In view of our upcoming Spiritual Growth Workshop, September 7-9, 2018, the elders of this congregation want to spotlight and encourage continuous spiritual growth for each and every member of the Southeast Body. We are very encouraged and excited because of the increased progress and spiritual growth shown by many of our brothers and sisters in our congregation. Many of you are “stepping up” and are supporting our efforts to seek and save lost souls and to encourage fellow Christians to stay faithful through the various ministries and programs we offer here at Southeast. Those who are currently active participants, we strongly exhort you to keep up your steadfastness in your service to our Lord and Savior. As the Apostle Peter exhorts us to steadfastness in 2 Peter 3:17-18, “You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever: Amen.” Let us not fall from our steadfastness and become complacent in our efforts to obey and serve God and to one day be with Him in Heaven. Complacency is a “grave” danger if we allow it to fester and take a stronghold in us for it will weaken us spiritually. What we mean by spiritual complacency is that we are attending worship and might be serving in some capacity but our heart is not in it. We are just going through the motions and are acting out of compulsion rather than faith, love, and conviction. Some indicators for you to consider to determine if you are steadfast and are abounding or have become complacent, is do you only touch or open your Bible when you come to worship on Sunday? Does your Bible travel around with you in your vehicle, and is only moved or used when you take it into the church building for worship, and back into your car again until next Sunday? Also when you hear God’s divine truth being preached from the pulpit or in a Bible Class are you bored or is your mind wondering on other things? This short list of indicators is also a sign of weak or low faith which is a symptom of spiritual complacency, which will hinder and stifle spiritual growth. Our efforts in our service to the Lord must be continuous as our spiritual being is being fed and renewed by our spiritual food which is God’s unadulterated word. 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, “Therefore my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” Our upcoming Spiritual Growth Workshop which will be led by Brother Foy Forehand, Preacher for the Park Heights church of Christ in Hamilton, TX, has been arranged with you in mind to encourage and stimulate individual spiritual growth in each member of the Southeast church of Christ. Brother Forehand will be presenting from the Book of Malachi and discussing with us the complacency and neglect exhibited by the priests in their disrespectful worship to Jehovah God, and the warnings from God through Malachi of their plight if they continued to offer defiled and unacceptable sacrifices to God. These priests are denying that they are disgracing the name of Lord through their worship, see Malachi 1:6-7, “To you priest who despise My name. Yet you say, “In what way have we despised Your name?” “You offer defiled food on My altar, But say, In what way have we defiled You?” By saying, The table of the Lord is contemptible.” Because we are considered priest in God’s spiritual kingdom, His church, we can in similar fashion as the priests that Malachi rebuked, can become complacent and offer God defiled and faulty worship. Although we are present and participating in our worship and putting forth the effort our heart is not in it and we are just going through the motion. John 4:24, reminds us that “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” We cannot under any circumstances worship God on our terms and get to pick and choose what we prefer to obey and what we prefer not to obey based on our likes and dislikes. This is why faith is so very important and why we must continue to grow in Christ so our faith can become stronger, and that will prevent us from becoming spiritually complacent, and not be concerned about what type of christian life we are living and what kind of doctrine we are following. Ephesians 3:16-19 echoes this point for it says, “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” If we are growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ as we read before in Peter, then we will be active in a continuous daily spiritual exercise involving the intake of God’s word, and putting what we have learned into practice. If our faith is weak and our knowledge of God is low, our lack of commitment will show and we will be open to finding more casual and easier ways to serve God. In which this will makes us vulnerable to worship and serve God falsely by just going through the motions. Ephesians 4:13-14, tells us, ‘till we all come to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness, of deceitful plotting.’ To continually grow spiritually, we must be willing participants and often times when we make the comparison of us like the priests in the Old Testament, we can get confused. Although we are priests in Christ’s Church under the New Testament, and our worship to our Lord is different from the priests in the Old Testament, we still must obey and worship God under His terms and conditions with the right heart, (see Malachi 2). 1 Peter 2:9, But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Lastly, we don’t want to get into the rut of spiritual complacency or being lukewarm because Christ warns us of our fate in Revelation 3:15-16, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot, I could wish you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
