6 All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.
—The words of the Apostle Paul from Colossians 1:6b
“No matter what we do, no matter what we say, we will never belong!”
The frustrated words of my dear friend, Jerry, cut through the song on the radio as we drove out of the parking lot at work on our way to lunch. The nature of our jobs at the insurance company where we worked often put us on the “other side” of various issues.
As fire protection engineers, our job required us to evaluate the relative hazards at each insured property. Sometimes our assessments prevented eager underwriters from writing the insurance on a particular facility. And, for those facilities already on the books, our recommendations forced the underwriters to approach the existing insureds with some mandatory new requirements.
We had become “buzzkills” before that word even existed in the vocabulary. As a result of our profession, even within our own company, most colleagues treated us as outcasts. No one wants to become an outcast. Everyone wants to belong.
Have you ever thought about the fact that Christians—literally “Christ’s ones”—belong to an enormous group of individuals that reaches back in history nearly 2,000 years? If you identify with the Lord Jesus Christ and accept the truth that He died for you on Calvary’s cross so the shedding of His blood would pay the penalty for your sins, and if you accept the truth that His resurrection from the dead has secured your place for all eternity in heaven, then you belong to a worldwide fellowship of likeminded believers.
The question for this fellowship—and for each individual gathering of believers in a local church—derives from the Apostle Paul’s statement in the Scripture passage at the beginning of this blog post. Of the church in Colosse, Paul declares, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you...” The question: “Are you bearing fruit and growing?”
In a recent Ministry Prospectus, Fr. Eric A. Kouns, a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, wrote these prescient words:
“I firmly believe that the heart of pastoral ministry is Spiritual Formation—exhibiting, encouraging, and enabling Christlikeness in people’s lives. Moreover, and perhaps more pertinently, as a pastor at this stage of my own pilgrimage, I am committed to the idea of the church as both the agent of the Kingdom of God and as a compassionate community in which people feel loved and accepted and where they are enabled to heal and encouraged to grow.”
Herein, Fr. Kouns displays a critically important emphasis on Spiritual Formation. I submit that a key element of personal spiritual fruitfulness and growth rests in each individual’s efforts at “exhibiting, encouraging, and enabling Christlikeness.”
So, how about you? Are you taking steps to exhibit, encourage, and enable your own Christlikeness? And, what about your church? Does the gathering of believers to which you belong, and to which you give your support, exhibit, encourage, and enable Christlikeness in its members? Does your church reach out to a lost and dying world with the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ in an effective and life-transforming way?
If you spend more time talking about Jersey Shore, or whatever television program you favor, than you spend talking about the amazing things God does in your life, then perhaps you need to make an adjustment. Likewise, if your church spends more time dealing with internal issues where your pastor, or board, or members draw battle lines against other members he or she or they do not favor, perhaps your whole church needs to make an adjustment.
After all, we belong to a worldwide fellowship. We need to seek and find individual spiritual fruit. And, we need to seek and find global spiritual fruit. Both as individuals and as a worldwide body of believers, we are either “growing” or “going.” I say, “Let’s grow! Let’s bear fruit!”
Will you pray with me?
Thank you, God, for loving us. Thank you for sending Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins. Thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us along the pathway that You have laid out for us. Help us to exhibit, encourage, and enable Christlikeness in our own lives and the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. We pray in the powerful and precious Name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
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