Grow up!

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Well, good morning. It's good to have you here again today. And on this solemn remembrance of 9-11, I think it's, let's pray, okay? Lord God, we want to focus on you today. We know you are our strong fortress, our tower of strength, our refuge in times of trouble. You are and you always will be there for us. And here, you are present right now. We pray that you would inspire us, Lord. Fill us with your spirit today. Breathe in us your breath of life through your word. We ask, Lord, that you would bring about a renewal in this country. We thank you, Lord, for those who have sacrificed so much and given of themselves here. We remember all those who grieve and mourn this day. And even after 15 years, that tragedy and the haunting of that day, we pray for your healing for all. But that we all look to you. Bless our service today, Lord. Keep us in your care. Keep us living towards you and living it up as you see so fit, Lord Jesus. The way that you intended life to be. All this we pray in your name. Amen. It's good to have you here today. You can follow the sermon notes on the Bible app. And you can also download from the App Store our iPhone app that has all the sermons and everything in it. We're going to be in 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17 today. And in this passage, we're going to kind of be working on growing up. And I know I hate that word, maturity. Maturing, whatever that means. Okay. But let's look at this passage. Okay. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. And how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So far, our text today that we're looking at. Now, Paul, I don't know if you know too much about Paul. He was one of the most important apostles. He was kind of the unapostle apostle. He was a persecutor of the church. He did all sorts of, he was so strict about his own rule keeping as far as a Pharisee of Pharisees. And then everything flipped around when he met Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, on the road to Damascus. And he never got married. He was always single. Was a tent maker, from what we can tell. And then he was a missionary. Went everywhere. The church wouldn't be the church that we know today without this particular person. He wrote probably half of the New Testament. Almost a lot of the letters. Anyway, he never got married, but he does have kids, in a sense. And Timothy, he considered his spiritual son. And if you read 1 and 2 Timothy, you get that kind of father-son feel to it. So whether you are single or married, have children or don't have children, no matter the age, you really can engender life and mentor and be there for people. And some of you do it as an occupation or as a vocation anyways. And I'm just telling you, it's amazing. And so Timothy is receiving this letter from Paul. And Paul wants him to grow. And to grow, as Paul puts it, to mature. And how he's going to do it, he says, is to be wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. That's what real maturity is. To grow in faith in Christ Jesus for the sake of salvation. So growing up is really vital. I don't know. Like I said, as a child, you probably went to a pediatrician. Or you still take your kids to pediatric checkups every year. And it's kind of amazing. At those, you learn all sorts of things. They do all sorts of little things. My daughter hates going because she always gets a shot. If they weren't shot, she'd be happy with them. But you know, all those immunizations and everything. Well, one of the things they also do is they check your growth. I don't know. There's a growth chart usually. If a pediatrician would find out that a child all of a sudden stops growing from one year to the next, they're along that curve and then all of a sudden, boom. It doesn't matter if they're at the bottom of the curve or the top of the curve. But it's amazing. I could see my two kids. And boy, were they different. Justin was at the 100th percentile the whole way up. And he's 6'4 at age 16. Emma was at the bottom. But she kept growing. And so there was never any extra tests or anything. Everything was normal. But if a pediatrician ever saw a child just stop or somehow it's like, wait a minute, extra tests might be performed. They'd ask questions about, you know, eating well, sleeping, exercising. Is this child thriving or not? Now, what's amazing to me is in the Christian church, I don't know, in the church I grew up in, it didn't matter if you grew. Really, you know, it's kind of like, oh, you're here. That's great. Show...