The foes of the spiritual life are distraction, complacency, and pride. Growth comes when we realize our need for personal growth and take responsibility for that maturing process.<\/p>\n
The Lord Jesus Christ has given Christians an incredible pattern of selfless humility, obedience to the Father, and sacrifice (2:6-11). His example can be followed. Paul did so and calls on believers to do the same.<\/p>\n
Paul commended past obedience and urges believers to \u201cwork out your salvation with fear and trembling.\u201d He did not say \u201cwork for your salvation.\u201d Observe Ephesians 2:8\u20139: \u201cFor it is by grace you have been saved, through faith\u2014and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God\u2014not by works, so that no one can boast.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Believers in Christ have been justified by grace and now Christians are called to self-activity, to the active pursuit of the will of God, to the promotion of the spiritual life in ourselves, to realization of the virtues of the Christian life, and to a personal application of salvation. We must \u2018work out\u2019 what God in His grace has \u2018worked in\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The foes of the spiritual life are distraction, complacency, and pride. Growth comes when we realize our need for personal growth and take responsibility for that maturing process. The Lord…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":8122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sermons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/star-trails-840357_1920.jpg?fit=1920%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9J9R0-272","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8126,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions\/8126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}