Thought to Ponder (Cont.):
The scripture reference that I remembered was, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” Matthew 5:48. The sermon on that day was to encourage us to be perfect and blameless before God. Other references were Genesis 6:9, Job 1:1, and I Kings 15:14. All of these references speak about people who were blameless because they walked with the Lord and had a personal relationship with him.
James 3:2 speaks about the perfection of man as being someone who in never at fault in what he says. Now, I don’t know about you, but I need to constantly repent for some of the things I say or think because they are not thoughts or speech that edify and build up. Through that repentance I can reach towards my goal of becoming a Godly woman and become perfect and blameless in the eyes of my Lord.
We should have Christ as our goal of perfection. The definition of “perfection” I use is that it is a process “to bring to full maturity.” Moreover, we can attain that perfection through a personal relationship with Christ by “confess (ing) our sins, and he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” I John 1:8-9. With Christ as our guide we can reach the perfection of maturity in our faith and can “purify ourselves form every thing that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” II Corinthians 7:1. We should not “conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of (our) mind(s)” Romans 12:2, which can be done by keeping Christ as our focus and continuing to be perfected by his life as we discard who we used to be.
God wants the church to be unified through the perfection of maturity, but that is very difficult to attain because everyone is at different levels in their growth. For this reason, “he gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” Ephesians 4:11-13. When we reach a point when we let God be in control of our lives, he can use us to help to mature the Church to do his works.
neumatikos 