Progressing to Spiritual Maturity

Is your focus on the person of God, or just His promises to you?

October’s Awakening, Day 19:

Spiritual maturity is neither instant nor automatic; it is gradual, progressive development that will take the rest of your life.       

 -Rick Warren

God's vision for you and me is maturity. Spiritual maturity is measured by how readily we respond to the person of God rather than the promises of God. It involves coming to the place where who is asking is more important than what we are being asked to do.

 - Andy Stanley, “Visioneering”

            As we become more spiritually mature, we begin to trust Him more and seek to serve Him more. It becomes a matter of not what we can get from Him, but how much we can give back to Him. It is dedication and commitment from our heart, and we know the more we serve and give, the more He will continue to bless us with everything we need. When we mature spiritually, we understand His principles and realize that everything we are and everything we have ultimately comes from Him. Unselfishly serve the Person, and all His promises and blessings will flow naturally back to you.

Spirituality Is Not Superficial

God designed your spirit nature to govern and rule over your physical nature and your soul nature (mind and emotions). What nature is ruling over you?

October’s Awakening, Day 18:

It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.

 - Oswald Chambers

A real spiritual life is never dominated by, nor lived in, feeling. Rather does it regulate feeling. Nowadays Christians mistake a life of feeling for spiritual experience. This is because many have never entered into genuine spirituality and hence interpret happy sensation to be spiritual experience.

 - Watchman Nee

The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Romans 8:6,7 NIV

            Connecting to the Holy Spirit allows your spirit to take back its rightful place in your life in the hierarchy of control. Without that connection you are out of balance spiritually, and you will be living a life that is always lacking. You can re-connect to Him by reading, studying, and meditating on His Word, and praying and listening for His voice. The more in tune spiritually you become, the more content your spirit will be.

Spiritual Illumination

Since God is spirit, the things of God, including His written Word, must be spiritually discerned to fully comprehend the deeper truths.

October’s Awakening, Day 17:

God must open the eyes of our understanding before we can truly know and rightly interpret His truth. His truth is available only to those with a regenerate spirit and in whom His Spirit dwells, for only the Spirit can illumine Scripture. Just as the physically blind cannot see the sun, the spiritually blind cannot see the Son. Both lack proper illumination.

 -John MacArthur

As we begin to focus, developing more and more hunger for his Word and being in His presence, the Holy Spirit will refresh, revive, and rekindle the zeal of the Lord in our lives.

 -Archbishop Gloria Grace, “The Heartbeat of God: Salvation of Lost Souls”

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. John 14:26 NIV

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV

            The spiritual nature and truths of God and His Word can only be fully understood and discerned by our spirit entwining with the Holy Spirit. When we become believers, the Holy Spirit indwells us and is there to guide us in all truth and to transform us into His image. It is a cooperative and never-ending endeavor. We will never fully understand Him nor experience any degree of spiritual maturity without the leading of the Holy Spirit and following Him in obedience.

Your Perception of God Is Critical

Your perception and understanding of the true God of the Bible determines everything.

October’s Awakening, Day 16:

In life, behavior follows belief. Everything we do is directly connected to what we believe is true.

 -John Stange, “Overcoming Negative Self-Talk: with the truth of the Gospel”  

Doctrine matters. What you believe about God, the gospel, the nature of man, and every major truth addressed in Scripture filters down to every area of your life. You and I will never rise above our view of God and our understanding of His Word.

 -John MacArthur

There's a God we want and there's a God who is and they are not the same God. The turning point comes when we stop seeking the God we want and start seeking the God who is.

 -Patrick Morley

            The bottom line question is this: “Who is the God in your mind?” Is He the God whose character and attributes are clearly delineated in the Scriptures from Genesis through Revelation? Or is your God the god of your own choosing, one who fits well into your nice, tidy box of characteristics and attributes that are most conducive to you and your personal ideology? There is nothing more critical and essential as that complete and perfect knowledge of God in your mind; everything filters down from that perception, knowledge, and understanding.

            So how does one come to know the One, True God? There is only one perfect way; reading, studying, and meditating on the entire Word of God from Genesis through Revelation, allowing all the way to be illuminated and instructed by the Holy Spirit. Knowledge from human teachers and other reliable sources can be extremely valuable, but yet, in the end, it is up to you to test all information against the Word of God. Humans are fallible, God is not.

Have You Learned the Truth?

Do you really know the truth, or is your conscience telling you something else?

October’s Awakening, Day 15:

Both tradition and truth inform the conscience, so the standards it holds you to are not necessarily biblical ones. The conscience can be needlessly condemning in areas where there is no biblical issue. In fact, it can try to hold you to the very thing the Lord is trying to release you from!

 -John MacArthur

Start believing the Word of God over our feelings. The truth always overrides our feelings. Find the truth in the scriptures.

 -Joyce Meyer

            Is your conscience constantly condemning you with guilt and shame, or a negative self-image, such that you feel unworthy and that you’ll never amount to anything? That’s not truth, and that’s not from the Word of God. That is an erroneous mindset placed within you by those who don’t know the truth themselves. That’s what MacArthur calls “tradition.” Tradition is anything you’ve learned from any source outside of the Bible. Tradition may be very true and beneficial, or it may wreak of error, inconsistency, and distortion that chain and bind your mind to lies.

            You must reconnect to Truth and stay connected with Him. You must begin to see yourself as He sees you and walk in that every day. You were divinely created and you are infinitely valuable to Him, and He wants you to live in His truth.

Virtuous Truth

What we believe not only manifests in our thoughts, but in our words and actions as well.

October’s Awakening, Day 14:

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other.

 -Charles Spurgeon

Breakthrough comes when we deliberately continue in that truth by renewing our minds with it over and over again, and acting on it. In other words, that truth must become a lifestyle before it will produce the results we desire.

 -Creflo Dollar

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1,2 NIV

            It is impossible to separate our system of beliefs from our daily thoughts, and from filtering into every aspect of our words and actions. Once those belief thought-patterns have become established, they are very difficult to change. That is why it is so important to learn the truth first, rather than try to substitute new-found truth for the errors that reside in your mind and have engrained themselves.

            Learning the truth, believing it, embracing it, and implementing it into your daily life is essential to removing the resident errors in your mind. Renewing your mind takes reading and studying God’s Word, illumination by the Holy Spirit, researching additional pertinent information, and sometimes seeking professional help and guidance, as well. The truth is invaluable and you should strive to implement it into your mind at all cost.

A World Without Truth

Can we just pick and choose what we fancy, believe that everything is relative, and that there are no absolutes?

October’s Awakening, Day 13:

There is no such thing as truth either in the moral or the scientific sense.

 -Adolf Hitler

At the core of evil is the process of dehumanization by which certain other people or collectives of them, are depicted as less than human.

 -Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University social psychologist, author of “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil”

            Hitler’s Nazi regime and the extermination of six million Jews, along with all the atrocities of the concentration camps and inhumane abuse in all sorts of scientific testing, should be a reminder of what happens when there are no boundaries and no absolutes. It is evil running rampant and free without restraint. We should also add to that, the evil of slavery past and present, the horrors of war and oppression, and the evil lurking underground in the black markets.

            This is why God has given us specific boundaries and absolutes, and truth that is divinely delivered and self-evident, for without that, this fallen world would self-destruct. The Holy Spirit is our Restrainer, our conscience, our moral values, and our awareness that all men are created equal and in the very likeness of God Himself. Our belief system is at the very core of our essence, character, and actions. How important is truth to you?