Stunted Growth?
A message from guest speaker, Pastor Wayne Shatney.
Christians, when they’re first saved, are not automatically spiritually mature believers. Like newborn babies, their understanding is simple and their control over their movements is limited. Just as it’s natural for babies grow into children, then into adults, it’s the same with believers too. It was un-natural for the believers in the church in Corinth to stay stuck in spiritual babyhood.
Paul wrote the epistle,1 Corinthians, to them both to chastise and encourage the Corinthians to get back on the path to spiritual growth. The Corinthians were saved. Paul calls them brethren and laborers together with God. Yet, they were stuck in the carnal way of thinking of the unsaved around them.
When Paul was in Corinth starting that church, he fed the newly saved with “milk†– spiritually simpler material. Like a baby with no teeth, they could not be given the “meat†of weightier spiritual matters until they had grown stronger in the spirit. When Paul left Corinth, that is what he expected they would do – grow.
Instead, Paul heard that the Corinthinans were letting pride, envy, and divisions stunt their growth. One problem Paul addressed was their carnal preoccupation with having a human leader. Instead of seeing Christ, they couldn’t see beyond Paul or Apollos. They were letting their feelings control their thinking. The immature believer often talks more about their feelings than Scripture. The Corinthians were following their feelings, just as the carnal un-saved around them were doing.
The church today faces a very similar problem. Many believers remain as babes, guided primarily by their feelings. They focus on how the music makes them feel, not on what the hymn says to God. They dwell on whether the service was exciting or entertaining or uplifting – all feelings – and not what Scripture is saying to them. We need to make sure that we are growing spiritually, ready for the meat of Scripture, and not babes focused on our feelings. It’s just unnatural.