by Pastor Patrick Cho
I’m so thankful for a good start to the New Year! Midweek Bible studies are back in session, Sunday School classes are meeting up again, and Sunday worship services are continuing as always. It was particularly good to begin the first weekend of the year by celebrating communion together with the church body and being reminded of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The New Year always brings a sense of excitement. Some take the moment to think back on their blessings and lessons learned from the previous year. Others look forward to new opportunities for self-improvement and growth. However you treat the New Year, as believers in Christ we ought to consider how we might continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 3:18).
Some of you will endeavor to read God’s Word this year. This is such a helpful commitment for spiritual growth. You cannot overemphasize the importance of being in God’s Word regularly to learn about Him and understand His ways. I hear people say all the time that they are not good at reading, but growth apart from God’s Word simply doesn’t happen. If you are not a good reader, you should work to become one. This would be worth every minute of investment. I believe many people simply use the excuse to justify their laziness and lack of discipline.
Others will seek to improve some other spiritual disciplines such as prayer or evangelism. These too are precious goals that every believer ought to strive to improve in their lives. With the New Year, we were able to look at James 4:2-3 and the topic of failure in prayer. We need to be honest with the truth that our prayerlessness is more than just a lack of discipline. It is a serious sin for which we need to repent. Our lack of prayer reveals a problematic attitude of the heart, one that ventures to live without God’s strength, provision, and grace.
Likewise, we should all strive to make opportunities to share the gospel. Considering the great need for the truth and how many continue in life completely blind to the light of Christ, we have an obligation to tell others about the hope of the gospel. Understanding this, some of you will seek to be more strategic in your conversations and relationships. We need to have the courage to broach the topic with others and to help them understand the meaninglessness and dreadfulness of life without Jesus. We worship and serve a God of mercy and grace who is full of love. Perhaps He will use some of our conversations this year to change people’s hearts and cause them to turn to Christ in faith.
Regardless of how you seek to grow, the greatest issue underlying these disciplines and practices is the motive behind them. We do not seek to grow merely for personal improvement. We certainly shouldn’t seek to grow for the esteem others give us as a result of our successes. At the heart of what we do should be a desire to see God magnified in our lives. We live for a glorious and great God, and we have the distinct privilege of knowing Him and living for Him. We can reflect His greatness and honor Him with our lives, or we can sadly live as though He is insignificant or even absent.
How big is your God? He is the one who created the universe and sustains it by His wisdom and power (Gen. 1:1; Acts 17:28). He is the one who knows the beginning from the end and is sovereign over all history (Isa. 46:9-10). He is the one with the wisdom to invent math, science, and logic such that all truth is ultimately His and there is no ultimate truth apart from Him (Ps. 18:30; Prov. 30:5; cf. Rom. 3:4). He is morally pure and not stained even by the hint of evil (1 John 1:5). The fact is that God is infinitely great.
As believers we can know Him, and His greatness is the greatest motivation for us to grow in Him. We can pursue Him with all our time and effort, and even be aided by His Spirit, and we will not exhaust what there is to know of Him. We could give Him every ounce of strength for every minute of every day and it would not be enough to match His infinite worth. It is always good to consider the greatness of God and to have an acute understanding of His attributes and character. We live in obedience to His will because He is worthy of all praise, honor, and glory.