The path towards maturity in Christ happens not in isolation, but alongside one another. Of all the things that we are called to as a church, this might be the highest: A place to mature in Christ together.We&apos;re going to continue the conversation we started last time and consider what needs to be in place in order for maturity to happen, along with acknowledging some of the challenges facing us that must be overcome in order to get where we are going.

Guelph Vineyard Church

Part 2: When I Grow Up I Wanna Be Like…

We are stepping back into our series about maturing in Jesus. As we started to unpack a couple of weeks ago, "maturity in Christ" doesn&apos;t = &apos;going pro&apos; as a Christian. It doesn&apos;t mean getting stodgy and stuck in our ways, either. It is an exciting, dynamic and yes, sometimes painful process of becoming precisely who God had in mind when He created us.The LORD&apos;s intentions (read: God&apos;s will) for us might sometimes be locational and/or vocational. But the much deeper application of God&apos;s will concerns you and me becoming a particular kind of person, whatever our circumstances. We&apos;re going to consider what needs to be in place in order for maturity to happen and what some of the challenges are that need to be acknowledged and overcome in order to get where we are going.

Part 1: When I Grow Up I Wanna Be Like…

It&apos;s the question travelling parents the world over dread, along with the inevitable follow up: "How much longer?" If the last year and a half have been good for anything, they&apos;ve certainly been good for begging questions. Especially these two. Well, I have good news, and also some not so welcome news for you. No, we&apos;re not there yet, not by a long shot. But it&apos;s okay. Jesus is along for the journey, and when we do arrive at the destination, we will have been transformed. We won&apos;t be different people, but rather whole-hearted, healed, fully matured versions of ourselves. And we&apos;re gonna look an awful lot like Jesus. The Bible uses a Greek word translated interchangably as "maturity" or "perfection" to describe this destination: "Telios"In fact, during His sermon on the mount, Jesus says telios is the point. Throughout the New Testament, this word gets used over and over again as the object of our followership of Jesus. Maybe it&apos;s time we talked about where the "there" in question, is.τελειοσ     Pronounciation :  tel&apos;-i-osDefinition: 1) brought to its end, finished 2) wanting nothing necessary to completeness 3) perfect 4) that which is perfect 4a) consummate human integrity and virtue 4b) of men 4b1) full grown, adult, of full age, matureτελοσ     Pronounciation:  tel&apos;-osDefinition: 1) end 1a) termination, the limit at which a thing ceases to be (always of the end of some act or state, but not of the end of a period of time) 1b) the end 1b1) the last in any succession or series 1b2) eternal 1c) that by which a thing is finished, its close, issue 1d) the end to which all things relate, the aim, purpose  

Are we there yet?

In the book of Revelation, John encounters a profound power and authority that is unrivalled elsewhere in Scripture. There are glimpses of it here and there throughout the Old Testament, but this is next level stuff. In fact, John&apos;s unrehearsed response is to fall at the feet of Jesus "as though dead". To this Jesus says, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last", echoing a curious phrase said earlier and again later in John&apos;s Revelation. "I am the Alpha and the Omega". This refers to the first letter of the Greek alphabet and the last letter. Jesus is implying many things when He uses this language, but not the least is His role in time. In the unfolding of our lives, Jesus is present. From before our first breath to our last breath and beyond, Jesus encompasses it all.  With this talk we&apos;ll close our series on the Examen prayer practice. The fifth and final movement of the Examen leads us to contemplate and prepare for what comes next. It asks us to anticipate God&apos;s movement and intentions in the future. This is critical to following Jesus. After all, without a sense of the future, we have no gospel at all. 

Future/Past

Do you know the phrase "The devil is in the details"? It feels like an old proverb (it&apos;s not) that helpfully points out that what may seem like a good idea on the surface can lose its lustre the more you descend into the specifics. They&apos;re intimidating, the details that is. They&apos;re also conveniently easy to ignore…. for a little while. But unchecked, they can wreak havoc and ruin even the best "big idea". All this is why we must invite God into the details of our actual life. Not just invite Him into the moments of our choosing… but into all of it. The wins, the losses, the catastrophes and triumphs. The Examen prayer calls these details "Desolations and Consolations". It assumes that the older and less popular expression coined by French author  Gustave Flaubert: &apos;Le bon Dieu est dans le détail&apos; trans: &apos;The Good Lord is in the detail&apos;. - is a deeper and literal truth. We&apos;re going to talk about the assumption that the Lord has something to say about every little thing (and the big stuff too).

Be specific!

Descartes said "I think therefore I am".We are fixated on what we think. Here I am, literally thinking about my thinking. But the truth is that we are emotional creatures first, we humans. It&apos;s a fact of the ways our brains work. The parts of our brain responsible for our emotions literally engage before the parts of our brain that process thought, shape intent or express language. Whether on the surface, or buried deep beneath layers of sediment, we emote our way through life constantly. Our emotions shape how we are in any given situation, regardless what we think we think about it.Thankfully, the Bible portrays a deeply emotive God. Remembering that you and I all were formed Imago Dei ("in the image of God"), and that our emotional life is a good expression of that God-likeness, this week we&apos;re going to talk about the 3rd movement of the examen prayer: Prayerfully considering what you&apos;re feeling. It&apos;s here that we hear this question posed by the Lord: "How are you?"Here&apos;s the good news: If Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and the Prophets are to be trusted, there are no wrong answers to that question.

How are you? Examining our Emotions

Who doesn&apos;t want to be more grateful? We all intrinsically know that living from a place of gratitude is a best-practice for living your best life. But how do we do that? Have you ever felt the burden of feeling like you should be more grateful in a situation that just honestly kind of sucks? Perhaps a well meaning friend gives advice about how you should see the circumstance you&apos;re struggling through, or maybe you encounter a scripture verse like this one: "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." - 1 Thessalonians 5:18, and it feels more like a gut-punch than healing ointment. Practicing gratitude is the 2nd movement of the examen prayer practice we&apos;ve been exploring lately, and we&apos;re going to take a good, honest look at the gift and burden of attempting thanksgiving in all circumstances.

The Notorious "Should" of Gratitude. Ugh.

One of the most famous stories about the prophet Elijah tells of him retreating, exhausted and afraid, into a cave for the night. There he meets God, not in the loud and the powerful events that follow but in deep quiet, with nothing more than a whisper. It kind of sounds like it&apos;s supposed to be peaceful, right? I&apos;m not so sure. Sometimes, the quiet places are the places that ask the most of us. Maybe that&apos;s why sleep can be so hard sometimes… the stillness of the night can be a playground for our fears and anxieties. Perhaps the LORD, meeting Elijah that way, is not some zen-like moment of spiritual enlightenment, but rather the LORD showing up to Elijah&apos;s most vulnerable, frightened self. Do you relate?

What's so scary about stillness?

Psalm 139 is one of the very best of the bunch. It opens with these startling, intimate and revealing words: You have searched me, Lord,and you know me.You know when I sit and when I rise;you perceive my thoughts from afar.You discern my going out and my lying down;you are familiar with all my ways. "How are you doing?" The Lord is so deeply interested in the answer to this question. Of course, like the psalm says, Jesus knows exactly how you are doing. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And that&apos;s part of the challenge of long seasons like the one we&apos;re in now. We can lose touch with what&apos;s really going on in our interior life. I believe the Holy Spirit is asking us this question, not for His sake, but for ours. We&apos;re going to get really practical and talk about a couple of truly sustaining prayer practices that will help meaningfully answer the question that God is most certainly drawing your attention to. How are you? 

How are you doing?

The lives of David and Abraham loom large in the Bible. In fact, we can know very little about the big story of Bible if we are not familiar with the stories of these two people. The gospel of Matthew opens with these words: "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham… " Jesus is introduced as the heir of these two great, complicated individuals who both walked in unique nearness with God and whose names became synonymous with the great promises of God to humankind.We&apos;re going to revisit the life of David. Perhaps more so than any other person in the Bible, we get to look at the interior life of David. He is certainly the defining personality of his day, and even more, his life shaped and helped to define much of the life of the Jewish people for centuries. He lived large. He won big. He failed spectacularly. And he allowed us a front row seat to see it all.

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