Churches are primarily about spiritual growth. At the root of the Church’s reason to exist is the desire to connect spiritual people to their creator. Spiritual growth is the transformational process of people who were once far from God becoming restored. Restored first and foremost into the relationship that we were designed to enjoy with God and secondly, into the image that we were designed to exhibit. Religion is a set of man-made efforts anticipating some form of spiritual growth. Christianity has the outward appearance of religion, yet at its core it is quite the opposite. Christianity is about surrendering from human effort and submitting humbly to God and to his efforts to transform us.

There are some major milestones in spiritual growth that we celebrate. The first – and most critical – milestone is when a person makes a decision to receive God’s offer of forgiveness and becomes a follower of Jesus Christ. God changes the root issue – our separation from him because of our sinfulness. On the outside we may still exhibit most of the same traits of our old sinful selves, but on the inside the transformation has begun.

From there God uses the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of the Word of God (the Bible) and the circumstances of life to re-calibrate our priorities, our relationships, our finances, our habits – literally everything – into the image that he always intended us to have. There is an old saying that captures the idea quite aptly, “God loves us just the way we are….but too much to leave us that way!” All the religious effort in the world won’t help God to love us any greater than he already does. But obedience to his work in our lives will increase the scope of our relationship and the righteousness, peace and joy that comes along with it.

This is spiritual growth. This is what the Church is all about. As with any other social-oriented institution (hospitals, schools, etc.) we recognize the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of mankind but our key focus is spiritual growth. Like Jesus said, “Seek first his kingdom (God’s) and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

Blessings,

Pastor Danny Stebeck