There are a number of techniques people use to keep from repenting from their sins. We want to look at some of those today and see how easy it is to excuse our behaviour and keep on sinning against our holy God.

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What is the purpose of assembling? There are two reasons we find in Hebrews 10:23-25. We are to hold fast the confession of our hope and we are to encourage one another to love and good works.

Self-control is not a pleasant concept. It means controlling ourselves to do things we do not want to do and to not do things that we do want to do. We talk about it in relation to fornication and drinking. But there are some areas in our life where many of us do not want to think about the need to control ourselves.

God has a plan for every Christian to grow continually through our lives. In the parable of the sower, we find that if we do not bear fruit, we are not good soil and we will not go to heaven. We must grow and produce fruit. How can we do that?

I want to look at three proverbs that deal with the issue of maturity. They do not deal with the subject directly, but certainly they are speaking about some things that really require maturity.

While edification is for the purpose of growing the church spiritually, evangelism is how the church grows numerically. How can the church evangelize?

Obviously, to evangelize, the church must be preaching and teaching the gospel. But there are some factors that influence the response of those hearing the gospel.

How can a congregation work to edify its members? Romans 15:1-7 shows that edification is something that is done by each member, working together in one church. This is very connected with what we talked about under unity — we don’t do what we want, we do what our brethren want when we see that it will edify them. The end result of that edification is unity and glorifying God. 1 Corinthians 8:1 tells us that it takes love to edify. We have to focus on other people, not ourselves.

When the church began, as we read in Acts 2, we find that God was adding daily those who were being saved. How did people come to be saved? They heard the preaching of the gospel and obeyed it. It has always been the responsibility of the people of God to teach others the truth. This is a responsibility for each Christian (as part of the universal church) and a responsibility for the local church.

Simply defined for our purposes, edification is the building up of the body of Christ. It is clear that edification is a work that Christ demands from His church as a whole. In this article, we look at some examples to hopefully get a clear understanding of what it means.