The church of Christ has one Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all and to whom all believers come for help and hope. But each church also has under-shepherds - elders - who have real authority and are meant to be gifts to the church for its good. Elders are to be men who have been called and equipped by God for this special work, and who are mature, godly men who can call the rest of the church to follow their example as they follow Christ.

Would you open your Bibles to Acts chapter 20 verse 28? If I have a choice, I'm with a group of elders, where would I start? What would I say to them as we begin? Well, that's what I'm gonna talk to you about right now. Here's a question I've heard many times.

What really do elders do? Where do I start? It's amazing to me how many men have never had any training for the eldership. As one man said to me, no one ever trained me. Well, I want you to look at Acts 20, verse 28, the great apostolic farewell message of the apostle Paul with the elders.

Verse 28, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. It's the only elders we want. To care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood. Now I want you to notice what Paul says here. And remember this is an apostolic prophetic word.

It's really Christ's Word to us, what He wants His shepherds to be. But here's what I want you to notice. Pay careful attention to yourselves. Now normally we run right over that, don't we? And we say, pay careful attention to the flock of God, because that's our job too, to care for the flock.

But I want you to notice, that's not the first thing he says. The first thing he says is that you've got to take care of yourself. And all of you as men have to care for yourselves. This is part of the guarding ministry. Now this whole passage is about the protecting, guarding, watching ministry, which is the negative side of the teaching, feeding ministry.

The point he's making is you can't care for the souls of others if you haven't learned to care for your own soul. And so some have called this soul care, and I think it's a very, very good term. Notice that the apostle says the same thing in 1 Timothy 4.16. Now, I'm going to read some of these verses to you. Write them down, or we'll be here until 1 o'clock in the afternoon, because I'm going to give you a number of verses.

So just write the verse down. 1 Timothy 4.16. Timothy, pay close attention, or play coast watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so, you will save both yourself and your hearers from the false teachers and the disaster in the church." Notice, Timothy, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. In other words, Timothy, if you're going to help a sick church, and this was a church in trouble, we'll look at it later, he says, Timothy, you first got to guard your own soul, because all the chaos in the church take you down with it.

And so our first duty as leaders of the Lord's people is to make sure our own souls are well, to care for our own self. And we do have to protect ourselves. We live in a world that's, particularly the Western world, that's growing more and more hostile to our faith. In fact, in my lifetime, I would say when I first became a Christian, my parents were not Christians, but my Christian faith and what my parents believed was really not too different. But today, what I believe and what I stand for in the ethics and the life I live and what the world thinks is that far apart.

You all have seen that. The growing gap between our secular, humanistic society and what we believe as the people of God. It's growing farther and farther, and the hostility against us is growing almost by the hour, it seems. Now, I want you to notice the context here is false teachers and the damage they do to the church and spiritual warfare. In this hostile environment, the first thing we have to do is care for our own souls.

We are on the front line of battle, and Satan would love nothing more than to take down the leaders, just as we saw last night. If they go, the church goes with it. That was a very famous book by Richard Baxter. In fact, there's a new biography, and if you want to know, just write me, called Good Mr. Baxter.

And just like we have the book Agape Leadership, The Life of Robert Chapman, there is a wonderful new biography, and it's short, on the life of Richard Baxter as a pastor in his church. And when he writes the book, Reformed Pastor, he doesn't mean Reformed theology. He means the pastors needed to be reformed. They weren't doing their work. They were doing very little, in fact, getting paid.

Listen to what Richard Baxter writes. Are you listening? Take heed then for the enemy has a special eye on you. You are sure to have his most subtle insinuations, incisive solicitations, and violent assaults. Take heed to yourselves, lest he outwit you.

The devil is a greater scholar than you are, and a more nimble disputant. And Whenever he prevails against you, he will make you the instrument of your own ruin. You have an enemy, and his eye is particularly on you. And that's why as we see many, many, in fact it's just horrifying, the number of pastors falling prey to sexual immorality is so discouraging to the Lord's people. We have a church in our area, five pastors in a row had to leave because of sexual immorality.

What must the people think? What must they think about our faith? And what do you think the world thinks? In fact, in the Denver, Colorado Springs area, you may have known this, we were on national news about a very well-known, nationally known pastor who turns out to be gay and taking very heavy drugs. I mean, can you imagine the fun, the fun the media had with that?

You evangelicals are against all this, but you're doing it yourself. The disgrace beyond the disgrace. Yes, the devil has a special eye on you. Watch your own soul. Guard yourself.

How do we do this? Well, real quickly, I'll just make a real quick statement here, but then we're gonna go on. Carefully guard what you read. It affects how you think. Carefully guard who you listen to as preachers and teachers.

And carefully guard who you watch on TV. I'm seeing a lot of Christians pick up on these pundits on TV and coming into the church the same angry disposition and hostile mean disposition bringing it into the church. Not to have to say to one Christian lady in our church, stop looking at those things on TV, because you're acting just like them. We're different people. Carefully guard your prayer life.

Carefully guard for unconfessed sins that causes your heart to grow cold and unresponsive to the things of God. Carefully guard yourself from unnecessary weights. Remember Hebrews 12, 1, and 2. Lay aside all those weights that so easily encumber us in the Christian life. What is a key way we guard our souls, soul care.

What's a key way? I just gave you some quickies just to show you there are other things, but I want to emphasize one way that we as leaders, both men and women, because our wives guard their own souls too, is by continuing to grow. We guard our souls by maturing and growing and learning. The key to effective pastoral leadership is your own personal growth in Christ. You are either growing in Christ or you are stagnating.

You are never standing still. The Lord will not allow that. Here's a fact. The fact is your church will not grow and learn unless its leaders are personally growing and moving forward in the Christian life. Very rarely does a church move above its leaders.

It's possible. If you're stagnant spiritually, the church will become stagnant and co-spiritually. If you are living off the past, the church will not go forward. In other words, effectiveness and leadership is based on one's own growing relationship with Christ and being excited about the Lord's work. Someone has said this, if you live in the past, you won't have a future.

Someone else has said, when you're through improving, you're through. Now, is this scriptural, what I just said to you? Is this scriptural? Well, it's always good to challenge one another, be Bereans, right? Check it out.

The great apostle Paul is probably close to a genius. He comes to Berea and they check it out. They don't just hook, line, and sinker, believe what he says. They examine the scriptures daily to see if what he was saying was so. Acts 17, 11, wonderful passage.

Let's be bereaved. Let's check this out, what I just said to you. You're either stagnating in your Christian life, you're not standing neutral, or you're growing, maturing, and learning, and expanding your Christian life. So let's check this out. Biblical mandate to grow in Christ.

Now if you have your Bibles, you can follow me. Turn to 1 Timothy 4, 7, and 8. 1 Timothy 4, 7, and 8. A marvelous passage of Scripture. Rather trained.

Don't get involved with silly arguments. Rather trained. Now you have different translations here. Exercise, discipline yourself. Mine says train.

I think a very exact translation would be exercise. Rather train or exercise yourself for godliness. This morning I came down for breakfast and brother Scott Brown was looking like one of these young guys in all his sports uniform. He's gonna go and exercise this morning. That's right, he's gonna exercise.

Looks to me he needs to. Well that's good, Scott. It'll probably save you 10 years. Hopefully save your mind now. But it's more important that we exercise ourselves to godliness.

For while bodily training is of some value, Scott, it is of value. So, good man, you're a good example. Godliness is of value in every way. It holds the promise for the present life and also for the life to come. Now I hate to say this, but all The exercise in the world of your body will do nothing for eternity, I'm sorry.

Might extend your life here, might feel a little better. But godliness extends into eternity, both now and in the future. So really, I wanna encourage you, train yourself. Exercise yourself, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Now Paul loves this athletic metaphor and the metaphor here is used for and it's in the present tense so it has the idea of constant training.

Timothy is to exercise his spiritual muscles. The problem with many of us is we're not exercising our faith. We're not exercising our mind in spiritual faith. In other words, we're to be spiritual athletes. And think of all that is involved in the image of an athlete.

Self-discipline, training, program, plan. Well, the same thing is true in the spiritual life. You don't read your Bible, you don't test time in prayer, you don't have spiritual responsibilities in the church. Guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna lose your muscles.

You know, it's an amazing thing about the physical body, and he uses the physical and the spiritual. The physical body will deteriorate very rapidly. So here's a person, they have a major operation in their bed for three weeks. In that three weeks, it's amazing how the muscles atrophy so that after three weeks you can hardly walk. But then you start walking every day, then you're up and down the hall, then you go around the hall, then you go outside the building, two, three weeks, all of a sudden your muscles are coming back.

And within a month if you exercise, in fact one of my dearest and closest friends just went through this. He had a massive major heart operation. And he's a pretty strong man, but after that operation, he could barely walk around his living room. And every day, he'd walk a little farther and a little... He had to build those muscles back again.

The exact same thing is true of your spiritual life, your walk with Christ, your knowledge of Christ, your authority in the word, your faith must be Exercised. Just the way it is. You do not drift into godliness. No one drifts into holiness. Listen to what the great D.A.

Carson writes here. People do not drift towards holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate towards godliness, prayer, obedience to scripture, faith, delight in the Lord. We drift towards compromise and call it tolerance. We drift towards disobedience and call it freedom.

We drift towards superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of loss of self-control and call it relaxation. We slouch towards prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking that we have escaped legalism. We slide towards godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. And that's why Paul says to Timothy, and he says to all of us, 2 Timothy 1.6, fan the flame of the gift of God, fan it.

Let that fire go. God has given you a gift. I don't know what that gift is. Some of you actually have several gifts. Fan it, fan it, use it, use it consistently and daily.

Let's look now at 1 Timothy 4.15. 1 Timothy 4.15, you're right there. Again, speaking to Timothy, a man probably in his 30s at this time. He says to Timothy, practice these things, immerse yourself in them, now I really like this, so that all may see your progress. Listen very carefully to what I just read.

Timothy, I want everyone in the local church to see your progress. We're either progressing spiritually or we are regressing spiritually. You are never standing still. Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if your wife men says says to you one day, honey? You're such a man of growth You're just always learning about the Lord.

You're just growing and maturing. You're such an example to me. Rather than your wife say, you haven't changed in 30 years. You're the same old, irritable, grouchy old self. Many wives, that's what they have to say to their husbands.

What an example to your children when you are growing and learning and going forward, not backward. Your children are inspired by you. They're learning from you. What a wonderful thing if the local church sees its leaders going someplace, new visions, they're maturing, they're changing, they're going to conferences like this, they're reading good books, they're studying their Bibles, they're men of prayer. Let the whole congregation see your progress.

So, what do people see in you? A Christian going forward, expanding, thriving, or enduring. Now, Bobby Clinton has written a very, very important book on mentoring, and he claims that he has studied every major character in the Bible, and He has studied throughout church history, Christian leaders. And here's what he claims. I cannot validate this, but he says he's done this.

He says only 25% end well. Only 25% end well. The rest do not end well. But Really, King Solomon didn't end too well. Even David didn't end too well.

They did great things in their life, but they did not end well. Now, I want you to listen to what he says, because I really think this is the issue. His conclusion. We have observed that most people cease learning by the age of 40. Now, I am not an expert in this, but I'll tell you, it seems in my church, they stop learning by 25.

They get done with college and the only thing they know is the newest restaurants or of course newest car or some foolish movie. But he says, yeah, let's go with him, he's the expert. We have observed that most people cease learning by the age of 40. By that we mean they no longer actively pursue knowledge, understanding, and experience that will enhance their capacity to grow and contribute to others. Most simply rest on what they already know.

Now please, Focus. But those who finish well maintain a positive learning attitude all their lives. So you're either stagnating or you're growing. Douglas Smith, an important article, wrote this, When leaders are learning and growing, everything about them communicates the same opportunity to other people. They're excited.

They do things differently. One of the most profound and unusual experiences people can have on the job is to see their leaders grow. How exciting to be in a church when the leaders are growing and they're thinking, they're getting new thoughts, and they're expanding their minds in the things of God. So my question is this. Do those around you see you progressing in the faith?

Or are you living off the past? You've learned enough. You don't need anymore. 2 Corinthians, chapter 416, you better look at this, especially if you're over 50. If you're under 50, you look too, but if you're over 50, you better look at this.

Here's my philosophy of aging. 2 Corinthians 4.16. So, We do not lose heart, though our outward nature is wasting away. Now, if there's anyone who should lose heart, it's the apostle Paul. He had more problems than all of us here put together.

And these Corinthians were a big problem. But he says, we don't lose heart. Although the outward nature is wasting away, and I can see some of you here are wasting away, you know, here's what happens. All of a sudden in life, well, do you wanna know the difference between being young and old? Do you wanna know the difference?

Here's the difference. If at nine o'clock and 10 at night, your desire is to go out and have pizza with your friends or coffee at Starbucks or go play basketball, you are young. If at 8.30 or nine o'clock at night, your chief thought is to go to bed, you're old. All right, we've just categorized all people. Now, when you get older, my father, you know, he lived to be 95, and he lived in New Jersey, I live in Colorado, so a couple times a year or more, I would visit him, and one day I went into his bedroom, and on his dresser was all these pills, a line of pills, And I said to my dad, dad, what are all these pills?

Vitamins, he says, I don't know. I just take them every day. One of his friends got so confused about the pills that he just poured all the pills in a big bowl and every day took a handful. So my dad said, should I do that? I said, no, dad, they're not M&Ms, We'll figure this out.

That's what happens when you get older. You've got all these pills to take and then you have, you know, you got hearing aids and you got knee replacement, hip replacements, and brain replacements. Every kind of replacement they can do today. Let me tell you, the outer man is fading away. It's fading away.

Now, I'm so glad Scott is exercising, because it will help him, and if he eats right, it will help him, but it basically is still going to waste away. Can't fight it, because the Lord built it into the system as judgment on us because the longer we live the more sin we get into. So the Lord said, Psalm 90, I'll give you 70 years. If you jog, I'll give you 80 years. Anything over 80, you're on bonus days.

Is there anyone here over 80? Anyone over 80? OK. You're on bonus days, let me just tell you that. OK.

Now, that's the sad news. The outward man is wasting away. But here's the good news. Here's my philosophy of aging. Our inner nature is being renewed every year.

Did someone say no? What, what? Is that Jim? Every day? The inner man, the man in Christ, the new nature, alive unto God, because verses before, he talks about the life of Christ in us, right?

Verses before. Inwardly, every single day, we're being renewed. Don't tell me the Christian life isn't a positive life. Now we got the positive thinkers, you know they're all on television, turn your scars into stars, most of that phony baloney stuff. But this is real.

The Christian life is the life of constant transformation into Christ's likeness. 2 Corinthians 3.18. We are to be every day, not once a month, not once a week or once a year, every day being renewed and we are to become more Christ-like. We talked about sanctification. Sanctification ultimately is Christ-likeness.

Our whole Christian life is to be aimed at being like the master. Because we're disciples, right? The disciples are to be like the master. That's our whole goal, to be like the Lord Jesus. And it's a daily pursuit, a daily pursuit.

So, I know men in their 80s, I know men in their 90s, I know a man who was 102, he just died recently. And every day, they're learning, they're reading, they're growing, they're excited about the Lord. Want to talk about Bible commentaries? Want to talk about scripture? This one man, 102, he taught our seniors for a number of years.

And when he got over 100, he said to us, you know, I think you need a younger man to teach the seniors, maybe someone around 90. We said, we'll look for that. I'm serious. 99, he was teaching our seniors, And you know, when you're with him, he didn't talk about all his pills and his backaches. He wanted to know what's a good commentary on Thessalonians and what do you think about the fourth chapter.

He's growing. He's progressing. That's why he's teaching seniors. His daughter told me, daughter-in-law told me one day, I said, what does Ed do? He says, well, he has his comfortable chair, he's in his high, high 90s, and he's reading and studying and talking to people.

I said, wow, this guy, This guy doesn't want to stop. He's renewed every day. It's real. All right, Philippians chapter 3. We've got to move here.

Time goes quickly down here in Alabama. I don't know why. Philippians chapter 3, 13 to 14. One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. In other words, my dear friends, Paul is a man who is always pressing forward, looking forward, going forward, and never backward.

It's very easy to look back and say, I've had some great successes in life. Looking backwards and saying, I've had some terrible failures in life and musing on it. Well, we have both successes and failures in life, but remember, the Lord never lets anyone drive on the highway looking through the rear view mirror. If you do that, please let me know so I can get off the highway. You can only look through the front windshield and go forward.

That's the only direction the Lord gives you. Moody said this. He said, when he got to heaven, he did not want to say, these 40 things I dabbled in, rather he wanted to say, this one thing I've done. I love that verse in Luke 10 42, if you don't know it, you should know it well, great, great story of Mary and Martha and Jesus visiting them in their home, would have loved to have been there, must have been a beautiful picture. And the Lord Jesus says of Mary, he says, Mary, there's one thing that's necessary.

And you've chosen the good portion. And it will never be taken from you. You know Martha, she was a double, triple A personality. She's out in the kitchen, super working for a fantastic meal for the Lord. But the Lord would prize her fellowship more than all her work.

And Mary went and sat on our Lord's feet. And the point of the story is this, sitting at the Lord's feet, listening to his word, hearing from him through his word is more important than running around in circles, trying to make everything perfect. And we in the Lord's work often, and this is a big problem that I have to struggle with all the time. I'm so busy for the Lord, I have no time for the Lord. And that's actually idolatry, it really is.

The Lord would rather our fellowship than all our activities. Actually, there's nothing we can do to add to him anyway. We think it can, but it doesn't. But then I want you to notice what Paul says in Philippians 1.25. I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith.

In other words, not only was Paul a growing man, he is a man helping others progress. And notice, for their joy. He doesn't want them to be sour puss Christians. Looks like they've been weaned on a dill pickle and baptized in lemon juice. He wants them to be joyous.

And he says, I'm here for your joy and your progress in the faith. And then 1 Peter 2.2. Like newborn infants, alright, here's the analogy. I think we have a newborn infant. Where's that baby?

Where's that baby? He's outside here, I think, sleeping. Okay, we have a newborn baby, a new infant. Isaac, do you ever see a new infant, baby infant? What is the one thing they want more than everything else?

What? Take a guess. It's not Coke. Food! Of course they want that mother's milk, like a newborn baby.

They want that milk. And they will wake you up at 3 a.m. In the morning for that milk. They don't wear watches. Do you ever notice that?

A baby does not wear a watch. They don't have time like we have time. And it doesn't matter day or night. When they want that milk they will scream like newborn infants. Here it is.

Here's the analogy. Long for the pure spiritual milk, the very sustenance of life for all believers, that by it you may, what? Someone yell it out. Grow, say it again. Into salvation.

My dear friends, you will never in this lifetime grasp all that's involved in your salvation in the substitution and penal sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will never grasp all that, but we keep growing in it. It's full of infinities and immensities, this doctrine. We are to be people that crave the word, so that We grow, we grow, we grow in our salvation. You know, there's a horrifying disease called Syndrome X, where a child may grow from ages one to four, but at age five and six, they stop growing.

One man with this disease was 29 years old and had a body of a 10 year old. One was an eight year old girl who only weighed 12 pounds. Well, we see that, we just, you know, we cringe, we just go, oh, those poor parents, What a terrible thing to happen. Syndrome X, you don't grow. Well, we like little babies and we like little children, but ultimately you want your children to grow up and leave the home and have their own family.

That's what we ultimately want. We don't want them around the house at five years of age for eternity. It'll seem like eternity if they're there. How terrible when Christians have syndromics. They just refuse to grow.

They will not read their Bibles. They don't want to learn new things. They don't want to change. They don't want fresh vision. They like it the way it is.

And then 2 Peter 3.18. 2 Peter 3.18. But grow, but grow, but grow in the grace, oh, the wonderful grace of the Lord Jesus, and the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Christ Jesus. Here's a direct charge from the apostle to grow in that marvelous virtues of the grace of our Lord Jesus and the knowledge of our blessed Lord which takes eternity, a lifelong pursuit to grow in grace, not near ability, grow in grace and grow in the knowledge of the Lord. You know, there's so many studies today, just two weeks ago in Time Magazine, I had about five or six pages on this, but there's many, many, many studies on longevity because people are living longer today and people want to know what is science finding out about longevity because people are living now into the 80s and 90s, which a century ago was very rare.

It happened, was very rare. At the turn of the 20th century, get this, the average age was 48. Now it's 76. But there has been a lot done in the study of the body and the mind as you age. Here's what they all conclude.

You've got to exercise the body and the mind. You gotta use the mind. But do you know what many people are doing? They're checking out in front of the greatest time-wasting machine in the whole world. It's called television.

It's a waste of your brain of this wonderful organ God has given you, which can do much more than you think. You all give up. Oh, I could never learn Greek. Oh, I'd never learn an instrument. What cowards we are.

It has tremendous powers if you will use it. Lose it or use it. God wants you to use your brain in the things of God. He wants you to use your spirit to expand yourself in serving the Lord and your faith to grow, that's his will for you. Someone has written this, leaders need to model growth, encourage it, praise it.

People are to be like trees that grow their entire lives. There's no such thing as a full grown tree. The day a tree stops growing, it dies. And so what I said to you earlier is when you're through and proving, you're through, you're through. Hebrews five, this is a serious warning.

Hebrews five, 11 and 12, very serious passage of scripture, we need to preach on this more. About this, that's the high priestly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have much to say, and it's hard to explain. Verse 11. Since you have become dull of hearing, that ought to frighten the pants off you. For though By this time you ought to be teachers.

You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk and not solid food. Here is a serious warning about the refusal to grow as a believer. If you are not growing as a believer, you are becoming more and more dull of hearing the things of God, and you have to go back to the very elementary principles of the faith, because you can't handle divine truth. You're either growing or stagnating.

You're not standing still. And you will go back much faster than you think. Your heart will become cold. You can fake it. You'll do pretty good on Sunday morning, but down deep you don't really have much love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

I was talking to a missionary, 50 some years in South America, wonderful missionary, just died recently, and we were having lunch together, and I said to him, I said, brother, we've just come out with biblical eldership in Spanish. He had read it in English, and he started laughing. I said, what are you laughing about? He said, they will never read that in a thousand years. They will not read that.

They do not read. None of them are growing, none of them are changing, no one is pressing forward. That's why I have now focused on university students and college students, our only hope in South America, that we get them when they're young and we turn their eyes onto the Christian faith and to grow and mature and learn. Friend of mine did biblical eldership in the workbooks at his own personal cause in the Czech Republic. Tried to sell it, no one would buy a single copy.

Had a big Easter conference, he held it out in the back, free. You can have it free. One copy was taken. My friends, that's all over the world. That's all over the world.

Christians who will not read, they refuse to grow. They're happy and they're self-satisfied. And someone said, there is no hope for the self-satisfied man. There is no hope for the self-satisfied man. You're either growing daily or you are going backward.

You are growing cold. You are becoming dull of hearing the things of God. And so we've got to go over the basics again. You're not moving on to maturity. We have to give you milk.

We can't give you solid food because you can't take it. Isn't it amazing? Well, let me deal with that in a moment. All right, so let's look, let's look here now at how do we grow, how do we grow? My time is short, and so I need to just pick up a little speed here.

Brother Scott, can I have five extra minutes? We're on the Day of Grace. There's no question about it here. All right, practical ideas for growing. I've told you to grow, you agree, but how do we do it?

All right, number one, pray for desire to grow and mature. Now why would you pray for desire to grow and mature? It's obvious, right? No, it's not, here's why. Since the time of the fall, when Adam and Eve fell, spiritual things became very difficult.

Let me give an example. Most of you here, I don't know what your football team is, ours is Denver Broncos, they will watch four hours of the Denver Broncos, right? Four hours, no problem. Do you know a Christian who can read the Bible for four hours? Or pray for more than 20 minutes?

Why is it that when We sit down with the very words of God and we start reading, we go, oh, I'm so tired. Oh, my neck is really, oh, it's really hurting now and I think my eyes are bleeding. You know, we do 10, 15 minutes and we're done. We're done, we go, okay, I've had enough. You know why?

I'm gonna tell you why. Because since the fall, spiritual things are difficult, and so we are spiritually lazy. People can read a novel. I see Christians read a novel a month. They don't read a book of the Bible a month.

I see Christians who can spend hours watching movies. They can tell you all the newest movies are puttering on the internet. That'll get you in trouble. But have no time for God. And when they do things for God, it's maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes and they're done, they're exhausted.

Spiritual things are difficult for us since the time of the fall. And Adam and Eve went hiding from God and we've been hiding ever since. And so we need to pray that God will stir our interest by his Spirit to learn divine things, holy things, eternal things, to have an interest in doctrine, an interest in the Bible, interest in reading, interest in prayer. By the way, society thing, This is why we have Bible studies and prayer meetings. Most of us can't do this alone.

But if we go to a Bible study, we're sort of forced into study. If we go to a prayer meeting, we're forced into prayer. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. Nothing wrong with that. So I see my wife spending hours preparing for Bible study on Thursday, and my daughters spending hours.

That normally they will not do that. Spiritual as they are, let's be honest, they'll do a little bit, but they're not doing as much. Why? Bible study demands it. So Bible studies, prayer times, these are good things that sort of cast us into a greater study.

Now we talked about 40 years of age. Here's another quote about 40 years of age. I hope you're not 40 years of age, you've been picked on. Oswald Chambers, my utmost for our highest, writes this. Very similar to Bobby Clinton's thing.

A great fear has been at work in my mind. A great fear has been at work in my mind, and God has used it to arouse me to prayer. Our point here. I came across a man whom I knew years ago, a mighty man of God, and now 10 years have gone, I meet him again, garrulous and unenlivened. How many men seem to become like that after 40 years of age?

The fear of sloth and indulgence has come home with a huge fear and fairly driven me to God to keep me never to forget what I owe him. Alright, next, protect your prayer life. Protect your prayer life. My dear friends, the first thing to go in a busy life is prayer. I know that.

I struggled with that myself. We're busy, busy, busy, and we've got many responsibilities. And we just have no time for prayer. But prayer is our communion with the Lord. It's our time to speak with him and he loves it when we just come into his presence and speak because he's opened a bold and new way that we can come with confidence 24 hours a day.

The Lord loves it when we speak to him. And when we don't speak to him, Well it hurts our fellowship. You imagine I go home, I've been gone for a number of weeks and I get home to my wife and say hi. Gotta go upstairs, I got a lot of do, I got a lot of phone calls to do right now, a bunch of things. What do you think my wife Marilyn would think?

She'd say, what's wrong with that guy? I'm gonna have to clip his ears or something. I don't talk to her. What do you think the Lord feels when we don't talk to him? We're busy.

We're even busy for him. Well, remember what he said to Mary and Martha. Martha, Martha, you are busy and distracted by So many things. You know, sociologists tell us we live in the age of distractions. Never in human history has there been so many distractions.

We've got television, we've got the internet, we've got football, we've got sports, we've got, it's just almost endless to distract us and do this and we do that. But one thing is necessary. One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen that good portion. It'll never be taken from her, and that's sitting at Jesus' feet.

Not sitting at the TV set. Next, protect your Bible reading time. Your Bible reading time. Let's be Bereans. We examine the Scriptures.

So I've given you a message today. Check it out. Often when I've spoken in our own church, I tell people, just because I say it doesn't make it true. You're responsible to check it out. Look in the scriptures yourself.

Don't be a dummy. Don't be dull of hearing. You should praise the scriptures. Outside the giving of his own son for our salvation, the greatest second gift God has given us is his word. The very words of God are in our hands.

It is the tool for growth, maturing, and going forward. The Bible will challenge you unlike any other book. If you will read it slowly and in a meditative way, you will be challenged every time you read it, and you will either be sanctified by it, which is its purpose, or you are gonna be turned off by it, because it goes right to the center of your heart. It tells you like it is. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Let the word of Christ dwell deeply and take up its abode in you richly, Colossians 3.16. And then that wonderful verse again, Luke 10.42, I hope you won't forget it. But one thing is necessary, Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. Spending time at the feet of the Lord Jesus just listening to his words. Then read significant books, books like Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Atonement and Justifications, Romans 3, 21 to 421, John Stump, the Cross, these are significant, significant books.

And there are many others, there's books over there. Significant books by brothers and sisters who have grown and are way advanced to us in maturity. And we can learn a lot from them. And then listen to audio messages. I'm going to make a confession to you.

And my confession is this. I was actually a tape-a-holic. I'm sorry. For much of my life, we used to have the little cassettes. We didn't even have them in the car in those days.

I had a tape recorder. It is a miracle I've not been killed in a car. I put my tape recorder there. I've listened to thousands of hours of Bible teaching by great preachers. I've learned so much by listening to audio messages.

Now we have podcasts today. I'm really encouraged, the men in our church, when you're in the car don't just be looking for the police. Listen to the word of God preached. Of course they're so guilty they're always looking for the police. Go to good conferences.

Conferences like this, years ago, was the way Christians met each other. And it was very important, conferencing. It's also a way to get a good wife or a husband that way. Meet other young people. Go to conferences.

Go as a group. It's a great fellowship together. You seem to get more out of just being together with each other in the conference. Oh, many more things to say here. Let me just close with this.

Be really concerned about your ongoing education as a Christian. Now we got these lovely, lovely young people down here, and they've been paying attention, they really have. Have any of you gone to sleep? Did you go to sleep? I see a lot of those older people, they're going to sleep, but you're not going to sleep, that's good.

We expect these young people to grow, don't we? We'd be very disappointed if their mom and dad didn't teach them. They've got a lot to learn. Why is it that we stop learning? Good doctors, I have a very good doctor for 30 years, very close friend.

The reason he's such a good doctor, he's always reading the literature, goes to conferences. He's not just resting what he learned 45 years ago in medical school. I like him because he's up on the latest literature. He's growing all the time. If you're a good musician, you're learning all the time to expand your music.

Why as Christians do we stop growing? Why do we stop learning? Why do we not even care that we're the same old, same old for three, four decades? In fact, we sort of resist growth. We resist new things.

We resist hearing what we should be doing. New vision for the church. You're either growing, learning, Expanding your heart and mind, or you're just maintaining, but the Lord doesn't allow it. You're going backward, you're going backward. The Lord Jesus even said, to those who have, more will be given, to those who don't have will be taken away.

I've actually seen it. Brothers at one time where men strung in the word and leaders and they backed off and it seems like they went way back. They hardly even remember those verses anymore. Don't have much to say about the Lord. So there is deep responsibility with divine truth.

If you're handling divine truth, there's responsibility to it. The more light you get, the more responsible you are. And the Lord wants to add more. He's not stingy. Remember what James says, if you lack wisdom, ask of God, it'll give it to you abundantly.

So ask for more. Say you're not satisfied, you wanna know the word more. You wanna have greater faith, greater prayers, greater wisdom in dealing with people. The Lord will give it to you. Let's pray.

Lord, help us to be growing Christians, excited Christians about our faith and about the Word, Christians that are expanding, deepening, maturing, going forward, greater vision for the world, greater understanding of divine truth, greater wisdom and heart and mind. We need your help because this is not natural to us. Divine matters are difficult for us. Worldly matters are easy and pleasant. Give us a heart to grow.

Give us a heart that wants to be more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ. To these ends we ask your help. Amen.