GROWING
why growth matters, what it looks like and how it happens
“All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing…”
[Colossians 1.6]
Where there’s life there’ll be growth: at least, there will be where the life is healthy.
The message of the Bible is about life. It’s a message about God, about the living God who breathed the dust of the earth into life and who brought the dead on the earth back to life: it’s a message about who God is and how He works and what it is He promises to those who trust in Jesus. And always the theme is life.
To have Jesus is to have life – because He is Himself the way, the truth, and the life (John 14.6); or, as He’d put it earlier, because He is Himself the resurrection and the life (John 11.25).
To have Jesus, therefore, also means you’ll grow: and it’s as much to that end as any other that the Scriptures are given – that we might “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet.3.18).
*
This series of studies addresses this whole theme of growth, considering why we can expect growth and what that growth will look like, why such growth is important, how such growth will happen and what that entails for the basic patterns of church life.
Hopefully this series will provide an opportunity for us all to pause and reflect on the growth in our own lives as followers of Jesus; and at the same time it will help deepen our understanding of the God-ordained ‘structures’ within the life of the church which are geared towards cultivating such growth.
*
“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.” [Colossians 1.6]
