Growing the Family

"To know God deeply is to love God wholeheartedly" ~David Platt

Basically, the more we know about God, the more we know God. The more we know God, the more we love God. And the more we love God, the more we will do for God. In the end, God gets all the glory. Everything is done for Him. So as long as we have the attitude of doing whatever it is we do for Him by His strength, productivity will continue to peak. It's only when we forget the mission and our all-out devotion to Him that we become satisfied living with Him rather than living for Him. There is no room for self when you are living your life for Christ.

As one of our pastors put it this morning:

The typical Christian is like a child who receives a command from her father to clean her room. Instead of cleaning her room, she comes back to her father having memorized his command, made his words into a song, and invited her friends over to study and celebrate every bit of the command he gave, without ever really obeying it.

Being a disciple of Jesus means being a disciple-maker. If you aren't praying and looking for opportunities to grow the family of God, then you are no longer on fire for Him. You may be on fire for His good attributes and promises, but not for His ultimate glory and not for his desire and vision for your own potential in serving Him. When you love God with your words instead of your actions, you declare that there is something else that satisfies you more than Him. You declare that God's calling of service toward Him is not the highest calling there is.

It is important to remember that God does not want us to respond to his love simply by enjoying Him, but by seeking the even higher joy of serving Him and spreading His gospel to all nations. Without Christ in our lives, we were once on the road to death, and without Christ in others' lives, many are still on that road. So even though worship via music, reflection, fellowship, or memorization and study may be God glorifying and beneficial, let us never forget the urgency of the mission we have been called to on top of all that. Let us never forget that there are still billions of lives at stake and thus billions of opportunities to glorify God even more.