“Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God… And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (Hebrews 6:1, 11-12, NASB95)

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I have responsibilities to fulfill. My “checklist” is not accomplished as a result of my own merit and tenacity, but rather as a response to the leadership and motivation of the Holy Spirit within me. My first responsibility is to worship the Most High God. He is worthy of my daily worship, in good times and in bad. My second responsibility is to lead people to a conversion experience with Jesus. In our current culture, “conversion” is a bad word and is assigned much of the same baggage as “terror.” I am not interested, nor shall I ever be interested, in “converting” a person to religious adherence. I am capable of doing such a thing, but such an act would be repulsive to me. I desire with my whole being, however, to see God transform the hearts of people who previously did not know him. In our natural state our hearts were cold and dead to God’s authority, but when God “converts” us we begin living for him and our hearts willingly yield to his direction. Witnessing this is pure joy!

Many people think that once a person becomes a follower of Jesus, then so long as they don’t do anything too horrible, that they are ok and not in need of becoming radical. The Scripture indicates otherwise. For the follower of Jesus, there must be following taking place. When Jesus walked on earth, he set the “followship” pace and his disciples, now referred to as Apostles, understood that Jesus expected us to behave like him (see You Expect Me to Do What? ).

This week at Main Street we will examine the call to maturity in Christ. Simply put, maturity is found in resembling the life, work, words and acts of the one we refer to as “Lord and Savior.” Maturity takes Jesus off the stained glass and makes him imminently dangerous to the living. Maturity considers every aspect of life and makes choices based upon God’s best for us and for others. Maturity is gained by obedient experiences, culminated by an abandon that can only be affected when the Christian really believes in heaven as his or her final and eternal destination. Maturity bears much “fruit” or more simply put, maturity’s outcome is evident by seeing people won to faith in Jesus and working to become just like him.

In September, October and November Main Street will be working through Scripture related to Francis Chan’s Crazy Love. For more information on Crazy Love click here (www.crazylovebook.com) or join us for one of our weekend worship services.