What they didn't know is that while they were growing in Christian friendship, they weren't really growing in Christ. Based on their Christian tenure, they thought they were mature believers; they did not understand spiritual maturity is measured on one's spirit of obedience to God and the bible (1 John 5:3). Their passion for good, clean, Christian fellowship for them and their kids was all systems go, but a spirit of radical obedience was absent in the group.
Then God, through the constant presence of His Word, busted up the group. Spiritually, things changed. It began with two or three wives and became two or three of the couples, who began to respond in obedience and faith to the conviction of the Holy Spirit in their lives. A growing spirit of obedience began to separate them from the rest of the group. The others have noticed, leading to the question I received from a man this week and is the title of this post.
My response is simple. You can be moral, you can be nice, you can love your local church and your friends there, but that a confidant of God does not make. Truthfully, an unbeliever can attain those things.
You can be all those things and still have a spirit of rebellion, sit in judgment of God's Word, spend all your time figuring out what God's Word doesn't say instead of what it does say, and have a distaste for the parts of God's Word and leaders that push you toward radical obedience to God.
Howoever, God says in 1 John 5:3 that this is how He knows you love Him: obedience. Jesus says in Matthew 28:18-20 that you are to be taught to OBEY everything in God's Word. Obedience. A growing and mature believer is marked by a spirit of obedience to God's Word.
God began doing amazing things in and through these couples when they started obeying God's Word--even though they were scared and it required personal sacrifice. God did little in these couples when they didn't obey. If you are a Christ follower and God isn't moving in your life, you should examine your spirit of obedience. Why would God share his heart with someone who doesn't love Him so much? (Again, 1 John 5:3.)
Christ follower, when you are looking for a small group or friends, our tendency is to look first for people with whom we have hobbies and interests in common. Yes, that matters, but it isn't what you should look for first. You need to look first for people with whom you have a desire to live in obedience to God in common. When we pick your small group based primarily on hobbies and interests, you can expect to have a stunted spiritual life, yall are unequally yoked. When you pick the people with whom you will live life in Christ based on their spirit of obedience, then as iron sharpens iron, so yall will sharpen each other.
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