Pressing on Toward Maturity: Seven Biblical Truths for Spiritual Growth

By Joey A. Perry Sr.

Trouble Knows Where You Live... How Will You Respond When It Arrives?

The issue is not "if" troubles will come, but how you respond "when" they come. The more spiritually mature you are, the better you will be able to handle the trials of life with faith and trust in God.

In his easy-to-read style, author Joey A. Perry, Sr. presents seven Biblical truths that will lead to spiritual growth and help you do the following:

- Realize God loves you, despite your circumstances!
- Trust God's wisdom and power, even when you don't understand why you are going through what you are going through!
- Praise God, in spite of your problems!
- Face life's challenges with faith in God instead of fear!
- Worry less when you encounter trouble because you will understand God is in complete control of everything, including your situation!
- Have and exhibit the joy of the Lord, regardless of what is going on around you!
- And more!

If you want to receive these benefits, get your copy of "Pressing on Toward Maturity" today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543961911

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Joey A. Perry, Sr. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, and recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-54396-190-4 eBook: 978-1-54396-191-1

Unless indicated otherwise, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (ISV) are taken from the Holy Bible: International Standard Version®. Copyright © 1996-forever by The ISV Foundation.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. Used by permission.

Scriptures quotations marked (KJV) are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version, public domain.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

www.Lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Albatross Publishing

P.O. Box 1444

Pflugerville, Texas 78691-1444

www.joeyaperry.com

This book is dedicated to the Father who loves and sustains me, the Son who died and was resurrected for me, and the Holy Spirit who indwells and empowers me.

Acknowledgements

I give all praise and thanksgiving to God for using me to complete this work. I could not have finished this task without the guidance, motivation, perseverance, and energy I received from the Holy Spirit.

Several years ago, God placed the seven truths given in this book on my heart. As I meditated on them and embraced them, my walk with the Lord grew stronger. God inspired me to share these truths with other believers, so they could be strengthened like I was. Each time I sat down to write, I asked God to give me the words to say. My prayer is that others will be just as blessed when reading this book as I was while writing it.

Even though my name is on the cover, many people made important contributions to this project. The following individuals took time out of their busy schedules to review the manuscript to ensure the content was Biblically sound, the Scripture references were appropriate, and the information was presented clearly: 1) my Pastor, Rev. A. W. Anthony Mays, 2) my Sunday school teacher, Judy Garner, 3) my friend, Rev. Daryl Horton, 4) my wife, Vanessa, and 5) my Mom, Rev. Annette Perry. I cannot thank them enough for their sacrifices and the valuable feedback they gave me. In addition to reviewing the manuscript, Vanessa helped in many other ways, including making sure I had a quiet and comfortable place to work at home, allowing me to bounce ideas off her, encouraging me to make and keep writing deadlines, and giving me some extremely helpful ideas, suggestions, and input. I am grateful to God for Vanessa’s love, support, and prayers! Finally, I want to thank my editor, Linda Stubblefield, for correcting my grammatical mistakes, cleaning up my awkward sentences, and giving the book a professional touch.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Truth #1: God Loves Us!

Chapter 2

Truth #2: God Will Keep His Word

Chapter 3

Truth #3: God Is Sovereign

Chapter 4

Truth #4: God Has the Power to Handle

Our Problems

Chapter 5

Truth #5: Worrying Will Not Improve the Situation

Chapter 6

Truth #6: God Is with Us

Chapter 7

Truth #7: God Will Work All Things Together

for Good

Conclusion

Author Resources and Contact Information

Introduction

God commands believers to be spiritually mature.

Spiritual maturity should be a goal for every Christian. Hebrews 6:1a (NASB) says, Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity. Spiritual maturity means being like Jesus Christ in our thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions. First John 2:6 says, Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. The key phrase in this verse is, live as Jesus did. Jesus is our ultimate example of how to be spiritually mature. Our lives are sometimes characterized by worry, doubt, anxiety, impatience, and frustration. Jesus’ spiritual maturity is seen in the fact that His life was marked by faith instead of worry, trust in God the Father instead of doubt, calmness instead of anxiety, patience instead of impatience, and peace instead of frustration.

We see from the way Jesus lived that spiritual maturity is not some abstract, theological idea that does not touch our everyday lives. On the contrary, spiritual maturity affects the way we live daily. That is why this book approaches spiritual maturity from a practical perspective. Spiritual maturity helps us obey the commands God gives us in the Bible. For example, God tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). We need some measure of spiritual maturity and power from the Holy Spirit to be able to obey that command. Our level of spiritual maturity determines our responses to adversity, our attitudes and actions as we interact with others, and our emotions when we go through difficult times.

Many Christian qualities are internal and cannot be seen with the naked eye. For example, you cannot look at someone and see they have faith. Their faith shows through when they go through situations that require them to trust God. Similarly, you cannot look at a person and see that they have patience. Their patience is exhibited when they go through circumstances where they must wait on God. The same is true for spiritual maturity. No one knows how spiritually mature they are until they face a situation which requires spiritual maturity. For instance, if you face a problem that could cause you to worry but you trust God instead, you are showing signs of spiritual maturity. If your loved one passes away and you could get angry and blame God but you don’t do that, you are showing signs of spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity helps us handle real life challenges.

Hebrews 6:1a says we must press on, or pursue, spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity will not just happen; it requires spiritual growth. We must put forth deliberate and intentional effort to grow in the Lord if we are to become spiritually mature. Christians who are serious about their walk with God should also be serious about their spiritual growth. Knowing what the Bible says is important, but that alone does not constitute spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is the acquisition of Bible knowledge and the application of that knowledge to our lives on a regular basis. It is taking what we learn from the Word of God and putting it into action.

Spiritual growth is analogous to human development. A human being goes through several stages of growth: baby, toddler, child, teenager, young adult, adult, middle-aged adult, and senior citizen. No matter which stage of development a person is in, he or she can still grow more, either physically, mentally, or emotionally. For example, regardless of how old senior citizens are, they can still learn and grow in some areas because they will never reach perfection. Similarly, no matter how spiritually mature we are now, there is always room for us to grow even more.

In Philippians 3:12, Paul said, Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. If anyone was mature in the Lord, it was Paul. But even Paul acknowledged that he had not yet arrived and had more growing to do! This lets us know there is always something else we can learn or some areas of our spiritual lives where we can improve and become more like Christ.

In my life, I am constantly reminded that I have more growing to do spiritually. When I have an opportunity to show love to someone and I don’t do it, that tells me I need to grow more. When someone offends me and I don’t want to forgive them, that tells me I have more growing to do. When I encounter a situation where someone needs help and I don’t even think about helping them, that tells me I need to grow more. If you are like me, you can probably look at your life and see times when you also missed some opportunities to be like Jesus. Every time we recognize that we have missed an opportunity to live as Jesus did, that is a time we can acknowledge we need to grow more spiritually.

Second Peter 1:3–4 tell us that we have no excuse for not growing spiritually:

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

God has given us His power and His promises to help us grow into the spiritually mature believers He desires us to be. Second Peter 1:5–8 list several areas in which believers should grow:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice that God says we should possess these qualities in increasing measure. That means we should continuously grow in these (and other) areas of our spiritual lives. Spiritual growth is a never-ending duty for every Christian. It is an ongoing process which starts when we first believe in Jesus Christ for salvation and continues until the day we die. The title of this book says we should press on toward maturity. We will never reach full maturity in this life, but we should keep growing such that we become more and more mature in Christ as long as we live.

Being spiritually mature is more important than ever before because it seems that every day, something happens that has the potential to shake our faith and cause us to become fearful. We hear news reports about shootings in our schools, high unemployment rates, problems in our government, children killing their parents, parents killing their children, disease outbreaks, terrorism, etc. With all of this unrest, we need to be spiritually strong, such that we 1) trust in God and His mighty power, regardless of what we see happening in the world around us; 2) believe God is still in charge, despite our situations and circumstances; and 3) stand for God and live for Him, in the midst of the problems of the world. As we mature, the situations that worried us last year should not cause us to worry as much this year. The people who upset us last year should not upset us as much this year. The events that made us fearful last year should not make us as fearful this year. We should be able to examine our lives on a regular basis and see where and how we have grown spiritually.

The Bible contains many truths that will help us mature such that we can handle any challenge we might face. However, for these truths to positively affect us, we must know them, embrace them, and make them a part of our daily lives. This book will explore seven truths from the Bible that will help us grow and mature in the Lord. If we really grasp these truths, they will make a dramatic difference in our lives and in how we handle the inevitable trials we will encounter.

Two requirements must be met for this book to benefit us. First, we must be Christians. God has made some fascinating promises in His Word, but they are specifically for Christians. The Bible tells us in Romans 10:9–10:

If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

Those who have confessed with their mouths that Jesus Christ (God’s