked like." [56:14] (38 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "If we don't grab on to God's word and this perfect law and live it out, what happens is we become old, but we don't grow up. We don't grow up. This is something that's really neat too. He goes, and he will be blessed in his doings. Do you see there's a blessing? There's a blessing attached to as we obey God's word. Don't you want that blessing? I know for me, I want that blessing. I want every blessing that's available to me. Let me give a for instance of this. The Bible says more blessed to give than receive. The Bible says that when we give to the Lord, what does he do? He repays back to us fold after fold after fold. Man, I've experienced that and seen that in my life." [59:11] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "How do we authenticate by God's word? When your conduct and your character come from God's word, that's how we authenticate. It's real when your conduct and your character come from God's word. It's one thing if you get up here on Sunday morning and Don, you talk a lot, but if you don't act like it, it means nothing. My conduct and my words have got to go together. And they've got to be based off from God's word. How do we authenticate by God's word? When you choose ownership, not blaming. Over and over and over, James is telling them, do this, do this, do this. Go to the widows, go to the orphans. What happens when you spend the whole time blaming everybody else for where you're at? There's no authentication in that. You're pretending." [01:06:26] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "We grow up by living out these three aspects of spiritual maturity. One, by accepting God's word. Two, by acting on God's word. And three, by being authenticated by God's word. Jesus says to John the Baptist, he says, I am living out who I said I was. He says to John the Baptist, guess what? I have said that I'm going to love people. Watch me authenticate it as I go to the cross and die on your behalf. If someone says that they love you and they're willing to die for you, that's real. If someone says that they love you and they're not willing to die for you, maybe that's not love. Maybe that's infatuation, concern. Maybe that's whatever else. But Jesus authenticated his love by his actions. He lived it out." [01:09:13] (51 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)