All of those who serve in the life of our church - paid or unpaid and in any capacity - are on what we call our S.E.R.V.E. Team. The letters in the acrostic S.E.R.V.E. outline for us the biblical values we strive to live out as a team of servants of the Lord Jesus in service to and for His church. In today's blog post, I am going to go over the first letter, S which stands for Spiritual Maturity in Christ.

In the golden chain of salvation, Paul says the following Romans 8:29, "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (emphasis mine). God is not just concerned with what we do, He is also concerned with who we are becoming. Our Heavenly Father desires and has destined us to become like Christ, and this will require us to know and grow in Jesus. 

This is why as the S.E.R.V.E. Team we are committed to sanctification first and service second. But this sanctification or growth in Jesus doesn't just happen by our mere strength or will power. We must be devoted to prayer, asking the Father to help us 1) to regularly digest the Bible (reading and studying the Scriptures personally and sitting under faithful preaching and teaching of the Scriptures), 2) to consciously depend on the Holy Spirit to empower us to believe and do what the Bible says, and 3) to humbly submit ourselves to the loving accountability of our local church family to that end. 

Remember, to serve like Jesus, we must become like Jesus.