Development: Cultivating Your Needed Maturity

God has created us for and called us to unique tasks. As particularly gifted and positioned disciples, we each should pursue the needed maturity to do what God has called us to accomplish.


  • Distinctive Discipleship– Designing Specific Plans for Christian Maturity
  • Category #4: Development
  • “present everyone mature” (Col. 1:28)

Evaluate

  • Would you label yourself as maturing?
  • You don’t have to be there yet, but you should be getting there.
  • Every believer has been gifted in specific ways requiring distinctive efforts for development.
  • Every believer has been placed in specific contexts warranting unique opportunities for development.

Ephesians 4:11-16

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Examine

  • What has God called me to accomplish?
  • Using our gifts, we each contribute to one another’s maturity (4:11-12).
  • Our work is incomplete until every church member is fully complete (4:13).
  • The more spiritually mature we are, the less likely we are to drift away (4:14).
  • It requires loving honesty to experience total development (4:15).
  • The more you are who God called you to be, the more others will be who God called them to be (4:16).

Engage

  • What part of my life needs further development right now?
  • Your family and church would benefit greatly if you were more intentional with your progressive personal maturity.
  • Your needed area to develop might not be a problem of sinning but a posture of slacking.
  • God did not randomly gift you or haphazardly position you.
  • Work on aligning your development with his calling.
  • I need development in learning how to:
  • How do I plan to mature in this area?