In his sermon 'Targeting Growth,' Jason Dohm emphasizes the importance of continual spiritual growth for Christians, aligning with the biblical call to 'grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.' He critiques the common practice of making New Year's resolutions, noting their frequent failure, and encourages believers to focus on daily progress and intentional growth throughout the year. Dohm draws from scriptures, including 2 Peter 3:18 and 1 Thessalonians, to highlight that Christian growth is a discipleship ethic, characterized by abounding and increasing in love and other virtues. He contrasts this with secular self-improvement methods, stressing that without Jesus, true growth is impossible. The sermon further explores the parable of the soils from Matthew 13 to illustrate the necessity of spiritual fruitfulness. Practical tips for growth include starting with thanksgiving, targeting specific areas for improvement, and maintaining a consistent connection with Jesus. Dohm advises against overwhelming resolutions, advocating for steady progress and a deeper appetite for God.

The title of the message this morning very fittingly for day approaching New Year's Day is Targeting Growth. Anybody targeting growth? I'm targeting growth. You probably are too in some ways. Second Peter 3, 18 says this, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Grow in grace, grow in knowledge of Jesus. So the Christian calling is growth. So if you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, it must be your aim to keep moving forward and to make progress. I don't think I'm on controversial ground yet. I might get there, but I'm not starting there.

If you follow Jesus, it must be your aim to keep moving forward and to make progress. And around January 1st is the natural time to think about making progress and to resolve to make changes that we need to make. If you think about that much, it will occur to you how silly that is. In other words, if there was something that was worthy of progress, why in the world would you wait until January the 1st to dive in and make progress? But in another way, it's a very natural opportunity to come to these natural checkpoints in your life like a birthday or January 1st and to take inventory at those significant times and to resolve to make progress.

Now, are Christians the only ones who are doing this? No way. Most people are doing this. And a study of gym memberships lets us know that New Year's resolutions are fraught with pitfalls and failure. So gym owners love the very last few days of December and the very first few days of January because of all the year they won't have more signups than they will in that one week period of time.

And the second time of the year that they like is mid to late February where none of the people who signed up ever come back but they keep paying. Okay so Most sign ups end of the year or the very beginning of the year and then at the end of February they stop being so busy because we stop going to the gym. That's true. So I want to just take time as we come to New Year's day to consider these things and how we can not be like the gym members, the gym joiners, those who are joining gyms over the coming week, but we can actually do a good job of taking inventory and identifying things in our lives that need to change and move forward to make progress. So let's ask the Lord to help us.

God, there are some of us here in this room who have gray hair, been through many cycles of this and have had many, many false starts and much, very temporary progress. It makes us in some ways want to forget about the whole thing. But Christians are people who see the need to make progress and who press forward and I I pray that you would just help us today to know how we can target good things and grow. Pray in Jesus' name, amen. Just listen to 1 Thessalonians.

I'm gonna read a sprinkling of verses from 1 Thessalonians. This is Paul writing to a new-ish church. He says this at the very beginning, this is 1 Thessalonians 1 verses 2 and 3, we give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father. So he starts the letter and he's describing of them, and here's how he describes them. They have work that's flowing from their faith, and they have labor that's flowing from their love, and they have patience that's flowing from their hope.

How would you like to be described that way? I'm a buyer there. I would love to be described that way. And yet when you get to chapter 3, he says this, chapter 3 verse 12, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all just as we do to you. So on one hand, he describes them very well, a description that you would absolutely embrace, someone describing you that way, and yet by chapter 3 he's calling for an increase and for abounding.

Then chapter 4 verses 1 & 2. Finally, then brethren we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God. So the walk is patterns of life. That's how Paul uses it in his letters. It's everywhere.

Walk this way, meaning cultivate patterns of life that are like this. And so he's saying there are patterns of life that please God And you should abound more and more. So I think what did the kids say? There are levels to this. There are levels to this.

You have certain things established in your life, but you're nowhere near the ultimate version of it. So you can say you're doing well and yet call for increase and abounding more and more. Paul is doing that. Just finishing chapter four verses nine and ten, it's really more of the same. But concerning brotherly love, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another, and indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in Macedonia, but we urge you brethren that you increase more and more.

So I don't need to teach you from the ground up brotherly love you know you're supposed to love each other you know how to love each other now increase more and more. So you have these words, abound and increase and more and more. This goes to the fact that growth is the discipleship ethic. So if you look on your handout, you're looking at this three-point outline. I'm a good Baptist preacher today.

I have three points. Point number one is growth is the discipleship ethic. Ethic fills in the blank. What is a disciple? A disciple is a pupil or a student or a learner or a follower.

There's a master and the disciple is the student of the master. And it's a relationship where you walk around with the Master to observe the Master and to become like the Master. You're the student of the Master. What's an ethic? It's a moral principle.

So a core moral principle of being a follower of Jesus is growth, is abounding and increasing and understanding that there are levels to this and thinking about more and more. Yes, we have good things that God has been establishing in our lives, but we're nowhere near the ultimate version of that, so we target growth. Matthew 13, Jesus gives us the parable of the seeds, or the parable of the soil. Sometimes it's called the parable of the seeds because a sower goes out and sows any scattering seeds. Sometimes it's called the parable of the soils because there are four different kinds of soils and you get four different, very different results from planting the seeds in those four kinds of soils.

In the end, only one soil proves to be fruitful and that is the genuine Christian. Listen to sort of the summary of the matter about this fourth soil that is a genuine believer and you know that because of fruitfulness. This is Matthew 13 verse 23, but he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it who indeed bears fruit and produces some a hundredfold some 60 some 30 so of the four soils the first three in the final analysis don't bear fruit for different reasons, different things. Choke out growth and you end up unfruitful, But then you have this soil of one who receives the seed and it actually grows and bears fruit, sometimes 100 times fruitfulness, sometimes 60, sometimes 30. By the way, if you ask an average farmer, how would you like a 30-fold crop?

He would sign up for it today. That's a good crop. J.C. Ryle looks at Matthew 13 and says that based on this, Christians should take the opportunity at every birthday, he doesn't think you should let one birthday pass, and the beginning of every new year, he doesn't think you should let one new year pass without targeting increased fruitfulness. Meaning if you can discern a 30-fold fruitfulness in your life, you should be targeting 60-fold.

And if you can discern 60-fold fruitfulness in your life, you should be targeting a hundred-fold. And that thought should occur to you on every one of your birthdays, on every January 1st, because it's a natural time to take inventory of the work that God has been doing in your life and to ask him for more, to bleed with God, give you more fruitfulness in your life. Now law keeping, what do you think of when I say law keeping? Law keeping can sound stern and gloomy. Am I the only one?

Law keeping. It sounds like it should be said by James Earl Jones in a very deep voice, you know, law keeping. But try this one on for size. Christlikeness. You like that better?

I do like that better, but you understand they're the same thing. They're the same thing. Love is a summary of the law. And nobody ever loved or does love or will love like Jesus. And he was the perfect example of loving and keeping the law, loving which is keeping the law when he lived here among us.

So When I read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it's exhilarating. It's inspiring. And I say, I need more of that and I want more of that in my life. Don't you, when you read the Gospel, say, I need more of that, I want more of that. And as I look at Jesus needing to be more like that and wanting to be more like that, I find that there is a very open field for progress.

Meaning I have a really long way to go. I've been a believer for 45 years and I can't even see the finish line, okay, in being like Jesus. So it's not like I Just a little tweak here and a little tweak there, and I will have arrived. The playing field looks essentially infinite in terms of making progress and growing. I hope you feel the same way.

You probably don't understand Jesus very well if you don't feel the same way. What we're saying when we see Jesus and are exhilarated and inspired by what we see in the Gospels is that we need to make progress and we want to make progress. So that's how a disciple should feel. That's how a follower of the Master, Jesus being the master, a student of the master who walks with him to observe him and to learn what we are to become, that's how we should feel. So good job disciple if you read the Gospels and say that.

So that's number one. Growth is the discipleship ethic. That's the key moral principle for people who have trusted in Jesus. Two, Without God we can do nothing and nothing fills in the blank. I want to go to John 15.

This would be a longer reading. You can go there if you'd like or you can just listen. In John 15, this is the vine in the branches passage. In John 15, I'm gonna be reading one through five and then skipping to eight. Just to stay focused on the things I'm talking about today.

John 15, one through five and then eight. Jesus says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that bears fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit you are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing. Verse 8, by this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit. So you will be my disciples. You're a follower of Jesus in the bearing of much fruit by abiding in the vine being pruned by the vinedresser.

This is what separates us from those who go to Tony Robbins or Jocko or James Clear. You might not know any of those. They're the motivational people in the secular world who you go to to learn how to make progress. Tony Robbins is, for those of us who are old, do you remember Tony Robbins? He's a devastatingly handsome man who has spent more than his fair share of time in the gym and he has very inspiring things to say and he can tell you how to get on top of things that you need to get on top of in your life.

As it turns out, as the decades have gone by, his devastating good looks are part of the mystique and part of the reason why one would kind of look to him because he's sort of the model human as we conceive it, okay, and it's getting harder for him to sort of keep up the mystique as he just gets old like the rest of us are getting old. The younger folks probably are more likely to know Jaco, the former Navy Seal. He has a last name. He's not hiding his last name, but it's not needed. He's one of those guys who doesn't even need a last name.

He's just Jaco. And because he's a Navy seal, he can sort of bend life to his iron will. So he's got tips for how to bend the life to your will. Can these guys and their counsel help you make progress? Sure, sure, in certain ways.

Tony Robbins has tips that can help you in certain ways. Jocko has a message of like getting on it and so sometimes we just need to be told stop delaying, stop planning, stop thinking, like get moving. Sometimes we do need to hear that message. But if that's the sum total of your plans to grow and make progress, you're going to get crushed. You understand that.

Or James Clear. So if Tony Robbins is for the old people and Jaco is for the young people, James Clear is for the nerds. James Clear is sort of for me. He's written Atomic Habits and he'll tell you the pro tips for how to break bad habits and establish good habits. And actually, I think he's knocked off a lot from the Proverbs, actually, without attributing to God, the wisdom that is God's wisdom.

John 15 is a completely different kind of way to make progress. And trying to emulate the stunningly good looking human that we think of as the model person. Of as the model person, okay, or the former Navy SEAL who can bend life to his iron will, or the nerdy motivator who can give you pro tips on how to break the old habits and establish the new ones. I want to draw three things out of John 15 that are distinctively Christian and absolutely needful to not just have another year of false starts and temporary progress. Okay, number one, Christians have a master vine dresser who prunes every fruit bearing branch that it may bear more fruit.

That's exactly what it says in verse five. So, Tony Robbins doesn't know about this, Jaco doesn't know about this, James Clear doesn't know about this, all Christians know about this. They have a master vine dresser who is targeting fruit in their lives and is taking these branches that are fruitful to a greater or lesser degree and like a master vine dresser, pruning in just the right way to get more fruitfulness. By the way, This can be painful. This can be uncomfortable.

Pruning, okay, if you're the subject of the pruning it means things are getting clipped off that need to get clipped off to bear more fruit. But the master vinedresser loves the branches. Okay, so he's doing it for the good and the fruitfulness of the branches. Number two, Abiding in Jesus is the key to bearing much fruit. This is also verse five.

Abiding in Jesus. What does it mean to abide in Jesus? That could be the subject of a full length sermon, but we're not doing that today. I'll just say it has to do with an ongoing lively connection to Jesus Christ. Ongoing, so not a good day, not a good week, not a good month, but ongoing.

Endless lively connection. This is abiding in the vine. So if we just take another New Testament analogy and say, he's a good shepherd, it's not kicking against the shepherding of the shepherd. Embracing the shepherding of the shepherd, abiding in the vine. Paul talks about grieving the Holy Spirit in one place and quenching the Holy Spirit in another place, we would say those things greatly affects that connection.

So if over here is abiding in Jesus, having this ongoing lively connection, over here on the other end of that line is grieving the Spirit and quenching the Spirit, resisting the work of God in your life. So To grow, if we're targeting growth, we should cultivate and nurture this abiding in Jesus through fellowship and obedience. Abiding in Jesus, Fellowship, connection to the sap. We need sap flowing through the branch to help us grow. Fellowship and obedience.

Embracing The shepherding of the shepherd. Not doing the things that would grieve the spirit, quench the Holy Spirit. Number One was Christians have a master vine dresser who prunes every fruit-bearing branch that it may bear more fruit. Number two was abiding in Jesus is the key to bearing much fruit. Number three, this is the third thing to pull out of John 15, without Jesus we can do nothing.

That's also in verse 5. That is literally true. Oh well, I mean I can get up without Jesus. Oh really? John 1 says, all things were made through him.

Without him, nothing was made that was made. So you're not breathing a breath if Jesus doesn't give it to you today. Colossians 1 says, all things were made by him, and through him, and for Him. So it's literally true that without Him you can do nothing, but it's especially true of anything and everything that has eternal significance. If you're going to undertake any single thing that has eternal significance, that lasts and is sustained, it will be because you're abiding in Jesus.

Without Jesus, we can do nothing. So friends, we should orient ourselves to that truth and do whatever we can to keep it top of mind. You know there are things that are true that you don't think of but from one month end to another. Doesn't mean it's not true, You just never think of it. This is one that we absolutely should keep top of mind.

I can't do anything without Jesus. I can't do anything without Jesus. I can't do anything without Jesus. You would be well served to wake up in the morning and think, I can't do anything today without Jesus. What does it look like to keep the thought that without Jesus we can do nothing top of mind?

Looks like this. Consciously seeking Him for growth and progress. Consciously, meaning intentionally. One of the things said at men's Bible study, I probably won't get the quote exactly right, but intentionality is good. No one drifts into Christlikeness.

If you drift, you drift away from Christlikeness. So if you just set your boat afloat on the river and just let the river carry you, you're going to get further and further and further and further away from Christlikeness. You're going to have to paddle upstream to get to Christlikeness. That is how it works. Consciously seeking Jesus for growth and progress.

Ask Him for it. Seek, knock. It looks like prayer. To plead with God for progress. When was the last time you felt like you did that?

You didn't ask him for progress. You begged him for progress. You pleaded with him for progress. You were sort of like Jacob, wrapping your arms around his knees. I will not let you go unless you bless me.

What was the last time you did that? I know our little tepid prayers, oh God, help me to be a better me. Okay, I know all about that. That's not what I'm talking about. What was the last time you earnestly wrestled with God that he would give you progress?

Here's the question. What if we targeted the right things for growth and progress? That's an important piece, like targeting the right things. Well what if we did target the right things and then persistently prayed to Jesus for those things? What do you think would happen?

You think you'd have more progress than you've had in the last year or less? Let me give you the profile of two growth seekers. This is an interesting case study, I think. So the profile of two growth seekers, Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards, they actually lived much the same time. Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706, lived to 1790, so he had a long life.

During that period of time, you make it to 84 years old you have done something. He did something. In his youth he developed 13 personal virtues And it was explicitly for the seeking of moral perfection. So that's what he said. These are for that.

Okay, these 13 personal virtues are to pursue moral perfection. So he outlined what he thought would take him there and then he pursued those 13 personal virtues and The objective was moral perfection. Each virtue had a tagline that described what he was after. Here's an example. The first of the 13 moral virtues was temperance and the tagline was eat not to dullness Drink not to elevation Don't eat too much.

Don't drink too much if you eat too much It makes you dull and you can't pursue things if you drink too much okay, everybody knows what happens when you drink too much. I'm not talking about water here, okay, don't eat too much. Don't eat to dullness or drink to elevation. I here are his 13 virtues. I won't give you all the taglines, but I'll give you the 13 virtues.

I'll go, you can Google this. This is easily Googleable, so you don't need to write feverishly to try to keep up with me while I run through 13. Temperance, silence, order, resolution. Here, let me give you the tagline for resolution. You'll love this.

Resolve to Perform what you ought. Okay, resolve. There are things that people should do. Resolve to do that. Perform without fail what you resolve.

Get fixed in your mind what's good to do and then always do quit. Next virtue, frugality, next industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility. Humility was the last one, it's number 13. Listen to the tagline. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Okay, so you can tell We're not tracking along the same lines as Benjamin Franklin. First of all, he thinks, well, just figure out what's good to do and then never fail to do it. Okay? No one who knows their Bible would write that. Okay?

That's not, just Figure out what's right to do. It's perfectly logical, okay, and perfectly inconsistent with all of our natures. I don't think the person who wants you to imitate Jesus in Socrates is the person we should be following here. So was he aiming at the right things? Well, he was aiming at good things like if you read each one of the virtues and the tagline, I think generally speaking you would say he was aiming at good things, but they're not the Ten Commandments.

Meaning, I'm not sure he was seeking God to define the things he should be pursuing growth in. He started with a clean sheet of paper and his own brain and went from there. And that's a terrible idea. I think maybe we should start with the Ten Commandments, what God says we should pursue. You would probably be aiming for the right things if we were aiming for those things.

What was his strategy? Okay, so he had a strategy. I got these 13 things, and I know I can't do them all at once. So I'm going to master the first one, and once I've mastered the first one, I'll have good habits. So that will just sort of click along as a matter of course, because I will have gotten on top of that one, then I'll move on to the next one.

And then so forth until I've finished the 13, and then I'll essentially be morally perfect. That makes you want to pat him on the head. You poor sweet child. You poor sweet child. He did find out that he had set himself on a fool's errand.

Did he achieve his objective? Did Benjamin Franklin achieve moral perfection? He was a great man in many ways. Every time we turn on the lights, we should give thanks for Benjamin Franklin. But He was not known for moral perfection.

If you read his biography, you say, yeah, he was a long ways off, a long ways off. Now, Jonathan Edwards, born just a few years before Ben Franklin. Jonathan Edwards was born in 1703, died in 1758, so he only lived to 55. He had a shorter life. He is famous for his 70 resolutions.

Here were the categories, meaning we got 70. I'm not reading all 70, but if you put them in buckets here are the buckets that you get okay. Overall life mission let me give you an example on resolution number three resolved If ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these resolutions, to repent of all I can remember when I come to myself again. So we're already off to a way better start. He's already seeing there are going to be times, there are ebbs and flows to these things and there are going to be times where I have ebbed and I've fallen off of pursuing even the things that I've identified ought to be pursued.

When I wake up, when that happens and I wake up, I should repent of everything I know of and try to get back on track. You're already seeing a man who knows more of human nature as the Bible gives it to us. Another category, good works, another category, time management, relationships, suffering, character, spiritual life. By far the biggest category was spiritual life. Of the 70, 21 of them were in the spiritual life category.

Now, listen to his introduction to his resolutions. He headed them with this. So before any of the resolutions, you have this. Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God's help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions so far as they are agreeable to his will for Christ's sake." And here was a man who knew about the master vinedresser, about abiding in the vine, and that without Jesus he could do nothing. So there are two men and they're very different plans for growth.

One is worth emulating and one is not worth emulating. That was point two. Without God we can do nothing. Point three, some thoughts and practical tips. Many of these are born out of my own failures over the years to make New Year's resolutions and then to be like a gym joiner and to have already crashed and burned by mid to late February.

I'm going to give you seven thoughts and practical tips. Number one, start with Thanksgiving. Start with Thanksgiving. When you get into this mode, it is a self-evaluating mode, it's a self-critiquing mode, and you can pass by all the good things that God has done in your life and get right to self-critique. And that is sinful.

We ought to start by saying, God, before I target growth and progress, I just want to acknowledge I can see that I have grown and made progress maybe not as quickly as I wish I had but God I can see you've been at work thank you for not leaving me to myself and for helping yourself, and for helping me in a hundred different ways. We should both rest and Strive. They seem like mutually defeating things, like they're at war with each other, but the Bible actually doesn't position them that way. You can rest in Christ and be confident in what God has done for you, confident in what God has made you by His grace, and yet strive for growth and progress. So let's start here.

God, you have been working in my life. I see marks of your faithfulness, okay? Thank you. So now I'm gonna seek you for more. I wanna go further.

Number two, after you've been thankful, target growth prayerfully and thoughtfully. I don't know the number, but if I knew the number, I would be ashamed to tell you the number of December 31st, I put together New Year's resolutions in 15 minutes. I don't like how this is going, so this. I don't like how that's going, so this. And no thought, no prayer, like 15 minutes, and okay, this is what I want to do over the next 365 days.

What kind of insanity is that? Target growth prayerfully. We should actually be laying these things before the Lord. God, would you show me how I should grow this year? Think, pray.

Don't have this be a 10 minute project where you chicken scratch some things down. That might be worse than doing nothing. It's possible. Number three. So that was it.

Number two is lay this before the Lord. God, how do you want me to be more like your son this year? Number three, teapot not ocean. Most of us fail by trying to boil the ocean. Do you think that you can raise the ocean temp, no matter your heat source, the best you can come up with, you think you can raise the ocean temp a hundredth of one degree.

But you can boil a teapot, but you can't raise the ocean temp a hundredth of a degree with a millionth of what it takes to boil a teapot this is the point I'm trying to make with this one a teapot not ocean This has to do with the volume and quantity of things that you're planning to attack for growth Okay, it goes like this. I'm fixing everything this year Just like Ben Franklin, oh you poor sweet child Report back to me in mid to late February. No, you're not fixing everything this year. You're not boiling the ocean. So If you want to raise the temp, do something meaningful, you're actually going to have to be more targeted than that.

Number four, base hits, not home runs. Number three was teapot, not ocean. Number four is base hits not home runs. This is about expectations and speed. How far do you think you're gonna go with this one and how fast do you think you're gonna get there with this one it goes like this I'm in kindergarten and in this year I'm getting a PhD.

No, it's kindergarten, to grade school, to middle school, to high school, to undergrad, then you get your masters, then you get your PhD. There is no kindergarten to PhD curriculum. I love this from William Carey. William Carey is one of my heroes. He's known as the father of modern missions.

He went to India, made a tremendous impact in India. He said, I am a plodder. That's my genius. Now, when you read his biography, you would say, no, I think he's actually a real genius. The real kind.

All the languages he learned, all the translation work that he did, all the tremendous, but he didn't do himself that way at all. He just like day by day, progress every day, progress every day, base hit, base hit, base hit, base hit, base hit, base hit, base hit. He wasn't swinging for the fences. The home run hitters strike out a lot. Okay, if you're a baseball fan, you know this.

The home run hitters strike out a lot. If you're a baseball fan, you know this, the home run hitters strike out a lot. We'd be better off getting lots of base hits and being steady, and being a plotter like William Carey, and we look up one day and have actually made meaningful progress. Steady, slow and steady wins the race. Number five.

If we don't write it down, we're not serious. If you don't target specific things, that's not what target means, by the way. I have a target. I'm not writing it down, but I know you do not in fact have a target. If we don't write it down, we're not serious.

Jonathan Edwards wrote his down, but He said this, remember to read over these resolutions once a week. He just wanted to refresh, okay? Like I'm after this, I'm after this, I'm after this, I'm after this, I'm after this. Write it down. Write it down.

Keep the list short and keep the expectations for incremental progress and you can get to the end of the year and say, God did Meaningful things in my life this year. Number six. Remember the things that pull in the opposite direction. You know the options are actually worse than growth or nothing. You can actually go backwards.

Don't you wish the worst that could happen was steady state? No, that's way away from the worst that can happen. You can backslide. Let me read to you Hebrews 12, 1, and the first part of 2. Hebrews 12, 1, and 2.

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." So he ends there by saying, okay, look to Jesus in all this. This is abiding in the vine language, taking sap from the vine, the sap that you need from the vine language. Okay, look unto Jesus. But a part of this equation is laying aside weights and sin which easily ensnares us. So you can mean the best, target all the good things, okay, but there are things that pull in the other direction and if you don't identify them and give some attention to that, you'll find yourself not making progress.

Think of it like gardening. There are things to nurture and cultivate. Watering is part of gardening. Planting is part of gardening. Fertilizing is part of gardening.

But there are also plant killers. Okay, You better do something while you're watering and planting and fertilizing. You better think about the plant killers. There are insects that devour. Insects that devour and there are molds and spores, blights that kill whole crops.

What are the weights that will keep you from growing? What are the sins that you won't part with? They easily ensnare and sometimes we're happily ensnared. That is not an environment for progress. Number seven, I'll give you a close with this.

Connor put this on my radar. Men's Bible study. Jeff Johnson, out of a sermon by Jeff Johnson. The reason we don't have more God than we do is that we don't want more God than we have. God is so good and we're so easily satisfied that what I have is fine.

Maybe if we knew what it was like to have more of God we wouldn't think like that. Maybe we wouldn't be so easily satisfied if we knew the delights of God more. Include in your targeting of growth seeking more appetite for God. Now I didn't say what you thought I said. You thought I said include seeking more of God.

I didn't say that. I said seeking more appetite for God. If we have appetite, God's never the problem in the amount of God we are experiencing. That's probably a better way to say it. And there's not more of God or less of God, He's God.

You have all of Him or none of Him, depending on your disposition towards the Lord Jesus Christ. True. But we can experience more of the blessings of fellowship with God or less. Union with God doesn't wax and wane, but communion with God can greatly wax and wane. This is what we're talking about.

Seek more appetite for God. It's okay to cry out for hunger. It's good to cry out for hunger. God, I find myself so easily satisfied with what I have. Oh God, help me.

I know my experience of you is nowhere near what I could be experiencing if I laid aside every weight in the sin that so easily entangles. And if I really sought you earnestly, I know there would be more of you and I would find that I was tasting and seeing that you're so good, that you're like honey in the honeycomb. Make me hungry for that, God. Let's pray. God, the year is before us.

Some days, January 1st is like every other day in some ways it's not. As we're thinking about the year before us, I pray that you would Help us to lay these things before you. And then as we do, please speak to us. Please give us a compulsion about things that we need for growth and progress. Do thank you for your faithfulness.

Been so good. You haven't left us where we were. However, satisfied or dissatisfied with where we are now, we can look back and see you didn't leave us where we were. Thank you God for your faithfulness in Jesus name, amen.