GROWING SPIRITUALLY
We want to learn how to renew strength, so that we walk and not faint, but stay fresh in the LORD.
Isaiah 40: 31 But those who wait on the LORD, shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Matthew 11:27 All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. 28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
One of our biggest problems is that we think everything can be solved by receiving ministry. So, we have this mentality, that we go to church, or events and conferences, because what we really need is a fresh touch from God. This is a lifestyle issue.
We go to ministries to get something that actually we can really get for ourselves. If we can get past this type of thinking, we can learn how to receive from God in our relationship the things that are relational, then we can move onto the next level of our walk with God.
We then go to a kingdom church to receive the next level of anointing together, so we can carry on the fight to advance the kingdom further than we’ve ever could as an individual. Then we can all come together and we work together to go into a whole new place of anointing. And for that to happen, we need to be living at the highest level of our relationship with God presently.
People come to events or conferences for the wrong reason. There are things that we need to get out of relationship with God so that we quit bothering certain ministries to give us ministry, this becomes a concern to them, so that they focus on meeting your need, instead of focusing on going to a higher level themselves. Babes in the Lord need ministry, but most of us have been Christians long enough, so that we should not be looking to leaders for a word from God. We should be looking to them for confirmation, for the word that we heard from the Lord ourselves.
If the ministries out there had a deeper walk with God, then the anointing on the words they speak, could impart more of God to the people. Most ministries our focused on advancing their own ministries, instead of hearing the voice of God, who wants to establish His kingdom on the earth. We are supposed to rule the earth; this is the mandate the Lord gave to Adam.
Ministries have been around for a long time, and they are on such a low level, that you cannot grow spiritually by attending their ministries.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR BLESSING
Everywhere we look, God has made provision for us in relationship. That provision is enveloped in Christ within the hope of glory. There should be an expectation of glory that is upon you, and it’s manifested in the relationship that God wants to have with you in Jesus. And we are given the power of the Holy Spirit to awaken us to Christ living in us. And out of that relationship comes a power that enables us to overcome anything that comes against us in the course of life.
The very least that we can learn to do is to take responsibility for our blessing. I’m not responsible for your blessing. You are. Your blessing comes to you out of your relationship with God. You don’t need to travel to go to a conference to get blessed in your relationship with God, because He’s with you seven days a week. He never leaves you; He never forsakes you. All you have to do is learn how to hear His voice, and then do what He says. A walk with God, is walking in the word that He speaks to you. Living by every word that proceeds from His mouth.
Now it would be a great blessing if you would set ministries free from having to minister to you, so that you outgrow them and can minister to them, so that they are no longer locked into a level of immaturity, building their own personal kingdoms. Then we could go into another dimension of reality in the Spirit, and we can see amazing things happen.
It is the role of people in a congregation, when they gather together, to come ready to become co-laborers with the Lord to cause the body of Christ to grow by what every joint supplies.
Ephesians 3: 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
It is the role of people in the congregation to come and thrust the worship leaders into a higher place in worship. It is not the responsibility of the band to somehow provide some spiritual momentum so that you can get in the Spirit and find your own unique expression of worship with Jesus unto the Father. That is not what they are there for.
Your job is to move them into a higher place of anointing, by being so full of the Spirit that you overflow causing a manifestation of the Spirit to touch them enabling them to go higher up in their worship of the Lord. Your role in this whole ministry deal is to push them into higher places of revelation and power, so each time we gather, there is an explosion of magnificence. That’s the congregation’s job, since the leaders are not led by the Spirit.
The first thing a Spirit lead leader of a worship service must do with the congregation is to change it from a congregation of individuals into one body focused on the Lord. After the people are one body, focused on the Lord, then we go into worship.
When the people come into the church, and do not see themselves as one body focused on the Lord, they will be standing as individuals who have come into the service with different thought patterns going around in their mind, and the service will not reach a very high level.
Come to church ready. And if you can, come early. The Holy Spirit is the chief leader in bring the service up to a higher level in the Spirit.
DEVELOPING THE NATURE OF GOD IN US
The Holy Spirit is the executor of the provision of Jesus helping us to learn how to abide in the Lord and become a partaker of the divine nature, and to become a partner with Him in all the divine promises that God wants to bestow upon you.
In Romans 4 Abraham looked at his body being as good as dead and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. But he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform-Romans 4:19
The Bible says Abraham had respect for the promise of God. How many of you have got promises? Abraham had respect for the promise of God. Faith doesn’t deny the existence of the negative. It just ignores it.
There are two things you can look at. You can look at the problem, or you can look at the promise and the provision. Every problem comes with a provision attached. The whole point of a problem is to reveal a provision.
What we are learning in relationship is we are learning to take hold of the promise and look at it and think about it. Grace is the empowering presence of God that enables you to become the person you want to be, regardless of what the enemy or life is throwing at you. So, we’re a people who are excited by the things that are coming against us, because when anything comes against us, God wants to elevate us. When the enemy comes in like a flood, God raises up a standard, which means in the Greek he causes the problem to vanish away.
Every problem comes complete with its own provision. Why? Because that whole thing is not connected to your anointing, it’s not connected to your ministry, it’s connected to your fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
There are more things that will come to you out of relationship with Jesus than will ever come to you under the anointing. Why? Because He wants to be your all in all, and He wants to have the preeminence in your life. And somewhere along the line, we began putting our faith in ministries rather than in the person of Jesus. If you really want to grow up, you’re going to have to quit that kind of behavior. You have a life, that is greater than all the anointing of every ministry on earth, you have a power in you, a life in you, greater than the sum of all of that.
The Holy Spirit is engaged with us to teach, to impart, to bestow upon us the true nature of God so that we are made in Jesus’s image and we can face all the circumstances of life in exactly the same way that Jesus would. That’s the advantage of the Christ’s life within. You get to think like Jesus. You get to see things like Jesus. You get to face things exactly the same way that he would, and if that isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, there’s something wrong with us.
It’s a wonderful thing to be able to go through life and know that I have somebody on the inside of me who’s absolutely going to express himself.
And just in case we are having a bad day, he’s given us a helper to assist that expression to manifest itself in our mind, in our heart, through our mouth, through our eyes, and so on. It’s called the Christ life within. And we are learning to be invincible. We’re learning to be overpowering to the enemy. We’re learning how to rise up.
Your training ground and your proving ground are your normal circumstances of life. So, the normal circumstances that you’re going through, that is like your kindergarten.
There is a move of God that is coming that will sweep through the world and God wants to prepare you to minister to hundreds and thousands. But your own life is your training ground and your proving ground. You have got to make your own life exciting. You’ve got to make your own life real with promise. You’ve got to learn how to stand up, walk through each day and believe God each day. You only have to do it for one day at a time. You just have to believe Him today. And tomorrow we start the whole glorious thing all over again.
But never carry into tomorrow the problems of today. You deal with them today, you get power over them today, and then tomorrow we do the same thing. It’s called life in the Spirit. knowing and experiencing the nature of God in all things is the important part of our growth and our development.
THE RELENTLESS NATURE OF GOD
The Lord is relentless in everything He does. The good news (the happy gospel) is relentless. I mean, it keeps coming to you again and again and again and again, every single day, relentless good news. God is relentless in His love; God is relentless in His grace. He is relentless in His mercy. He is relentless in His joy. He is relentless in His peace. And when He’s teaching you something, He is relentless.
He is relentless until you actually give up and you have an encounter with him, and then that encounter leads you into an ongoing experience which is relentless. He is the most merciful person I have ever known.
In the Old Testament, they had times and seasons, they we’re in a visitation culture. God came on certain people; and then He came off of them.
But in the New Testament, we are a new creation. All the old things have passed away, everything has become new, and now you are a habitation of God by the Spirit. He lives in you.
Jesus came saying, you have heard it said, but now I say. Jesus said you have had the law and the prophets until now, which means you don’t have them anymore in the same way.
So, you have all the law and the prophets until now. And John the Baptist, who’s the last of the Old Testament prophets, says I must decrease, and you and all you experience through relationship to your father must now increase.
And so now all New Testament prophecy and the gifts of the Spirit has to come through the very heartbeat and the very nature of God. Why? Because we have Him living on the inside of us. So, whatever God is, He is relentlessly.
His purpose from the very beginning has been to make a people in His own image. And He simply will not give up on that standard. There are lots of movements and trends that come and go in ministry. But the characteristic of New Testament spirituality is Christ in you, the expectation of something glorious occurring. There is a glory attached to your relationship with Jesus. Don’t settle for anything less than a glorious relationship with God.
You need to learn to love the relentless nature of God. So, for me, it’s meant every single day there is always a word or an act somewhere in my day of the mercy of God bestowed on me. And then what happens is through the relentless nature of God, he will keep dealing with us until Christ is formed in us. As he keeps revealing certain aspects of his nature it penetrates our spirit, it gets into our spirit so that we become like him.
So, when God declares one of His fruits of the Spirit to you, He has an intention of saying, I am going to put this in your life to such a degree that it will change you, it will turn you into another person and you will become like me in this aspect of my nature. That’s what God is doing. He’s not just visiting you with little touches of his Spirit every now and again. He wants to saturate you in it.
We are made for multiplication. That means whatever God imparts to us can touch hundreds and thousands of people. So, I have developed aspects of the divine nature in my life, through continuous trying circumstance and found out that the fruit of the Spirit only grows in bad soil. It grows in the soil of a situation that actually is coming against you to steal, kill and destroy. But the fruit of the Spirit is a more powerful weapon against the enemy than the gifts of the Spirit.
So where does the fruit of kindness come from? It comes from the soil of a situation where somebody says something or does something unkind towards you. And now you have a choice, right? You can move in the same spirit and say something unkind about them, having a carnal moment and ruin your testimony of who Christ is in you.
But don’t worry, because you’ll get to take that test again and again and again, until the fruit of kindness is developed in your life. The fruit of the Spirit grows in the soil of a situation that’s against you, and you make a choice to be like Jesus in it. life is about choices but being in Christ we eventually learn to make the right ones.
WHO IS GOD FOR YOU?
Who is God for you? Here’s the thing about situations. Every one of your situations, good, bad, or ugly, is first and foremost about your relationship with God.
So, when we pray, when we come to God, we do not come to Him with the problem. You take that problem, and you put it under your feet, and you come before the Lord, and you worship Him, and you rejoice, and give thanks.
How do you give thanks? It’s not, well Lord, I give you thanks for this situation. Giving thanks is not an obligation. It’s not a duty. It’s a joy. It’s a delight. It’s an honor to give thanks to God.
And it’s a double honor when life is working against you. Rejoice in the Lord always. In everything, give thanks. This is the will of God concerning you. And prayer is part of that celebration.
So, we come to the Lord, and our question is Lord, thank you for this issue. What is it that you want to be for me now that you couldn’t be without this situation, what is it you’re going to be for me now? It’s a relational issue.
So, we have to choose to make our relationship with God the preeminent focus of our life. When we come to the Lord, everything’s about relationship.
Lord, I thank you. I’m not quite seeing it yet, how this problem is going to enhance my relationship with you, but I know that it will. You make everything work together for good. I know this is about me and you, ultimately. It’s not about me and the problem. It’s not about me and the issue. This is about me and you.
So, what is it you want to be for me? And so, you upgrade your relationship with God. You put on who the Lord wants to be for you, you tune into it, you appropriate it.
Here’s the thing, the more you upgrade your relationship, the smaller the problem will become. The more you get into thanksgiving, the more you see the problem in its true light. Because without thanksgiving, you’re prone to seeing it how the enemy wants you to see it. But when you get into thanksgiving, that thanksgiving changes the way you look at things. But you have to give thanks until you become thanks. Can you understand what that means?
We do not give thanks in a mechanical way, just because it is a commandment. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. The word give is an imperative which means God commands us to do it, it is not optional.
We have to get excited about it. Oh my God, thank you, this is great!
Thank you Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you that you’re with me, thank you that you’re for me. Thank you because I know you’re going to talk to me, thank you that nothing works against me.
See, you have to give thanks until you become thanks. You have to get excited about this thing of giving thanks. You give thanks until you become thanks. Because if you’re going to give thanks, you need to believe in thanksgiving. You need to believe in the power of it. You need to receive the energy of it. You need to get energized by it. That’s what thanksgiving is for. That’s what rejoicing is for.
Joy is who God is. Rejoicing is our response to who God is. So, the very least you can do is take pleasure in the happiness of God. The very least you can do is rejoice because he’s always joyful. He always has a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye, a grin, because he is happy that you belong to him, because he has an expectancy, an anticipation of your perfection.
PRACTICING THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
When we have a problem, the Lord is excited about the problem, even if we are not, because He allows in His wisdom what He could easily prevent by His power, and He’s allowed you this thing because this is His way of teaching you how to grow fast. The bigger the problem, the more quickening you can have. The bigger the problem, the more of a divine acceleration belongs to you. You see, we need to be less earthbound in our thinking.
And this is why we have an amazing, incredible relationship with Jesus, so that we become occupied by a power that sees things incredibly different than the world around us. And you need the benefit of that wisdom and that revelation. So, you can begin to understand that you’re more amazing than you can possibly think.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, its joy, its peace, its patience, its kindness, its goodness, its faithfulness, its gentleness, it’s self-control. Against such there is no law. In other words, nothing works against the fruit of the Spirit.
So, the fruit of the Spirit is where you begin to learn how to overcome, you learn how to become like Jesus.
So, the love of God teaches you to overcome fear, because perfect love casts out fear. The joy of the Lord stops you from being depressed. It helps in the fight against bitterness, and resentment.
And then there is the peace of God, that surpasses all understanding. The word for surpasses is-which means to hold yourselves above. You are above the problem, even if you do not understand why, you have it. You will begin to learn the ways of peace. You will begin to learn about rest. God will relentlessly teach you about rest, about peace. How? Through conflict, through difficulty.
You don’t learn peace on a nice, easy, wonderful day. You learn it in conflict, all the gifts, all the fruit of the Spirit, they’re there for the conflicts of life. That’s the amazing thing about them; they work in horrible situations. We all need to learn patience; it is a divine attribute.
In warfare, we are learning about authority and power. But when God is teaching you patience, sometimes God delivers you from situations, sometimes He delivers you in situations, and sometimes He delivers you through situations. Patience is just as powerful as authority. Everything in the Spirit about learning the fruit of the Spirit is a paradox (two apparently conflicting ideas contained in the same truth).
So, there are going to be some days when the joy of the Lord is going to be an immense strength to you. And you’re going to feel it tangibly. But there are other days when God will give you joy that might not be as intense to go along with that long-suffering that you’re learning. The Bible talks about long-suffering with joy. That means you’re going through something, and the joy of the Lord is walking with you every single step of the way.
Patience has to do with circumstances, and long-suffering with people.
But here’s the thing. When you go through a situation with someone where you need some long-suffering, you are not focused on the long-suffering. You’re fixed on the joy of the Lord.
When the Lord is teaching us persistence, He is not teaching us how to persist in our circumstances. He is teaching us how to persist in His nature in the circumstances. So when I’m going through something difficult, I am going to persist in the joy of the Lord. I’m not going to persist in the situation itself.
The fruit of the Spirit elevates you above the problem and the difficulty, so that the fruit of the Spirit is what you live in, you don’t live in the problem.
So, there are times when I am persisting in peace. That means, in the situation, I’m working on my peace. Peace is the thing that I’m fixed on. And every time I find myself losing that peace, then I’m lifting myself back up.
Now if I want the peace of the Lord. I am going to persist in peace, until I become it. Why? Because I want to overcome the flesh, the world and the devil. So, I am going to persist in the nature of God. This is why we have problems and difficulties. They are a crash course in us becoming like Jesus.
So, you don’t persist in a problem, you persist in what God wants to be for you. So, if God wants to be your joy, then you persist in joy. That means I am going to be joyful no matter what happens in the world.
If the Lord is teaching me peace in a situation, I am going to persist in peace, not in the problem, I’m going to persist in the attribute of God that He most wants to be for me. I’m going to persist in the peace of the Lord. And so, I have learned rest. How to rest in the Lord, how to take a step back into my spirit if I am troubled in my soul (mind and emotions). When problems swirl around me, I make sure that I dwell in the inner man of the Spirit, God becomes my fortress, my refuge, God is my high place, I dwell in the secret place of the Spirit.
And what I have learned through all of this, is that rest is a weapon. Rest is a weapon. The fruit of the Spirit is a weapon against the enemy. There is a place set aside for you, in the Spirit, where you can make the enemy tired and weary.
We have got to stop going through life thinking that we are victims of the devil and that we always need to be rescued by the Holy Spirit. You are so much more than all of that. We can exhaust the enemy with the love of God. We can depress him with our joy. We can weary him with our peace. We can demoralize him with our patience. We can discourage him with our kindness. We can overcome him with goodness. We can incapacitate him with our faithfulness. We can trouble him with our gentleness. We can dismay him with our self-control. We can dishearten Him with our faith, we can weaken Him with our mercy, and we can intimidate Him with our intimacy.
There is a place set aside for you in the Spirit where you make the enemy tired and weary. When you learn how to be with God, learn every day how to live under His smile.
WHAT IS GOD TEACHING YOU?
When you move in a negative, you empower the enemy against yourself. One of the things that we’re doing in our relationship with God is we are removing anger, resentment, bitterness, arrogance, unbelief, fear, impatience, worry, anxiety, being judgmental, being wounded and being a victim. We are banishing those things from our life because they have no place in life in the Spirit, they are not your inheritance. It is your relationship with Jesus that brings you into your inheritance.
Why do so many people get into high places of anointing and gifting, and live there for years, and then suddenly they lose everything. They lose their anointing, and they walk away from God. I think the single biggest reason is not because they fall into sexual immorality, it’s not because they develop a love for money more than God. It is because they have not grown in the fruit of the Spirit.
It is because they’ve not taken time to develop their relationship with the Lord consistently. It is because they have not seen life events as a shortcut, as a quickening into a higher place of fellowship and relationship with the Lord Jesus.
It’s one thing to be tired in the work, it’s quite another thing to be tired of the work. We cannot continue to surrender our identity to negative emotions.
Opposition attaches to what you don’t remove. We have to remove those negative things from our life, from our voice, from our heart, from our expression of behavior. You have to remove those things and replace every single one of them with the fruit of the Spirit. You have to learn how to respond with the opposite spirit. If you have a spirit that is fearful, you have to move in love, if you do not know how to tune into the love of God, you already have a measure of it in your heart when you were born from above, so you have to learn how to develop it, until you become Love.
You must grow in all the fruits of the Spirit. And that’s why we need situations because they’re a growth medium. It’s a seed bed for your relationship with God.
So, we need to ask ourselves what particular fruit of the Spirit is God wanting to develop in us right now? Practice asking this question every day. This will accelerate our growth in God. Because then all our circumstances will be about developing that fruit. That fruit is a critical part of your relationship with God. It’s a critical part of His personality in your life.
So, what we are learning not to be troubled by our circumstances, but we’re learning to be excited about them. We’re learning to be interested in our circumstances. We’re learning to be intrigued. I wonder what this is about. Lord, what is it you want to be for me? What fruit of the Spirit do you want me to have in this particular situation? It’s a great question because it allows you to focus on what God wants to do in you and what He wants to be for you.
When we learn how to live in rest, we live being untroubled. It means I can bring ourselves to peace in a matter of seconds. It’s a discipline we develop through practice. All disciplines are rooted in desire and delight.
One of the things that’s common to all of us is that we will do exactly what we want to do. So, God works in us both to will and to do. So, when God wants you to get something, He’s working on your desire first. He wants to give you a passion for it.
So, when you’re learning something new, you have to develop a passion for it, and then you have to keep that passion all the days of your life. You have to grow it. You have to increase it.
Because warfare will come against your passion in God’s will for you. People come against it, tiredness, weariness, all those kinds of things will come against it.
When you develop in the gift of prophecy and become well known, you can get annoyed with people and it can burn you out. Everyone starts pulling on you. When you meet someone on the street, people think that suddenly seeing you is like a major answer to prayer, and they’re pulling on you. And you can get to a place where the pressure of that drives you into despair, but you have to get beyond that. You have to maintain your passion for prophecy and for the people that you’re prophesying to. If you don’t maintain your passion in your gifting, you’ll lose it. If you don’t maintain your passion in relationship with the Lord Jesus, you will misplace it when you need it most.
You’ve got to have a passion for peace and for joy, and love, and for grace. You have to develop a passion for patience.
Whatever God is for you, is automatically against the evil one. So, what fruit of the Spirit is God developing in you? He will do it relentlessly. All your circumstances are about practicing that particular fruit until it becomes first nature, until it becomes who you are. And then you’re not practicing joy, you are joyful. You’re not practicing rest; you are at rest permanently. It becomes a part of your normal behavior, a part of your lifestyle.
You do not have to spend your time fighting the enemy if you have a great relationship with God, because the relationship with God is your true hiding place.
The key to persistence is not in our anointing. It’s in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We find in Him a refuge, a fortress, a strength, a power.
The fruit of the Spirit compels us to live by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. You can defeat the enemy with fruit, but it has to be fresh fruit. Part of the art of winning in warfare is about the law of staying fresher for longer. You live in day-tight compartments. We plan and we pray for the future, but really, we live in this present moment.
And what you’re learning when you’re learning how to walk in the fruit of the Spirit, is that you are learning how to be present in the moment with God. You’re learning how to stand with Him. And it doesn’t matter if nobody else stands with you, because it’s always about the power of the one with the one. One person walking with God is always in the majority. It doesn’t matter whether your team doesn’t show up.
Staying fresh is about knowing your true source. It’s about knowing your point of origin in the kingdom. It’s the Christ life within. People can never be our truest source. That is reserved for the person of God in our lives. He has the preeminence. And our confidence in God always surrounds His nature, not His power. You know, it’s possible for people to believe that God can heal, but to wonder if He will heal them.
We believe in the power of God, but the issue is, will He heal me? Our confidence in God is always in His nature. What is God really, really, really, really like? And what is he like for me?
So, the key thing is, what is it that God wants to be for you now? That’s the source of your confidence. God is our healer.
I heard a story about a lady who says, I’ve just come from the doctor. I’ve got cancer, I’ve got four months to live. Is there a word from the Lord?
The minister says, right now, this moment is the most critical moment in your relationship with God, probably outside of salvation. This is your critical moment in the nature of God. This is what I’m going to pray for you. I am going to pray that God would make Himself real to you and that he would reveal to you what he wants to be for you now that you’ve got cancer. Because the question really is, Hey Lord, what is it you want to be for me now that I’ve got cancer that you couldn’t be if I didn’t have it?
It’s a great question. A couple weeks later the minister says, so, what’d you find out? She said, well, I asked the Lord. And you know, the funny thing was that when I tried to ask the Lord that question, the cancer kept trying to push its way into the conversation. And I realized that I had to push the cancer thing out and say, this is about my relationship with you. It’s not about anything else. If I’m going to die, I want to die in a great relationship with you. This is about you and me. So, she kept saying, Lord, what is it you want to be for me?
Day one, He didn’t say anything, but she had peace. Day two, nothing. Day three, nothing. Day 11, nothing. Day 12, she’s in the supermarket. She’s picking up some bread and some chicken or something. She walks down an aisle, there’s a family, a mother and two small girls coming with a trolley, and she looks at the woman, and it’s someone she’s known 10 years ago, and she hasn’t met her in all that time. She moved away; she had no idea she moved back. The lady looks at her, gives a classic double-take, and runs towards her. And she says, oh my goodness, I can’t believe that it’s you. And so, they start talking, and the lady says, I am so excited. My daughter had a dream about you last night. And in this dream, Jesus came to her, and he gave her a note. And she read the note, and she was supposed to give it to a particular woman, and when you walked down the aisle to meet us, my daughter says, Mommy, that’s the woman. And so, the kid pulls out this note, and on it is a Bible verse, I am the Lord that heals you.
Every set of circumstances is about the lesson of how we love Jesus and walk with Him appropriating His provision. But more importantly, it’s about the lesson of how Jesus loves us.
Every circumstance in your life right now is about an aspect of God’s nature. Some of you are learning about love right now. Some of you are definitely learning about patience right now. Some of you are learning about joy.
When you get serious and ask the Lord who He wants to be to you now?
The Holy Spirit will overshadow you; He will talk to you. He’s saying, I want to teach you this. in this situation. And I want to give you this in this situation. But I want you to see your circumstances as a crash course in you becoming like me. Because if you’re made in the image of God, you’re going to be pretty amazing.
If one of the Lord’s names is wonderful and He’s in you, what does that make you? You can’t avoid being wonderful. You can’t avoid being amazing, and you’re not going to avoid being astonishing to someone else. It’s in your DNA now. So, here’s the issue. You need these situations in order for you to become like Jesus really quick.
So, this is your moment. You’ve got to learn the fruit of the Spirit. You’ve got to embrace it as more than a concept. It has to become an encounter. It has to become an experience. It has to become part of your lifestyle.
This is what will form you, transform you, conform you into His image.
We have to eliminate the language of hell. Being angry, resentful, bitterness, murmuring, complaining, criticism, cynicism and sarcasm, it’s the worship language of hell. The language that we should have where relationships are difficult with people, is the language of grace, the language of blessing, the language of rejoicing, the language of thanksgiving. You’ve got to how you speak, you have to practice your language, until it is programed in your brain. You have to learn how to say good things about people who are trying to hurt you. It’s good practice.
Here’s the brilliant thing. When you’re practicing the fruit of the Spirit, you’re leaving behind the things that have always tormented you. Fear, anxiety, worry. You’re leaving those things behind when you practice love. So, this fruit of the Spirit is going to take you on a journey into a deeper relationship with God.
You need to say to the Lord right now, I am going to love this lesson. I’m going to become this. And you’re going to help me. So, Father, in the name of Jesus, I ask you what fruit of the Spirit do you want me learning at this time? I ask that you absolutely solidify it in our life in the name of Jesus.
Lord, we thank you for the situations that we are going through. And you’re going to establish this as a part of my life and as a part of my lifestyle. And when I’m done learning this lesson, you’re going to give me another one. And that’s exciting. Because I am learning, I’m going to have a crash course in becoming like Jesus. This is exciting. And I’m going to make up for lost time. And I’m going to recover everything that was stolen. And here’s the thing.
So, the Lord is saying, along with that particular aspect of my nature that I most want you to get now, I want you to remember a promise that I made to you. Something I’ve already spoken.
It could be in a prophetic word; it could be in a passage of Scripture. The Lord wants you to remember a promise that He spoke to you, and He is going to teach you in your current situation how to have respect for the promise of God. And that promise will be fulfilled.
We are going to tangibly, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally partner with God. And we’re going to learn to master the art of renewal, staying fresher longer. And that every situation around us is sent to us to make us like Jesus. That’s its prime responsibility. And so, the enemy’s going to help us, whether he likes it or not. People who don’t like us are going to help us, whether they like it or not. But the Holy Spirit is already given to us to help us. And we like that. Amen.