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  PRAYING TO GROW IN GRACE
  by Geoff Thomas
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of growing in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It highlights the
need to progress in graciousness, knowledge of the Bible,
conscientiousness, victory over besetting sins, and evangelistic
earnestness. The speaker urges the audience to prioritize spiritual
growth, actively feed their souls with God's Word, and diligently seek
opportunities for spiritual nourishment and maturity.

Topics: "Spiritual Growth", "Knowledge of Christ"
Scripture References: 2 Peter 3:18, Matthew 22:39, Romans 12:2, 1 Timothy 4:15, Galatians 6:1, Ephesians 6:14, 2 Timothy 2:15, Hebrews 5:14, 1 Corinthians 9:24, 1 Peter 3:15

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of growing in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It highlights the need to
progress in graciousness, knowledge of the Bible, conscientiousness,
victory over besetting sins, and evangelistic earnestness. The speaker
urges the audience to prioritize spiritual growth, actively feed their
souls with God's Word, and diligently seek opportunities for spiritual
nourishment and maturity.

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CONTENT
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But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
to Him be glory both now and forever. Amen. Second Peter chapter 3 and
the last verse, verse 18.

Now one of the great goals of this conference is expressed by Peter in
these words, that we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ. Many benefits come from conference, the renewal of
friendships, and moments of inspiration from speakers, and meeting
someone special perhaps. But unless we grow from our time here, grow in
graciousness, grow in our knowledge of the Savior, then there will be a
major failure in our gathering together.

Some of you know Don Whitney's helpful little book, Praying Scripture.
And we gather to pray this Scripture. Lord help me to grow in
graciousness.

Lord help me to grow in knowledge of the Savior. And who needs to pray
that? Well, the baby Christians here. They need to pray it.

And then the man who is the most holy and most mature and has followed
the Lord for many years, he needs to still pray this prayer. So what are
we asking when we are asking that we may grow in grace and in the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well firstly, we are asking for a
genuine, progressive concern for the needs of others. Second commandment
after to love God with all our hearts is to love our neighbor as
ourselves.

And that's the impact that we are to make on one another, a real concern
for other people. How is it with you? Do we know where the members of
the congregation are? Do we know where there are doubts? Do we know
where people are close to giving up? Do we know where the troubles and
the problems are? And you'll say, well, the elders know. Well, perhaps
they do.

But perhaps with some people, you know more. I'm not talking about
inquisitive prying into the lives of other people, but I'm speaking
about a concern for them. Do they have some fear? Do they have some
worry? How can I help them? And so that's going to be our lives from now
on.

We're going to be corns of wheat that fall into the ground and die, or
we'll abide alone. We're going to be concerned that there'll be fruit in
the lives of others and fruit in our own lives. The Savior then, He
didn't come to be served, but He came to serve.

And so He calls us also that we're better servants of one another, more
concerned, more aware of the needs. And how is it with you? How is it at
mealtimes? Do you look to see if everyone's got what they want and
you're concerned about them? You just don't look at the food in front of
you? And the nicer seats, are you anxious to help other people? When you
drive a car, do you let other people come in? And when there are family
choices, do you ask your wife, well, what do you want to do? Do you ask
children what their concerns are? It's a very sad life if it's just
centered on you, an egotistical life. And so growing in grace, growing
in graciousness, then shows itself in a progressive concern for the
needs of others.

That's the first thing that we're praying for. And the second thing we
are praying for is that we are growing in knowledge of the Gospel, of
the Christian faith, and growing especially in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ. A literal mental grasp with our minds of the teaching of
Holy Scripture.

It may seem to you very elementary and very basic. But the first thing
that a believer puts on is the girdle of truth. And the first thing that
he must attend to in terms of spiritual knowledge and spiritual growth
is familiarity with the truth, with the teaching of Scripture, with a
system of Christian doctrine.

And it's all very well for us to speak of the perils of a dead
orthodoxy, and I guess it's a real peril. There are people and their
concern is not interest in the great foundational doctrines, but they're
interested in the conundrum of theology. And let's avoid that.

And there are other people, and they're only interested in the doctrines
that have given rise to controversies amongst Christians. Doctrines that
men fight about. Doctrines that men disagree with.

And let's mortify that spirit too. But we are bound as Christians to
make conscience of growing in our grasp of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and so on to Revelation and to that life of Adam and Noah and
Abraham and the patriarchs and Moses and the deliverance from Egypt and
then the time of the entry and Joshua and Judges and Samuel and the rise
of Saul and the rise of David and Solomon and the great division that
took place under him and then the destruction of the northern kingdom
Israel and then the temporary Babylonian captivity of Judah and their
return and the coming of Christ as promised. And we ought to know those
things and know the letters.

And so when the Jehovah's Witness comes to your house and you say, do
you know the Bible? Yes. Well, what? You say to him. What is the main
theme of the letter to the Romans? And that's a good question to ask him
because he won't know.

He'll know his stuff, but he won't know a question as important. Well,
Ephesians is shorter. You say six chapters.

Tell me, what is the main teaching of Ephesians? And then he'll get a
bit frustrated and angry with you. Well, now, come back and let me know
because you're driving him to the Word, aren't you? To read the Word.
And that is the only chance of him changing.

And so I'm saying to you, we have to soak ourselves in the Word.
Marinate ourselves in the Word of God. Because if we're going to ask
then a Jehovah's Witness to tell us what the main theme of Romans is,
we'd better know it ourselves.

We'd better know it ourselves. So we ought to know about the Person of
Christ, His deity, His humanity, His incarnation, His states as
preexistent, humiliated, exalted, about His offices as prophet, priest,
and king. We ought to know the great doctrines of God's sovereignty, of
justification by grace through faith, of adoption, of union with Christ,
of sanctification.

These teachings are not simply for theologians, but they are the stuff
of believing meditation. They are the stuff of doxology. The great hymns
are about those themes.

And if we're to be growing Christians, we are to be growing
intellectually. We are to be growing theologically. We are to grow in
our grasp of them.

And we are to grow in the emotional impact that they make upon our
lives. That the Word of God lives in us. Because the Psalms begin by a
man, his delight was in the law of the Lord.

And in that law, he meditated day and night. Thirdly, if we are praying
this prayer that we might grow in graciousness, in grace, we are praying
that we might progress in conscientiousness. That is, in responsiveness
and obedience to our own consciences.

Because God has placed that monitor in our minds. And it reproves us
when we do wrong, and it encourages us when we do right. Well, how is it
with your conscience and you tonight? How are things between you and
that monitor, that voice of God? You know, there are many consciences,
and in Thomas Boston's words, they are too pernickety.

They condemn what God's Word doesn't condemn. And we must educate that
conscience. Does the Bible condemn blood transfusions, for example? And
there are other consciences, and they let anything pass.

They let pass what God's Word condemns. They are less sensitive than
they should be. They are much too broad, much too open.

So we must always bring our conscience under the light of the Word of
God. You know, the Puritan illustration then of the sundial. And the
sundial will work if it's at the right angle and in regards to the light
of the sun.

But on a bright moon like night, you can go out to your garden and you
can look at a sundial, and there'll be a shadow, a moon shadow. And it
will give you the totally wrong reading because it's not a moondial.
It's a sundial.

And so there is the conscience of the cannibal. And there is the
conscience of the abortionist. And they are not living in accord with
the Word of God who created the conscience, gives to us.

Now, let's suppose that you have an enlightened conscience. Let's
suppose that you have the full light of God's Word on your conscience
then. Are you carefully obeying it when you are emotionally disinclined?
When you're lying on the floor in despondency and sulking and unhappy
because your worst fears have been realized? When you're in the depth of
depression and self-pity, and there's a duty that you have to attend to?
It's a duty.

It's very unpleasant. It's very demanding. Do you do what your
conscience tells you that you should do? Do you have the maturity to
stand on your emotions and reject them in the face of their reluctance
and aversion to attend what God commends us? There's no greater peril in
the Christian life than to make our emotions the touchstone of our
duties.

And time and again, we have to pick ourselves up off the floor of
discouragement and say, I have a duty, and I know this is right, and I'm
going to do it. Or again, let me ask you, are you conscientious about
small things? Because there, most of all, Christians are tested. We
don't have huge sacrifices to make, but every day, there are many little
duties that you know has to be done.

And we have to pay careful attention to matters of detail because our
Lord, He commends people who are faithful in little things. And so
often, we are losing the battle in little things. It might seem to you
not a big issue to be in prayer meeting on a Wednesday night there.

It might not seem a big issue to be in Sunday nights at church. A small
thing. It might seem just a little thing to ignore writing a letter to
someone to say thanks for all your kindness to me.

Certain things. But we must make conscience then. If we are going to
grow in graciousness, our conscience, we respect it.

Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. And then fourthly, we must make
conscience, we must make progress in victory over besetting sins. That's
a great reality in the Christian life.

That there's some sin and you know it's a problem for you, isn't it? And
you know you're not going to grow unless you deal with that particular
sin. It's perfectly possible to be normal in every part of the Christian
life there in your emotions and affections and will and so on.
Everything seems to be in order except at one point.

You're in the grip of one temptation. You are dominated by one lust. You
are entangled in the meshes of one particular sin.

And you see it in the world around you. It's called monomania. One man
in every area, 99 out of the 100 areas of his life, he's straight down
the line.

But there's one area of his life where he's warped and he's grasped by
one sin. And we say, well, it may be mysterious that I'm not growing as
I should be as a Christian. Is it so mysterious? Is the reason why I'm
not growing as I should be because my spiritual life is diseased in one
area? And unless it's dealt with, it's going to, just like a bug, a
virus, just in one part of you and it affects the rest of you.

You're weak and listless and so on. You must deal with that besetting
sin. Worldliness, prayerlessness, irritability, impatience,
aggressiveness, what have you.

So, those are four. Oh, and then one more point in which when we are
praying for growing in grace, we are praying that we should grow in
evangelistic earnestness. Now, you know, when you first knew the Lord,
you see it in the young convert.

It's lovely to see him, how bold he is. You tremble at times because
he'll blurt out things that he might have said rather more sweetly, but
he just sees the world's need and he sees Christ as the great Savior.
And he speaks a word in and out of season.

And the mature amongst us, we smile and we may sneer even because much
of it was immature. The witness was unwise and indiscreet and
ineffectual, but that does not justify the fact that many Christians as
they grow older, they grow more reticent and quieter and share their
faith less and less. The vision of the world's lostness disappears.

And that's a maturity that our churches need to do without. It's
expected sometimes. It's only the young people who go out on missions
and work and go to Mexico for a week and so on.

And they haven't the equipment. They haven't the wisdom. They're great
helpers, but they're not great leaders.

So as we've been coming now, we've been Christians many years, how is it
with you and your evangelistic concern? Are you prepared to get involved
in every true evangelistic cause? Are you prepared to support it and
pray and give and cooperate? I know there's a lot of misplaced
evangelism. I give statistics for evangelistic failure and you know all
that. And that won't help us at all.

We must stand back from simply criticizing. And we have to be involved
in every form of biblical evangelism. We have to do that.

And it's a sad thing for any Christian if that vision is gone. So, I'm
saying those are the sorts of things that we are praying for when we
hear the exhortation, the last words of Peter, but grow in grace. Grow
in graciousness.

And we're talking about making progress and being concerned for other
people. And growing in our knowledge of the Bible and what the Bible
teaches. And growing in conscientiousness.

And growing in victory over besetting sins. And growing in evangelistic
earnestness. And then very briefly as a postscript, how is this to be
achieved? How are we as Christians going to grow? And the first answer
is that it must be a priority in our lives.

These are Peter's last words, aren't they? Think of the life he lived.
He preached at Pentecost and 3,000 were converted. Did you think he
would sort of float along in the glow of that for the rest of his life?
But he doesn't.

He's here and there. He's going to Cornelius' household. And he's
traveling and he's speaking everywhere.

And his last words to people are, grow now. Grow in the grace and
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the greatest thing in our
lives.

There's nothing more important for us. What's more important than this
then? In the midst of all the other engagements and preoccupations and
concerns, a Christian's relationship with God controls his life. It's
what his life is built around.

And his greatest longing is to be more fit for the Master's use. This
one thing I do, one thing, the apostles, every single eye Jesus speaks
about. And I look at my own life and I wonder as the years have gone by,
have I changed that scale of values and my sense of priorities? I know
it's easy to react against extreme religionism.

A person just talks about religion and isn't interested in anything
else. That's unbiblical too because in the Bible, they talk about all
that's in God's creation. But there's a far greater peril than that sort
of extreme.

And that's a reduction of religious aspiration, of religious vision, of
a relegation of my relationship to Christ to not be the first thing, the
greatest thing in my life. And at times I think it's happened to me and
it's happened to other people. That things that should be primary have
become secondary in my priorities.

And I think as I look at my old church and evangelicalism as I meet it,
I see slackness and sloppiness coming into so many areas. You know,
church life. For to me, to live is Christ.

That's what He says, isn't it? So if our chief end in life is not that,
we are facing the most appalling and unhappy futures. And then secondly,
it must be a priority. Secondly, our religious lives are not going to
take care of themselves.

We can't simply expect our soul to nourish and fend for itself, to
provide for itself. You have to see for it. I have all the weight of an
apostle's command to say you have to grow.

You have to make sure you are growing. And that applies to every form of
life. And we are concerned for our plants.

We give our tea to our neighbor and we say I'm going to Florida now for
two weeks. Can you feed the plants? When I'm away, we're concerned about
the bushes and the flowers. We're concerned about our animals, how
they'll be fed.

And our minds and our intellects, what stuff we are feeding our minds
with. Because they won't look after themselves. And so our souls.

Our souls won't look after themselves. We have to feed our souls.
There's a program of provision for them.

Peter speaks in the 17th verse about being led away with the error of
the wicked. And we all know people who've been led away because they
didn't look after their own souls. There are people, and Paul tells
Timothy about it, they have a form of godliness.

And they go to church and so on. But it's just a form. It's formalistic.

That's it. There's nothing under it. Nothing beneath it at all.

So let's be so careful about this. You know, not to prove I'm not a
Puritan. Not to prove to people that I'm not narrow-minded.

That I believe in Christian liberty and the freedom of conscience. And
to show people that I know about politics and I can speak about all
these things. I wonder if some of the energy that we pour into that can
be poured into my relationship with Jesus Christ.

And that I'm growing. I'm growing in my knowledge of Him, my Savior. And
I'm feeding my soul.

So, how do we do this? Well, it must be a priority in our lives. And
then we must be aware that we've got a duty to feed our souls that they
won't look after themselves. And then Peter tells us in this 14th verse,
to make every effort.

To be diligent, he says. Be diligent. And in what direction? Well,
you've got to seek food for your souls.

But you've got to get away to a conference. Travel a long distance to be
here. Drive 15 hours.

Drive through the night just to be here. And search for things that can
nourish you and build up your knowledge and your graciousness. You don't
want to be unfruitful and static.

But there's a dynamism and a maturing and a beauty and a fragrance and a
loveliness about your life. You're seeking for truths that will do that,
that will produce love and joy and peace and long-suffering and
gentleness and goodness and faithfulness and meekness and self-control.
You've got to fall in love with the Bible.

You've got to search it. You've got to ransack it. You've got to sit
under the best ministry you can on a Sunday.

You've got to read the best books. You've got to sit and listen to older
Christians as they talk together and they reminisce about how God has
dealt with them over the years and learn from them the mysterious
influence that one Christian can have over another. You seek good
fellowship with other Christians.

And your hunger and your truth, you want the Word of God to come not in
Word only, but power and the Holy Spirit and much assurance. Fall in
love. Meditate upon Scripture and pray in Scripture.

So you read a verse like this, but grow in the grace and knowledge of
our Lord and Savior. And you say, Lord, me too, I want to grow. I want
to grow.

This week, I've got a special time here, special privileges. Have me to
grow in the grace and knowledge of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Because your
souls won't grow without food.

And there's no food for the soul like the Word of God. There's no place
to be better than before the face of Jesus Christ. You need that.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we've heard these searching
exhortations, and so now we just roll them out before Thee. Oh, we wish
we were much stronger and maturer and wiser and more loving and more
patient and gentle and long-suffering.

Oh, we wish there was more purity and love for what is good and holy.
Oh, Lord, give us a nudge. Give us a little push.

A big push this week. Oh, speak to us, humble us, encourage us in the
Christian life this week that as a result of being in the conference,
we'll grow in the grace and knowledge of our Savior, Jesus Christ, to
whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/XWGME01R8h8.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/geoff-thomas/praying-to-grow-in-grace/
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