Intro:
Dr. Paul W. Brand, the noted leprosy
expert who was chief of the rehabilitation
branch of the Leprosarium in Carville,
Lousiana, had a frightening experience
one night when he thought he had
contracted leprosy. Dr. Brand
arrived in London one night after
an exhausting transatlantic ocean
trip and long train ride from
the English coast. He was getting
ready for bed, had taken off his
shoes, and as he pulled off a
sock, discovered there was no
feeling in his heel. To most anyone
else this discovery would have
meant very little, a momentary
numbness. But Dr. Brand was world
famous for his restorative surgery
on lepers in India. He had convinced
himself and his staff at the leprosarium
that there was no danger of infection
from leprosy after it reached
a certain stage. The numbness
in his heel terrified him.
In her biography of Dr. Brand,
Ten Fingers for God, Dorothy Clarke
Wilson says, "He rose mechanically,
found a pin, sat down again, and
pricked the small area below his
ankle. He felt no pain. He thrust
the pin deeper, untila speck of
blood showed. Still he felt nothing...He
supposed, like other workers with
leprosy, he had always half expected
it...In the beginning probably
not a day had gone by without
the automatic searching of his
body for the telltale patch, the
numbed area of skin."
All that night the great orthopedic
surgeon tried to imagine his new
life as a leper, an outcast, his
medical staff’s
confidence in their immunity shattered
by his disaster. And the forced
separation from his family. As
night receded, he yielded to hope
and in the morning, with clinical
objectivity, "with steady
fingers he bared the skin below
his ankle, jabbed in the point--and
yelled."
Blessed was the sensation of pain!
He realized that during the long
train ride, sitting immobile,
he had numbed a nerve. From then
on, whenever Dr. Brand cut his
finger, turned an ankle, even
when he suffered from "agonizing
nausea as his whole body reacted
in violent self-protection from
mushroom poisoning, he was to
respond with fervent gratitude,
’Thank God for
pain!’"
Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Ten Fingers
for God, pp. 142-145.
Transition:
How do you respond to pain? Do
you try to avoid it, run from
it, deny it’s
presence? Many people try to get
as far away from pain as they
can, unaware that pain is not
always bad. As a child grows,
he or she will experience various
aches and pains which are known
as "growing pains."
It is in this process that bones
begin to grow and muscles and
tendons begin to stretch, and
as a result, we experience pain.
Just as we must all experience
physical growing pains, we will
experience spiritual growing pains
if we are to grow and mature in
Christ.
In our text today, we find 4 stages
of growth in the life of a Christian.
I. Stage One: Infant (teknion)
A. They Need Love
1. Love from God
2. Love from Parents
3. Love from Peers
B. They Need Protection
1. Protection from Satan
2. Protection from Doubts
3. Protection from Discouragment
C. They Need Nurturing
1. They need Attention
2. They need Feeding
3. They need Changing
II. Stage Two: Children (paidion)
A. They need Attention
B. They need Discipline
C. They need Accountability
D. They need Guidance
E. They need Models
III. Stage Three: Adolescents
(neaniskos)
A. They need to develop Strength
B. They need to develop Experience
C. They need to develop Responsibility
D. They need to develop Individuality
IV. Stage Four: Adult (pater)
A. They develop a closer walk
with God
B. They develop self-discipline
C. They develop spiritual gifts
Conclusion:
Wise men know their own ignorance
and are always ready to learn.
Humility is the child of knowledge.
Michelangelo was found by the
Cardinal Farnese walking in solitude
amid the ruins of the Coliseum
and when he expressed his surprise,
the great artist answered, "I
go yet to school that I may continue
to learn."
We need to learn from everything
around us. Every person we encounter
is able to teach us something, and
we would be very foolish not to
be able to learn from him. What
about you? What stage of growth
are you in at this time in your
life?
