Introduction

The Spirit of God gave us the Comprehensive Christian Planner (CCP) as a tool to help us to organize, coordinate and monitor our many activities that Believers may achieve spiritual maturity and a balanced life into a more perfect man.

Why is spiritual maturity and a balanced life so important to us as Believers? The answer is found in John 14:12 which states: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father (NIV).

Well now, Jesus answered the question; now the question becomes do you believe it? But Jesus’ answer did not stop with, “whoever believes in Me will do the works I have been doing…,” but He continued on by saying, “and they WILL DO even greater things than these . . .”

Let us identify two important aspects of what Jesus said: Who is the person, or persons that Jesus is referring to that will do the works that He has been doing? And the second point is that the Scriptures identified the many works that Jesus did.

Those people that Jesus are referring to are His Followers [Christians], and if you are a true Believer then He is talking about you, and to you. YOU CAN LITERALLY DO THE THINGS THAT JESUS DID.

Now, let us review some of the things Jesus did: He turned water into wine (John 2: 1-10); He healed the sick (Matt. 8: 1-3; Mark 1:40–45; and Luke 5:12–16); He walked on water (Matt. 14: 22-33; Mark 6:45-56); He raised the dead (Luke 7:11-17; 8:49-56; John 11:1-44).

While you are pondering these things and some of you have said to yourself and even spoken the words out of your mouth that “I can’t do these things. . .you expect me to do what Jesus did? You expect me to raise the dead? I can’t do that.” Ask yourself, why did Jesus believe and said you could do the works He did?

No, you cannot do these things, but the Spirit of God within you can do them through you-that is, if you believe, and exercise your faith. Jesus exercised faith in everything that He did, why shouldn’t you have to exercise your faith as well? You see, there were men of God who raised the dead before Jesus did; Elijah raised the dead (1 King 17:17 -24); Elisha raised the dead (2 kings 4:18-37). There were also men who raised the dead after Jesus was resurrected and went back to Heaven; Peter raised the dead (Acts 9:36-42); and Paul raised the dead (Acts 20:7-12).

So there, you have plenty of Scriptures to back up and support what Jesus did, what four men of God did, and what Jesus said you can do. We know that God is No respecter of person (Acts 10: 34-35), and that Jesus cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2). So, since God is telling us the truth, what is the problem?

The answer can be summed up in a truly short phrase as this: spiritual growth is paramount to spiritual maturity, and it has nothing to do with how long we have been a Christian. We can be a Christian for 50 years and still be a babe in Christ? Yes, we can. Read what Hebrews 5: 12-14 states:

"In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13  Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14  But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil (NIV)."

Isn’t that what we so easily learn in our natural world? We are born into the world as a babe and we grow in response to the tender loving care of our parents. By the end of the first year we learn to walk; within two to three years we learn to talk, and within this time we learn to consume solid food because staying on a milk bottle does not get the job done for bone development and to strengthen the muscles. Through our adolescent and puberty years we are not prepared and ready to take on the responsibility of getting married and raising a family.

Time is of essence. We still need more time to grow into maturity to take on the responsibility of getting married and raising a family. So, why do not we want our 16-year-old, or even 18, 19 or even 20-year-old sometime, to get married? Because we do not feel they are mature enough to take on the responsibility to adequately take care of themselves and the birth of a new life which usually come from a marriage.

It is amazing that oftentimes, somehow, we are not able to extrapolate from natural order into spiritual truths. What we should learn from this is that preparation precedes maturity, and maturity precedes reproduction. Without the inclination to reproduce indicates a maturity deficiency.

Therefore, if a 50-year Christian has never led an unsaved person in a sinner prayer to accept Jesus as their Savior and Lord. That person is still a babe in Christ. For the major sign of maturity is reproduction, and the natural things of this world have taught us this.

To help address the issue, the Comprehensive Christian Planner (CCP) is designed to support that process. It is a tool that lays out a constructive approach and a simple format that organize and coordinate spiritual activities in one place. It makes it easy for Christians to approach the process of spiritual growth and development simply by filling in the blanks of a system that is readily at your disposal. Users can measure what they are doing, what they are not doing, and what they should be doing; and it champion the cause for every Christian to activate their faith, to be diligent, to be steadfast and stay the course, and to trust God through the process. In short, it makes it easy for us to get involved and stay involved.

Habbakku 2:2 makes it clear. “Then the LORD answered me and said: “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it.” The CCP is the tool that helps you to write the vision.

In 1910 there were 600 million Christians in the world out of a population of 1.8 billion. In 2010, one hundred years later, there were approximately 2.2 billion Christians in the world out of a population of 6.9 billion. If my calculation is correct, over a period of 100 years the work of 600M Christians led an averaged of, approximately, 3.6 unsaved persons to Jesus Christ. In other words, each Christian led one person to Jesus every thirty (30) years.

It is far worth than that. The 600M people did not live for that entire period but instead were joined by other Christians to reach that number because the likelihood is that a majority of the 1910 original group had died and gone to Heaven. Therefore, the number of 3.6 would be substantially reduced which means that it could have been that 1.2 billion Christians, or even more, probably produced the number of 3.6. We do not know just how many Christians participated in sharing Jesus and leading the unsaved to Jesus over this 100-year period.

What we can draw from this analysis and conclusion is that the Body of Christ multiplied 3.6x which strongly suggest that the Body of Christ at large is not highly activated when it comes to sharing Jesus with the unsaved. If we stick with the number of 600M Christians lived for the entire 100 years and no other new Christian got involved with sharing Jesus with the unsaved in that period would simply mean that on an average, each of those Christians led one person to Jesus about every thirty years.

Since we can conclude that a great majority of these people did not live for 100 years, we can also conclude these numbers are dismal and point us to the conclusion that we as the Body of Christ can and should be committed to doing more because we can.

So, what are we failing to realize and understand? Just what are we missing? Are we afraid to accept the challenge? Do we feel that the preachers are doing simply fine and they do not need the lay people?

To answer those questions and similar questions, I will imitate Jesus. Jesus often used earthly things to illustrate spiritual truths. I will do the same.

Living in the earth realm has taught us so much about living in a state of progressivity. We did not rapidly evolve over one day; we grew and evolved steadily and systematically over a long period of time. While the principle of growth is practically the same in this natural world and spiritually, the spiritual aspect of life offers us the advantage and opportunity to grow so much faster.

But there is one principle that applies equally to both earthly and spiritual development. When something grows into maturity it develops the inclination to reproduce. It does not enter the mind of a ten-year old to get married and raise a family; it does for a thirty-year old. There is no demand placed on a one or two-year apple tree to produce more apples; but it does for an apple tree that is five to ten years old. There simply is no demand until maturity is developed.

Luke 10:2 states that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Why? Because the laborers have not grown into maturity. Why haven’t the laborers grown into maturity? You may go and ask your pastor that question.

What is more revealing is that once we take a closer look at the larger picture of evangelism, we will find that the chances are the pastors, evangelists, and the five-fold ministers did most of this work through their preaching and teaching, which reveals that the lay Christian did even less than the numbers mentioned above.