What is God's way to come to full maturity in Christ, and how can I know it is the right way? By the Church. By that which every joint supplies.

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

This is God’s process, and it does not happen by human effort. We cannot strain to yield. We must let God do the work in us. When we fail, we get up and walk again. When our brother or sister misses the target, we help them to get up and walk again. We restore them. If one walks away from God, we look to God for how to bring them back, but we only do that which He sends us to do. Whatever is not of faith is sin. The only thing that we can bring to this process is submission, and even our submission is a gift of God.

At the start, it must be stated that there is no way that you can earn maturity just as there is no way you could have earned your initial salvation. Jesus paid it all. If you refuse to believe in Jesus and receive His salvation, then you will not be born into the family of God. If you aren't born into God's family, there cannot be any maturity or fulfillment. Once you are born again, if you refuse to walk in the Spirit, you will stay a baby in Christ. If you walk in the Spirit, you are simply believing and receiving what Jesus already paid for. You are not earning your way into the Kingdom of God.

God’s order for coming to Him will be the way. And that order will be in place ‘til we all come to the full completeness of the likeness of Christ. This is the duration. God's order must be in place.

True ministry is the flow of that Anointing from member to member. The ministry is from the Christ in one member to the Christ in the other. It assembles the Body together.

Ephesians 4:11 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

But how? Through the Church. We Need The Church. This is God’s order. These are God ’s sent ministries. These are God’s called out people walking in God’s Spirit.

You may have been dissatisfied with church. You may have known, by the Spirit of God, that something was wrong or phony. Perhaps you stopped attending. Perhaps you knew, by the Spirit and by the Bible, that the Church has a certain order, and that order was not being followed.

Ephesians 3:10 To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,

This verse is not referring to the man-made Church, but the Church of the Scripture, the called-out ones. God’s way. God's order. Many people are surprised at how much of what we call Christian is actually not even in the Bible. It is surprising how much of what the Bible has to say is left out, but God continues to restore. All may come, but God forces Himself on no one.

Just make sure that, when God speaks to you through your conscience, that you don't ignore Him.

God Has Restored Much Of What Is Necessary So That The Church Can Come Into The Fullness. Don't ignore the Spirit of God because of what some men and women are doing that is contrary to the Spirit of God. If you seek God, you will find Him. God will lead you and give you power for righteousness.

God has a method for bringing us to maturity in Him. His plan is that we would be transfigured by the renewing of our minds. For this process, He has given gifts of the Spirit to the members of the Body of Christ, so that there is none that has preeminence. All are necessary. His method is that every member have one or more gifts and that those gifts be the manifestation of God in the earth. Those gifts grow into ministries as they are used. They are used to minister outside the church, but they are the means by which every member ministers to every other member. It is a body ministry.

Ephesians 4:15-16 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him [Christ] in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom [Christ] the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

What is God's way to come to full maturity in Christ, and how can I know it is the right way? By the Church. By that which every joint supplies.

How can we know anything about anything

The Church, What Is It and What Is Its Purpose

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