Reading · Oakleaves | Grace Church Ojai

Newton’s first law of motion states that “an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.” In other words, a soccer ball will never move unless someone kicks it. People work the same way. We will not change anything until some external force pushes or motivates us to make a change. More often than not, that outside force comes in the form of suffering or discomfort.

Take, for instance, the posture you’re sitting in right now as you read this email. If you’re comfortable in your position, you’re unlikely to move. However, if your back begins to ache, or your leg goes numb, only then will you shift your posture to alleviate that discomfort. The principle applies to more significant matters of life as well. It’s often when we’re discontent with the state of our physical health that we’ll change our diet and sign up for a membership to the gym. It’s often when we’re discontent with the tension in our marriage that we’ll take the hard yet necessary steps to seek healing and reconciliation with our spouse.

Change hardly ever happens without some outside force motivating us to make those changes, and very often, that change comes in the form of discomfort, discontentment, or suffering.

In my email two weeks ago, I defined spiritual maturity as a lifelong process of growing more and more into Christlikeness, and argued that this process looks like growing in knowledge, holiness, worship, and mission. This, as I noted in that email, is a lifelong process that will never be complete this side of glory. My goal in this email is to encourage you to notice, pray for, and perhaps even seek to cultivate in yourself what many have called a “holy discontentment” with the current state of your spiritual maturity. In other words, to pray for the Lord to help us humbly see the areas of our spiritual life that still need to mature, and let this motivate us to strive after Christlikeness.

Here’s what that might look like in the areas of knowledge, holiness, worship, and mission:

Knowledge - A spiritually mature person knows God intimately and believes what is true. Are you content with your knowledge of the Lord, or do you long to know him and his word more deeply? Cultivating a healthy and holy discontent in this area means seeing where there might be gaps in your knowledge of God, and then, out of a deep desire to better know your bridegroom, seeking to grow in your knowledge of who he is, delighting in the fact that we will never get to the bottom of our bottomless God!
Holiness - A spiritually mature person seeks holiness, putting off the old self and putting on the new. Are you content with the lingering sins in your life, or are there sins you’re desperate to weed out? Cultivating a healthy and holy discontent in this area means not turning a blind eye to the wicked whispers of your heart, nor the vices still enslaving you, but hating them and, by the power of the Holy Spirit and with your church beside you, “put[ting] to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Col. 3:5).
Worship - A spiritually mature person delights in the goodness, truth, and beauty of his God. Are you content with your affection for the Lord, or do you long to have a deeper and sweeter intimacy with him? Cultivating a healthy and holy discontent in this area means crying out from the depths of our heart for “more of Jesus,” then ravenously seeking him through the ordinary means of grace (scripture, prayer, community, and sacrament).
Mission - A spiritually mature person longs and labors for the reaching of the lost and the discipleship of the saved. Are you content with the service you are rendering to the Lord’s commission, or is your heart burdened for the lost and immature? Cultivating a healthy and holy discontent in this area means seeing the fields white for harvest, and itching to put your hand to the plow. It will drive us to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24) until everyone is “present[ed]… mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).

So, are you content with your spiritual maturity? If the answer to that question is “yes,” you’re unlikely to continue to grow mature in Christ. My prayer for you and for our church is that we would be characterized by a holy discontent, longing together for more knowledge, striving together for lives of greater holiness, stirring one another up to deeper affection, and linking arms together as we strive to complete the great commission given to us all.

Quarterly Meeting: Please mark your calendars for Sunday, July 26. We will be having our quarterly congregational meeting right after the morning service.
Office Hours: The church office hours have changed. Instead of 9-1, they will now be 9 AM to 12 PM from Tuesday through Friday.
Service Opportunity: Looking for a way to serve? We’d love to have you join the music team! We are always looking to add singers and instrumentalists, and slide technicians, so please contact Ed White to get more info.

There will be no sermon questions this summer, as we encourage our small groups to take a break from meeting. This gives leaders a chance to rest, makes it easy for people to jump back in to small groups come fall, and, most importantly, frees up a little more time in your schedule to join us for some other summer community and discipleship opportunities. We’d love to see you at our events this summer. Keep your eyes open for those announcements!

Seeking a Holy & Healthy Discontentment

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