GROW

What would you strive for if you knew that you could accomplish it? As a fan of icebreaker questions, I put that question in my top ten.  

What if I told you that you could be like God? Not how the first humans sinned in the garden, but in a way that your character could become increasingly like God’s.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

All of these are lists and characteristics of the person who is becoming more like God.  And you don’t have to do it on your own.  Ephesians 4 teaches us that God himself, by His Spirit inside of us, is at work already to form our lives to the character of God.  

What is left for us to do?  We have to put off the part of us that God knows he wants us to leave behind. That habit, that attachment, that addiction, that resentment, that fear, that obsession. It is a bad habit that is only a distraction for a moment, but that is only one part of it.  We fail to recognize that every sin produces not just guilt but also corruption.  Sin’s corruption forms us in its image rather than the image of God.  As a church, we are here to help one another take off our old self and the endless layers of corrupted identity and to put on the new self, which is like God in true righteousness and holiness.  

You can do this.  As a part of Give–Serve–Grow, what is one thing you want to put off in your life?  What aspects of your new self are you ready to put on?  

"You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
- Ephesians 4:22-24