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As Christians, what we do matters.
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Your habits will form your character. That’s the theme that Elevate, Rush Creek’s college and young adults ministry, has been discussing over the past few weeks and it has been making such an profound impact! Far too often, we think that our faith develops almost naturally as we attend church or various faith-based groups, but the reality is that maturing in our faith takes hard work. It’s like training to run a marathon. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4 that we are to train ourselves to be godly and he compares living the Christian life to running a race in 1 Corinthians 9. Developing the Fruit of the Spirit (Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self Control) doesn’t just happen, but it takes us disciplining ourselves to break our bad habits and develop new ones that reflect the image of Jesus!
But we can’t simply do this by ourselves. If we do, we’ll end up like Paul describes in Romans 7, where we know what we’re supposed to do, but inevitably we do what is wrong instead. What we need to do is depend on the supernatural strength and endurance that we find through the Spirit! It’s only when we find ourselves training with God for this marathon we know as the Christian Life that we can truly become mature believers, as we continue to put off our old selves and put on the new self.
Many of the Elevate students have been taking this to heart and begun training regimens of their own, engaging in disciplines like prayer, reading and memorizing Scripture, reading Christ-centered books like C.S.Lewis’ Mere Christianity, and sharing their faith with individuals that they encounter on a regular basis. And even beyond that, three students made decisions to follow Jesus with their lives and accept him as their personal Lord and Savior!! God is working in the hearts and minds of our young people here at Rush Creek!
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