Spiritual Growth

It's pretty clear that anything that is growing is healthy and anything that is not growing has problems. Physically we can easily see this, but spiritually it's a bit harder to determine. One of the ways we insure that we are growing spiritually is to monitor our disciplines or what we actually do with our daily routines. At LHC we measure our spiritual growth in three phases.

We call it "C.S.I." Just like the favorite crime drama except without all the science, ha! C.S.I. stands for connecting, serving and inviting. As you read below ask yourself, "Where am I? Am I there? Am I beyond that? What step do I need to take next for my spiritual growth?"

The "C"Connecting phase:

This is where we all start our spiritual growth. We first connect with God through an open honest relationship with Jesus Christ and then we connect with other Christians in Christian community. One of the biggest blessings God has bestowed on us is the ability to meet openly on Sunday morning for a worship service. After all not all Christians are given this blessing. With that in mind let me say this, Sunday morning is not automatic. You have to apply yourself to getting something from it. Just showing up and going into auto pilot mode won't afford you spiritual growth and it will certainly not help you make meaning full connections with God or other believers.

So instead of wasting your time on Sunday morning, follow the EPA guidelines (HA, I love these puns):

• Expectation (Expect God to do something and come prepared for that)

• Participation (Church was never a spectator sport, for you to experience God you must interact)
• Application (Don't just come and go without trying out what you have experienced, what good is that???)

To continue your journey we recommend you to register for our Online community called theCity. This is the place where you can connect to a group of your interest, never be out of the loop on what is going on around the church, interact with other believers and craft your own personal spiritual growth plan.

Finally, you can register during a Sunday morning service or on theCity for the LHC LIFE Track. This is a 3 class process designed to help you get more connected, involved and participating in your spiritual growth. "Simple Church" is the class designed to help you commit to the local church and if you have not done this you need to do it. Research has shown that people that never commit to their local church end up stagnate in their walk with God.

The "S" serving phase:

This is the phase which your spiritual growth starts to accelerate. It's because when we start to serve, we directly touch the heart of God. When we start to live for someone else our hearts get closer to the ONE who served us first. And there is no better method than to get involved at least once a month in your area of giftedness. Since you are already on theCity you can easily register for the "Simply Identify" class. This reveals your abilities, giftedness and temperament and gives you recommendations on which area to serve.

The "I" Inviting phase:

What good is a journey when you are all alone? At some point it gets really boring because we were designed by God to be in relationship. Do you go to a restaurant by yourself? How about an amusement park? Of course not, if you think about the most important moments in your life someone else was there. So why not invite others along this amazing journey with Jesus?

You see the "Inviting" phase is growth because of practice. It is where you and I apply our faith. Have you ever thought of the times Jesus said, "Go?" "Go tell, go work, go in peace, go tell your husband, go and sin no more, go preach, go to the next, go into the deep, go into the street, go into the village, go make it right with your brother, go quickly." Jesus was always saying, go, go, go. That is why He would look and say, "Don't only be hearers of the Word, also be doers of the Word."

Purpose

(This one’s a bit long, but worth the time, so get some coffee and carve out 10 minutes—it will change your life!!!)

Purpose has so many benefits to a life well lived. So why do so many people seemingly live without a purpose? Well often it’s because we get caught up in life that has its own agenda and we forget to command our own ships. We let something or someone else take control and we lose sight of our purpose. It’s time to regain your purpose back, or get it locked on for the first time. So here are a few pointers that can help you spot where your purpose is. (Disclaimer: Before you start, remember a life lived for a purpose beyond ourselves first surrenders that to Jesus Christ and consistently seeks His will for His purpose to be lived out through us.)

1. It ought to start with you.

Often when we start to think about purpose our minds wanders into an abyss of grandiose dreams and visions. As wonderful as those lofty ideas are, they rarely help you spot your real purpose. They only give you a clue. So where do I look?

Well, my first advice for you is don’t look anywhere except right where you are and start right with yourself. Look first with these six key areas. (Excerpt from John Maxwell)

Talent

Basically, talent answers the question, “What can I do well?” Every one of us has talents and there are some things that we can do very well. So when you are going to discover your purpose and significance in life, start there. “What can I do well?”

Desire

What do I want to do? I learned that talent without desire will never achieve anything. You’ve got to not only be able to do it and be talented with it, but you’ve got to have a heart and a desire to do it.

Results

You say, “Pastor isn’t number one and three the same?” No. Talent is what I can do well. A result is what I do well. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you’re doing it well. I know an awful lot of talented people who aren’t getting results with their God-given talent. So just because you have talent doesn’t mean that you are going to achieve the purpose in your life. So it’s more than just what I can do, it’s what I do and do well.

Recognition

What others think I do well. When people come alongside of you, what do they talk to you about? What do they say is your strength and what you do very well? What do you do well? There are certain things that you do well that even others will come along and recognize in you.

Circumstances

That’s what I have an opportunity to do. You see, I’m convinced that most people look at their goal and purpose and they think they have to skip life to get over there to it. Take life right where it is. What’s around me? You know, the Bible says, “Whatever your hand finds to do...” What does your hand find to do? It finds what is opportunistic, what’s right there, what’s right around you. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might. Therefore, you and I have to look around and say, “Okay, what is the opportunity that is given to me at this time?”

Fulfillment

What I enjoy doing. Now, I promise you if you can work those six words into your life and into the purpose of your life, you’ll begin to have a sense of significance and you’ll begin to find yourself, so that you can begin to take the next step.

2. It ought to contain life-changing convictions.

When I’m talking about a purpose or a meaning, I’m talking about life-changing things. We all have little mundane desires that we try to fulfill in our life. But I’m talking about living for something that is life changing. Not just convictions that you can live for but convictions that you can die for.

John A. Howard who was the past president and counselor of the Rockford Institute said this: “Having spent a career trying to understand and help young people, I am convinced that the one primary cause of tragic self-destruction of so many of our youth is that they do not know the work and satisfaction of living for something larger than themselves. The human psyche cannot stand up against moral neutrality. If nothing is truly good, right, or worth striving and sacrificing for, life is meaningless and no course of action can build a sense of one’s own self-worth. Without large goals, life is barren. Without large goals, life is a burden.”

I believe those words, just like Jean Valjean in Les Miserables said, “It is nothing to die, but it’s an awful thing never to have lived.” So let me ask the question, what would you die for? Your answers may differ, but here is how I answered this question.

Four things worth dying for:

1. Faith (It’s worth living for and it’s worth dying for.)

2. Family (It’s the place you originate from, you must start here)

3. Freedom (In my limited travels overseas I know that I would rather be dead than be under the oppression of other people.)

4. A few close friends

Now I don’t know what you’d live for and I don’t know what you’d die for. But I’ll tell you this; anybody that has a purpose worth living for probably has a purpose worth dying for. Don’t be just like a sailboat tossed back and forth out there on the water. Get an anchor and get a purpose and get a direction.

3. Our purpose ought to include others.

If we are going to have a mission and really be significant, it certainly has to include others besides ourselves. Or as Albert Pine said “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. But what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

4. Our purpose should be bigger than ourselves.

We ought to be living for something much bigger than what we are. So it not only includes others, but it should also be larger than your lifetime. God wants to accomplish something greater than what can be done in a day, a month or a decade. He wants to accomplish something from generation to generation. How do we accomplish this, well its simple—day by day, that is why the Apostle Paul stated, “I die daily…” (1 Cor 15:31)

5. Our purpose ought to have eternal value to it.

In an interview of a Rose Bowl Parade worker, the interviewer asked, “ “Would you like to do this for a living all of the time?” And they said, “No, I would never want to do the rest of my life something that’s only going to last for two weeks.” There was a survey recently taken of people that are 95 years of age or older. They asked these 100 people, 95 years and older, if they could go back what would they would do differently in their life? Three things surfaced from these elderly people. If they could go back and redo their life over they said:

1) I would reflect more.

2) I would risk more.

3) I would do things that will last after I’m dead. Don’t live with any regrets.

Boy, when they said that I thought “How true.” Because of Jesus, I want to make my life count for something that has eternal value, just like the Apostle Paul.

(Philippians 3:7-9) “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…”

Friendship

So this past week I spoke on being a friend and having the right friends in your life. It’s one of your basic needs and you will either choose to have them or your circumstances will default you to whoever is around. I encouraged you to deepen your relationships with your friends through the ABC’s of friendship. “A” being acquaintances, “B” being brotherly or blood related to “C” for close or deeply committed, I’m going to give you eight things that you can apply to your life, that will help you enter the “C” relationship:

1. Be real.

No relationship can ever get to a “C” level unless there is realness to it. Yet we often live without it, like this nurse who was over in the Persian Gulf, who wrote a letter to her mother. “Mom, I’ve seen a fellow here I’d really like to get to know. But they won’t let us wear makeup so he doesn’t have any idea what I really look like.” Wow, how true! How many of us go through life with makeup, facade, coverings? How many times do we walk through life with these facades and these barriers and people really never get to know who we really are?

2. Be realistic.

In any relationship, you have to be realistic. You have to understand that there is a certain amount of public image everybody puts out in any kind of a relationship. Especially in the beginning. It’s called, “putting our best foot forward.” What happens in that relationship is that you have to understand not only do you do that, but the other person does it also.

Now, the “C” level gets to a place where we don’t always have to put the best foot forward. Now, what I want you to understand is to have a realism about your relationship. There will be times when your friend will let you down and that understanding brings the realism to an acceptable reality. There has to be realism, without it we get stuck in point 1

3. Be affirmative.

Affirm others. Remember this about people: Every person that you see has an invisible sign around their neck that says, “Make me feel important.” The moment that you begin to make others feel important about themselves, I will promise you that you will begin to develop a friendship.

4. Be available.

Relationships are built on availability. We live close enough to the ocean to realize that sharks swim in schools and so do dolphins. But we also know the difference between sharks and dolphins. When a shark is wounded, what do the other sharks do? They kill it, they attack it. When a dolphin is wounded, instead of attacking a dolphin, the dolphins gather around the hurt dolphin and nurture it and carry it until they can bring it to some place of healing or some place of safety and protect the injured dolphin from other animals. When we make ourselves available to others we gather around them, often during their time of need.

5. Be balanced in your relationship.

This I know, in this world there are a bunch of unbalanced people. Unbalanced in that they expect to get when they never give, yet for a relationship to be whole there must be give and take on both sides. A relationship can’t be all giving and a relationship can’t be all taking. There has to be a balance. So this means you have to learn the art of closeness and giving space at the same time.

6. Be growing in your relationship.

Grow your relationship. I can promise you today; any relationship that doesn’t continue to last is a relationship where one has grown and the other hasn’t. It’s almost a slam dunk guarantee. See if you don’t grow together, you grow apart. It’s that simple.

7. Be grateful.

Be grateful for your relationships. Express that gratitude. Don’t take friendships for granted folks. They are too few and too precious for you to run over your friends. Do not take them for granted. Listen, quit waiting for a crisis to express your appreciation. Cut that foolishness out. Grow up. Start expressing love now. You’ve only got today. Tomorrow is a promissory note and yesterday’s a cancelled check.

8. Be a friend of God’s.

I closed my message on Sunday with this point and gave you some tremendous words that I will repeat here: “There is a tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me. There is certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow men do not see. ...and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself... He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”

“The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11)

“And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.” (James 2:23)

Understanding

So this last week we learned that one of our deepest needs is to be understood. Often mis-understanding comes from poor communication and since we speak only 120 words a minute and can listen to 440 words in the same time, we all communicate with a deficiency. In other words we struggle to listen and stay in engaged in a conversation.

To become a better communicator one must first become a better listener. Now, there are four different styles of listening, read below and figure out which one you are.

Four different styles of listening:

1. Empathetic

This is non-judgmental, where you capture the feeling of the person and reflect it back to them, summarizing what they said and offering no advice. This is where we listen with understanding. According to my research it is stated that 22% of people use this type of communication.

What makes this type of listening so difficult is the last part, “offering no advice” I don’t know many people, including myself who listen without offering advice. We all offer advice, in fact, we often offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes we take it a step farther, we bring up the issues. It’s not easy to listen to a person and after it’s all said just love them and walk away. I mean, especially when you know you are right--geez. It’s almost a sin to withhold information, don’t you think?

2. Advice

Speaking of, this style is where you offer unsolicited advice. I feel so much more at home on this one. Sometimes a person wants only an ear, however, we may be to busy thinking of what to say rather than listening. Used by 35%.

3. Asking for information

This style uses more questions than statements. Usually that is a good method, at least for the first few minutes of a conversation, but after awhile it becomes interrogation, and that’s not conversation. Used by 26%.

4. Critic’s response

This style seeks to correct the situation. It often offers disapproval to the situation or the person involved, you listen and write them off. We all seem to do this one and it is used over 50% of the time.

I ran across this and wanted to share it because it’s so good: “To be understood, it is not as important to listen to the words of a person as to understand their feelings.” What happens is, in being understood, there is a tendency for us to take their words and begin to offer advice based on what they have said. And a person’s feelings, and what they say may be totally different.

Let me give you a tip in your listening skills. What people want to have in being understood, the first thing they want is not advice on what they are saying. What they really want is for you to look at them and say, “I understand how you feel.” They want acceptance of their feelings before they want acceptance of their words. And normally, we bypass their feelings and go straight to the words and what they are saying. When people say they want to be understood, they are basically saying, “I’m really not looking for advice. I’m not even asking for a critique on what I’ve done, as much as I’m wanting somebody to say, I understand how you feel.

So how much do you understand others?

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:14-16)

Appreciation

Our church is located in the Baltimore/Washington corridor. If you have lived for long or ever been to the east coast you will know that we are not exactly known for our appreciation of each other. Sure there is a city north of us that is called the “city of brotherly love” but there is another saying that most Philadelphians tag to that, “and they will kill ya for a quarter.”

Expressing appreciation either visually or verbally is not our strong suit. But come to think of it, I don’t believe it’s an east coast condition as much as it is a sin condition. It is a natural state for people in the human race to take others for granted, to not say “thank you”, to be ungrateful. Where does this unappreciative attitude come from. Well you might think differently but I believe it comes from a deep inner lack of healthy self-esteem.

See, if I don’t appreciate myself, how in the world will I appreciate you? We walk around life so beat up inwardly that we rarely if ever see the amazing blessings around us and express appreciation for them. So we have a self-esteem problem and we need a healing inside us that will flow outwardly.

As promised in the message I want to give you 10 methods to apply to your life to build your self-esteem. These methods are never to take the place of a desire to have Jesus change you, but they can position you for all the Holy Spirit has.

1. Learn something new every day.

If you want to build your self-esteem, keep growing. When you are growing you add to your life, when you add to your life you have something to give someone else. Learn something new every day.

2. Do something for others every day.

In other words, don’t live for your own life. Pour yourself into others. So many live there lives for themselves, that “pity poor me” attitude will actually destroy your self-esteem.

3. Don’t compete with others.

There is a difference between competition and comparing. Often we confuse the two and use good healthy competition to fuel our comparison of ourselves to others. Instead just be who you are, don’t’ try to be some else.

4. Use affirmative language.

In other words, talk positive thoughts. I learned a long time ago that you can’t think positive thoughts while you’re using negative words. So say positive things. Learn how to say good things.

5. Remove yourself from people who put you down.

If you get around these people, you know what I’m talking about, very draining people. You all know them. Do you know what it’s like to have an average day and you look up and say, “Oh God, in your sovereignty and mercy, don’t let me see so and so today?” Keep away from those people.

6. Do something every day that you do well.

Find out what you do well and do it every day. It may be minor. It doesn’t matter because you’re going to feel good about yourself every time you do something that you know you do really well. That’s why I sing every day. You didn’t buy that one either did you?

7. Concentrate on the things that you like about yourself.

Every one of us has things that we don’t like about ourselves. Well, sure, join the crowd. It’s called humanity. But concentrate on the things that you like about yourself.

8. Immediately change the things that you don’t like.

If there’s something that you don’t like about yourself, change it, if you possibly can. John Maxwell taught me that a problem is something I can do about life, and a fact of life is something I can’t do anything about. But if you can do something about it, change and leave it. You don’t have to live under that.

9. Keep a success list.

Keep a list of successes. Just list those things that you are doing well that are helping you. If somebody writes you a note, a nice card or something and it really helped you, put it away for a while and read it once in a while when you’re having a blue Monday.

10. Set clear, reachable, daily goals.

And when I say daily goals, I’m not talking about getting 37 goals out there. I’m not even talking about being goal oriented. I’m talking about every day, determine to do something that’s going to help somebody else or help yourself, regardless of what it’s going to be.

“but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)