The Necessity of Growth
To our beloved partners, I trust this letter finds you doing well and flourishing in God. I hope that you know that you are loved by God and that you have someone else in the earth realm that is praying for your success! I am so excited about the vision that God has given us for the Kingdom of God and specifically KCC. It has been impressed on my heart in recent days to remind believers to “keep growing.” We should never find ourselves content with a lack of progress in our lives. Growth is a crucial element for life satisfaction and peace. All throughout my development first as a businessman, then Pastor/visionary, I have never been content with having “nothing else to do.” I tend to think that once we stop increasing, we begin to decrease. Hear what the Word of the Lord has to say about God’s plan for us pertaining to “increasing and not decreasing.”
Jeremiah 30:19 (NKJV) - Then out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of those who make merry; I will multiply them, and they shall not diminish; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small.
Notice that God says concerning His people that He will “multiply them and they shall not diminish.” He goes on to say that His people will be glorified and “they shall not be small.” Now, to me this is an excellent promise to believers everywhere. We are not to decline; we are to incline in every area of our lives! We must realize that God’s plan is that we are “ever increasing”, this means that there should never be a time when the focus is on decreasing. As an asterisk, don’t feel bad when you’re growing in God and as a result you decrease in wrong relationships. I believe that a big part of “next level living”is to understand that everyone won’t be able to go higher with you as you progress in God. I started learning to play the piano when I was a child, I had a sweet older lady teaching me at the time how to play by music score. She was an excellent theory teacher. As I grew in my craft, she began to realize that the lessons that I would need as a musician playing by ear would be beyond what she could teach. I had outgrown the simple lessons of theory and needed more in the bucket of developing my talent of playing by ear. There would be times in our music lessons by which my teacher would play a song based on the score sheet and I’d then sit down and play the entire song by ear not needing the sheet music and she would simply laugh as to acknowledge the growth she was seeing in me. On one faithful day she knew that it was time to promote me to a different teacher for who I had become, I had outgrown just theory and needed someone to help me in the more complex areas of musicianship. This is not about getting rid of teachers, because for most of us our teachers are for life. However, in life, growth will cause you to progress, and you’ve got to make sure that the people around you, especially peers, are growing lock stead with you. Never sacrifice growth to keep a temporary relationship, always seek better in life, because God desires a return on His investment in you. Hear the Word of the Lord concerning how God views progress or lack thereof:
Luke 12:43-44 The Passion Translation (TPT) - And whenever his master returns, he will find that his servant has served him well. I promise you, the master will reward him generously and he will be placed as an overseer of everything he owns.
The passage above depicts the fact that your growth in God “will be rewarded.” The Word of God declares that when our Master finds out that we have served him well, He will reward us generously and place us over everything He owns. Folks, this is promotion! God is into promotion; He is into elevation and when you are faithful to serve Him on one platform He will elevate you into another. Here are 3 points relative to growth on what I believe God looks at before He decides to promote an individual:
1. Humility and Teachability - easily corrected and aligned
2. Passion - a drive to serve God well
3. Faithfulness - a continuous pattern of good works both in season and out of season
I have found that in all of my dealings with God, the above formula has always led me to success, and this will work for you as well. Always aspire to do things “God’s way.” I believe that people who may even make a mistake trying to serve the Lord with gladness will often get a pass because their heart was perfect towards Him. The Word of God says, “he gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Humility is not something that you just are, humility is something that you continue to strive to be everyday of your life. Don’t ask God to humble you. Humble yourselves under His mighty hand and He will exalt you! God loves you today, partner and so do I. I pray that your continued growth causes you to win in every area of your life!
Just as a quick reminder, we are coming into our capital campaign season. Let’s grow as a ministry and add significantly to our project account! We are not going to stop growing as a church. Last year we cut the tape on our Grace House and we successfully paid off our campus! It’s time for us to progress in developing our ministry via more buildings, acquisitions, and television outreaches. We met recently with our Architect and Engineers and our ability to build more “multipurpose spaces” on our current campus is very promising. Design work is being completed now and more feasibility studies are underway. Pray about being a significant blessing to the ministry. We’ve always managed resources with great integrity and over 15 years of growth, this has been shown consistently. Kingdom Christian Church is “good ground”. Take full advantage of your opportunity to harvest by sowing into this ministry. Please know that I am so very grateful for your continued love and support for the ministry.
God Bless You,
Pastor Gabe