Further, Part 1

This is a series about your story. But it’s impossible to tell your story without the context of the larger story of God. So, no matter who you are or where you are in your faith journey, the invitation to all of us is to come further up and further in to experience life with God.

This is Our God
Phil Wickham

Rest on Us
Maverick City Music

Good Plans
Red Rocks Worship

Way Maker
Leeland

Jo Frost
“Man is a teller of tales. We tell our lives as if they are a story and we live our lives as if we are in one…[But] The smaller the story, the less capable it is of holding the weight of a whole human life…,there is a bigger story and there is a better story that we are invited to participate in–it is rich, deep, complex and we need that whole story to make sense of our lives. …if we can find ourselves within that story, then we can start to glimpse what it means to be truly human.”

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Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

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Psalm 8:1-9
Lord, our Master, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Whose splendor was told over the heavens from the mouth of babes and sucklings You founded strength on account of your foes to put an end to enemy and avenger when I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars you fixed firm, what is man that you should note him, and the human creature, that you pay him heed, and you make him little less than the gods, with glory and grandeur You crown him? You make him rule over the work of Your hands. All things you set under his feet. Sheep and oxen all together, and also the beasts of the field, birds of the heavens and fish of the sea what moves on the paths of the seas. Lord, our Master, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

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John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God…

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John 1:3-5
…life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…

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John 1:9
The true light, which gives light to every human being, was coming into the world…

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John 1:14
And the Word became flesh, and lived among us. We gazed upon his glory, glory like that of the Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

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John 12:23-24
‘The time has come,’ said Jesus in reply, ‘This is the moment for the son of man to be glorified.’ I’m telling you the solemn truth: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains all by itself. If it dies, though, it will produce lots of fruit…

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John 12:27-28
‘Now my heart is troubled,’ Jesus went on. ‘What am I going to say? Father, save me from this moment? No! It was because of this that I came to this moment. Father, glorify your name!’ – “I have glorified it,’ came a voice from heaven, ‘and I will glorify it again.’

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John 12:29
“That was thunder!” Said the crowd, standing there listening. ‘No’ said others. ‘It was an angel, talking to him.”

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John 12:30
‘That voice came for your sake, not mine,’ replied Jesus. ‘Now comes the judgment of this world! Now this world’s ruler is going to be thrown out!

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John 12:32
“And when I’ve been lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. He said this in order to point to the kind of death he was going to die.”

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Ephesians 1:3-12
Let us bless God, the father of our Lord Jesus, the king! He has blessed us in the king with every spirit-inspired blessing in the heavenly realm. He chose us in him before the world was made, so as to be holy and irreproachable before him in love. He foreordained us for himself, to be adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus the king. That’s how he wanted it, and that’s what gave him delight, so that the glory of his grace, the grace he poured on us in his beloved one, might receive its due praise. In the king, and through his blood, we have deliverance—that is, our sins have been forgiven—through the wealth of his grace which he lavished on us. Yes, with all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the secret of his purpose, just as he wanted it to be and set it forward in him as a blueprint for when the time was ripe. His plan was to sum up the whole cosmos in the king—yes, everything in heaven and on earth, in him. In him we have received the inheritance! We were foreordained to this, according to the intention of the one who does all things in accordance with the counsel of his purpose. This was so that we, we who first hoped in the king, might live for the praise of his glory.

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Ephesians 1:13-14
In him you too, who heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed it—in him you were marked out with the spirit of promise, the Holy One. The spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance, until the time when the people who are God’s special possession are finally reclaimed and freed. This, too, is for the praise of his glory.

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1. Stage Theory is not in the Bible.

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1 Peter 2:2
“Like newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk, the real stuff, not watered down. That is what will make you grow up to salvation.”

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Hebrews 5:12-14
“Yes: by now you really should have become teachers, but you need someone to teach you the basic elementary beginnings of God’s oracles. You need milk, not solid food! Everyone who drinks milk, you see, is unskilled in the word of God’s justice; such people are just babies. Mature people need solid food–and by ‘mature’ I mean people whose faculties have been trained, by practice, to distinguish good from evil.”

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2. Stage Theory is not a formula.

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3. Stage Theory is not linear.

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The Critical Journey Stages
Stage 1 – Recognition of God
Stage 2 – Beginning Discipleship
Stage 3 – The Productive Life
Stage 4 – The Journey Inward;
Stage 5 – The Journey Outward
Stage 6 – The Life of Love.

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All of life counts.

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Dallas Willard
“God is not interested in something called your spiritual life. He’s interested in your life. And the thing God gets out of your life is the person you become.”

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Formation takes a lifetime.

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Robert Mulholland
“Spiritual formation is not an option! The inescapable conclusion is that life itself is a process of spiritual development. the only choice we have is whether that growth moves us toward wholeness in Christ or toward an increasingly dehumanized and destructive mode of being…The Christian journey is an intentional and continual commitment to a lifelong process of growth toward wholeness in Christ…it is for this purpose that God is present and active in every moment of our lives.”

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