The Bible is a book of promises and covenants, of laws and principles, of judgments and pardons. Our faith and our future is based upon all of these.
May the Holy Spirit illuminate these messages, so that you may know what is very legally yours.
When the heirs of a large estate gather to hear the reading of the will, probably the first question they ask the lawyer is, “How soon do we get the money?” In their minds they probably have it already spent. They have been thinking of all the things they need and want, and are delighting in the fact that ultimately the desires of their heart will be met.
There are several familiar passages in the New Testament that describe the assets of the central bank in heaven. II Peter 1:3–4: seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness (it’s all yours, it’s already granted), through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
You don’t just inherit things; you inherit His nature. This is no small inheritance. In your concept of the inheritance, don’t limit it only to money. It’s more than money, it’s more than things, it’s more than circumstances being altered, it’s more than a comfortable life, it’s even more than a meaningful life. It goes way beyond all of that. It is an entering in and partaking of His very nature.
I Peter 1:3–8: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance (again this is talking about the big trust fund) which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away (even inflation does not affect it), reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.The Scriptures constantly keep implying that God has something ready to be revealed in these last days.
In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.
In order for you to come into your inheritance, you must have proof that you are an heir. If you were to go to a court of law and say, “My Aunt Matilda just died and I want my inheritance,” you would first have to prove that she was your aunt, and so you would set about to secure the legal documents to prove this. There are no legal documents that will prove you are an heir of God. Only when you have so progressed in the family of God that the signs of maturity show the divine nature coming forth in you will you pass the inspection as one of the sons, one who can start collecting the goods.
Galatians 3:29–4:7: And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. Now I say, as long as the heir is a child (the margin reads “minor”), he does not differ at all from a bond servant although he is owner of everything. We are owners of everything, but the question keeps coming up, “How soon do we get the money?”
But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. This is speaking of the ancient custom, referred to in the Scripture as the adoption of sons. At a certain age, a child, who until then had been practically nameless, was acknowledged by his father to be a son and proclaimed as an heir.
I wish we had the same custom now. I think that up to a certain age a young boy needs his mother very much. She can help him develop an awareness of himself and help him during a very awkward period when he is trying to relate to the human race. But there comes a time when she should say, “Here Dad, now you take over.” And that’s what was done in ancient times. A child was under the care of his mother or guardians and managers until about the age of twelve. Then he was told, “Today you are a man. Today you begin to learn to be responsible for yourself. Now you’re going to learn to be a man and develop an awareness and a consciousness of the whole world.” Of course, that is the difference between being a child and being a son.
So also we while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law…. The old Mosaic Law held them in a state of infancy until finally sonship could come through Jesus Christ.
Many Scriptures in the New Testament point out the fact that we progress spiritually from children on to adults. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I have to treat you like babes and give you the milk. I can’t feed you with meat as if you were full grown. You’re not able to bear it yet.” Jesus told His disciples, “I have many things to tell you, but you’re not able to bear them now” (John 16:12), indicating that in times of immaturity there is a great holding back of the things God would give you and the provision He makes for you.
…in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” What an endearing term—Abba, Father. Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
God’s promise and provision for the heirs of the Kingdom is unchangeable. He has done everything He can to guarantee that the estate is yours and will be delivered to you in due course of time. It’s all very legally yours, but you had better qualify for it.
This you must see: If you continue in a state of spiritual immaturity, you will possess very little of what God has for you. And I’m not only talking about the sweet by-and-by; I’m talking about the now-and-now—the things that God has for you now.
He has ordered certain things for you to go through, all with the design of bringing you into what He has for you. God is very, very good at maturing people. According to Hebrews 12, if your relationship to God is without chastening, that designates you as a bastard instead of a true son. And if God doesn’t deal with you as a son and scourge you, He doesn’t love you.
Any relationship to the heavenly Father necessitates certain disciplines that will bring you from the category of a child to the place where you are not being treated as a slave, but inheriting as a son. At this particular point most of us still fit the category “though we are heirs, yet we are being treated as bond servants.” We have not begun to touch the great provision that God has for our life—all the things that pertain to life and godliness.
This present struggling with limitations and these great areas of lack and need are not at all in the perfect plan of God for the mature son of God. It is only a temporary arrangement to hold you in restraint while you’re a child.
You are being treated as a bond servant in order that you can be brought through the spiritual discipline and maturing of your spirit into the fullness that He has for you.
Now do you understand that God does not purposely hold this back from you because He doesn’t love you? He holds it back from you because He does love you, and He wants to bring you into the things that are for you.
I do not recall when favorable or easy situations caused any significant growth or blessing.
If we had all the blessings we want, we’d have more blessings than would bless us. We’d cease to be blessed by them anymore. The Lord says that all things work together for good to those who love God (Romans 8:28). That does not necessarily mean that you consider it a blessing or that you think it is good at the time it happens.
When the doctor prescribes a dose of castor oil for a sick child, the child protests loudly, “It tastes terrible.” But the doctor insists, “No, it’s good.” He means, “What it works in you is good.” All things work together for good. It does not say that it seems so good at the time. Whenever someone begins to make some significant spiritual growth, the Lord always puts him right in the kind of situation that will make him mature rapidly so he can get into the thing God has for him.
We know the trust is laid up for us. We know our inheritance is fantastic. Then doesn’t it seem logical that regardless of the means God has to employ to mature our spirits, we should say, “Amen, let it happen.”
The quicker we get out of this state of being treated as a bond servant and begin to walk as sons and true heirs, the better off the whole world is going to be.
According to Romans 8, we have the witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and if children teknion, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.
Did He not make the captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings? And so He comes down to us the same way. He’s going to lead us into our inheritance through the sufferings.
Have you ever prayed, “Lord, just help me. I have to appropriate these promises. I have to lay hold upon them.” That’s just like praying for patience. Tribulation worketh patience. When you pray for patience, the next thing you lose your patience. You pray for blessings, and then all of a sudden it seems as if there are no more blessings.
You never reach the next realm of blessing until the Lord puts you in a place of His dealings that will produce one or all of the five areas of spiritual maturity that have to be developed within your life.
Hebrews 6:17: In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath. You are His heir and He wants to show you the unchangeableness of His purpose.
It’s human nature to think that God has changed in His purpose toward you. But if you’ve had true, confirmed prophecies and they’ve been glorious, no matter what you’re going through, those prophecies are still valid if you’ll walk with God. They’re still valid! God is constantly concerned about this frailty within His creatures that causes them to abandon the purpose of God and the revelation of God over their lives. They go back and read their prophecies, and say, “But that was before I got into this dreadful mess I’m in now.”
God takes two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie to guarantee to you that He has not changed His heart toward you, that His purposes are unchangeable, that He loves you, and will pour His love upon you. Just because your emotions seem to change and you fluctuate in the degree of your faithfulness and goodness, just because you waver between a position of proving yourself to walk with God or failing to walk with God, don’t think that the promises of God fluctuate the same way.
We are always imposing upon God our own verdict concerning ourselves. When we walk unfaithfully, He abides faithful still. He cannot deny Himself. Just because you have failed doesn’t make God a failure. Just because you’re a mess doesn’t suddenly make God a mess.
Because you have walked in a way that hasn’t pleased the Lord doesn’t mean that His purpose toward you has changed one bit. You must realize that He knew what a mess you were when He gave the first word concerning you. You’re just finding it out now. Actually, the fact that you know what a mess you are is a great upward step in revelation. There is no one who has so few faults as the immature babe who thinks that he has arrived and that everything is his, when actually he is stumbling around, unable to appropriate hardly anything.
Hebrews 6:11–20: And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end…. That full assurance of hope is what you need. Just be filled with it. You are heirs of God and He’s going to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose. Just hang in there.
…that you may not be sluggish (keep slugging, but don’t be sluggish), but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply you.” And thus, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath (a promise and an oath—God makes a promise and then He swears by Himself, confirming that promise with an oath), in order that by two unchangeable things (a promise and an oath), in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement.
This speaks of the integrity of God. He wouldn’t be God unless He could do all things. God can do everything. He cannot lie, but that is a self-imposed limitation. God can do anything; therefore He can impose upon Himself a restriction not to lie, but to abide faithfully to His promises.
Then every promise He makes is a limitation upon Himself, but it is a lack of limitation to you. There must be a corresponding balance. There cannot be any liberation, any glorious blessing for you unless He has limited Himself in it. He says, “You call upon Me and I’ll answer you.” What a bother. Now He must answer you every time you call on Him. Every time He makes a promise or a commitment, He places a restriction and limitation upon Himself.
…we who have fled for refuge to laying hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
Down here there may be a lot of storms, buffetting us, but we are anchored within the veil, and nothing can move us. Right in the very heart of God—that’s where our anchor holds. It’s impossible for God to lie and by oath and a promise He sets before us, His heirs, the unchangeableness of His purpose. God does not change. His purpose toward us is unchangeable!
We see what a glorious inheritance we have and we see that God really means business. But we must mean business too, and grow up out of this bond servant state and get into the son stage. God must teach us just exactly how to become sons. To that end, we will consider five qualities of maturity.
The first quality of real maturity is submission. This is why young people who are leaving the child stage and becoming adults have such a great tendency toward rebellion. Some have tried to explain this by saying it is just because they are protesting against the bondage of the home and they want to become individuals in their own right. I don’t think that is necessarily so. They flounder around with rebellion because rebellion is the opposite of the submissiveness necessary for maturity.
It’s difficult for young people to submit to the things that are required of them and that they know are good for them because that requires a maturity. To go to work day after day, to settle down and study day after day, requires a maturity.
The first thing we have to do is submit to the will of God, and then there’s a great deal of resentment and bitterness. Let’s face this fact: Wherever you see resentment, you see immaturity. A mature person faces his problems and all of his disappointments with maturity. He may grieve over them and find they are very difficult, but he will solve them or learn to live with them. What happens to a person who is not mature? Resentment and bitterness build up, and soon he is looking around for some individual or some situation to blame.
In their lack of submission, young people are often independent. So they bring themselves into situations where their very independence is almost destroyed. In everything learn how to be submissive to the Lord. In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. I Thessalonians 5:18.
Give thanks when I stumble and fall? Yes, because you learned how unintelligent you were, and you didn’t have that knowledge before. Now you know that you will have to lean on the Lord and trust Him.
No matter what befalls you, you should look up and say, “Thank you, Lord. If You’ve delivered me over to my own folly, it’s in order that I might appropriate Your wisdom. I’ll learn to be submissive to You in everything I do.” That is the first quality of maturity. If you are facing any of these negative attitudes that prevent submission, such as resentment, bitterness, rebellion, or this independent spirit, you better deal with it. If you deal with it, you’ve taken one of the five steps into your inheritance.
Another step that will bring you to the place where you inherit as a son and no longer have to be dealt with as a bond servant has to do with love. It’s a special kind of love—responsible love. This is the love of maturity. The love of a mature person is always a responsible love. A young boy and girl may think they are in love and proceed to completely disregard all the rules. In the course of time, the young girl finds out she’s pregnant. When she tells the boy, all of a sudden he wants to run; he feels trapped. He didn’t intend for anything like that to happen. He wanted to have his pleasure, but he does not want to assume any responsibility. He wants to be able to run. The girl becomes bitter and vicious in her thinking, because she was the one who got trapped. To love without a sense of responsibility is so immature that it cannot even be considered as love in the true sense of the word. Real true love is responsible. It does not expose the one you love to a situation for which you cannot be responsible.
In the eyes of the law, when a juvenile, a young person under the age of twenty-one, commits a crime, he is not penalized as severely as an adult would be. No permanent record is kept of his offense. Before a man reaches an age where he is considered a mature adult, he is not considered to be responsible. That statement is an overkill, I know, and has limitations upon it, but it is a principle of the law. Many times gangs of juveniles commit crimes, but the law does not prosecute them. It places them in a home or under the care of a guardian or a probationary officer who assumes responsibility for them. Kids who are caught with drugs seem to get away with it, but an adult is punished because he is supposed to know what he’s doing.
God uses this principle too. If you don’t want to be held responsible for your actions, okay—maybe God will forgive you for almost anything. But then don’t expect to inherit the promises. The two contrasting conditions will not co-exist. You can’t come to God and whine, “O God, don’t hold me responsible for my actions; I’m just a little child, a babe, Lord. Please forgive me for all my bitterness and resentment; forgive me for all of these things I’ve done”; and then in the next breath pray, “Lord, I’m a son. I want to inherit the promises.” No way! If you want to be treated like a slave, that is the way you’re going to be treated. But if you want to accept the responsibilities of maturity, you too can become an heir of all the things that God sets before you.
I’ve never known God to promise anyone a special blessing without having him first prove his love for God in carrying a responsibility day by day, day by day. Those who have matured and grown in a walk with God have all carried heavy loads. They have made almost impossible demands upon themselves. They walked in the supernatural because it was imperative. They had to. As sons they possessed great portions of their spiritual inheritance because the Father’s business required it. They could not obey God’s will for their lives without richly appropriating His provision for them. In other words, they loved Him so much that they took the responsibilities as sons. And that is how they become the heirs of God in actual fulfillment.
This puts another light upon your taking a ministry that is a thankless task and going on when it seems sometimes that you have neither the physical, the mental, nor the emotional assets to accomplish it. Yet you keep on doing the will of the Lord. This is not a matter of dead works; these are living works performed by sons who take the load and the burden.
A third indication of spiritual maturity is the rule over your own spirit in dealing with all the negative emotions, the things that emotionally stir you up and cast you off the track. The mark of a child is the fact that he is influenced by his emotions which continually deflect him from the course. Those who are spiritually mature set their course, ruling their own spirit, determined that neither hell nor high water will deter them from the course that God sets before them. They are not victims of immature emotions. They have learned to rule their own spirits, and this is a mark of maturity.
Whenever I see a child who is allowed to have a temper tantrum, to lie on the floor and kick his heels and scream, I want to teach him by hitting his bottom. You are only prolonging his immaturity and putting something permanent in the heart of that child when you allow him to express himself that way, instead of making him feel responsible for the control of his own emotions. Psychiatrists may not agree with this. They say, “Don’t bottle up your emotions. Go ahead and express yourself. If you feel like kicking or hitting someone, go ahead; you’ll feel better.” To that I say, “No way!” There must be some kind of control that people have over their emotions. For he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city (Proverbs 16:32).
A fourth mark of maturity is a faith that is steadfast and demanding. When you are spiritually mature, you do not need to be continually buoyed up in your purposes by a pleasant illusion of things.
Usually marriage is entered into with a great deal of love. But there is quite a difference in their attitudes after two people have been married a while, and have had to face realities. Illusions are gone; if not gone, at least they are going. They must have faith. Recently I counselled with a young couple. They said, “We don’t want to live together anymore.” I said, “Yes, you do, because you were married in the will of God and the perfect will of God is for you to be married. Cut out the nonsense and be married. Be married with faith. Live with each other with faith, because it’s the will of God.”
“Well, I’m not sure I love him.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I don’t think I love her.”
“Yes, you can love her. The Bible says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, and it never commands anything that you cannot do. Straighten up. Be mature. Be determined to love her, and then set about and do it with all of your heart. Love her!” This involves a faith that is steadfast and is demanding of God, “Lord, I don’t feel like loving her. But I’ll take help from You, and with my whole heart I will love her.” That’s the way we do it.
When people have been married for a long time, you will find that their life is not just a matter of compromise; it goes beyond that. A relationship of faith has been established between the two of them—not just faith in each other, but faith for themselves as a spiritual unit. Enter into this same faith.
You may say, “I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe that in me dwells any good thing.” Then you’re in good company. Paul felt the same way about himself. He said, “For we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). For real maturity never isolate yourself from God. Have faith for yourself in relationship to God—a faith that is steadfast and demanding because you sense that all you are and all you are ever going to be is based upon a relationship that He has created and it is that which you have faith in. Believing in that relationship, you say, “You’re my Father. Abba Father, I believe. I’m a believing son. I’m related to You. No matter how weak I am in myself, I have faith for myself in relationship to You.” That is maturity.
Generosity is the fifth mark of maturity. People who are immature are not giving away much. They are demanding, not giving. I wish our young men knew what to look for in a girl. They see someone with bright sparkling eyes and a beautiful figure and face and they say, “That’s the girl for me.” They don’t stop to look below the surface at an immaturity that they will have to cope with all of their life. It seems that the more beautiful a girl is, the more self-centered she is. The more she conforms to certain standards of beauty, the more immature she tends to be throughout her entire life. That does not mean you have to marry a homely girl, for God can bring to any girl’s heart a humility that makes her an ideal mate.
When the boys watch some of these little sexy girls flip by, they may think, “My, what a wonderful wife she would be.” Remember—it’s one thing to promise; it’s another thing to produce. And I’m not only speaking about sex, but about the whole relationship. Over and over again we see this thing of big promises and little fulfillment. Look for a girl who is generous.
Rebecca was a beautiful girl, but beautiful girls were probably a dime a dozen. You could fill a harem with them back in the days of Abraham. When Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, he was anxious for him to find a generous girl. When the servant, with his ten camels, stopped at a well outside the city for a drink, a young girl came by to fill her pitcher with water. He asked her, “May I have a drink from your pitcher?” “Oh yes, here’s a drink, and let me draw water for your camels also.” That generosity, that capacity to give of herself, marked her. She was to be in the holy line, one of the ancestors of the Lord Jesus Christ. She was a generous-hearted woman whom God had chosen.
The capacity to give of yourself is a great mark of maturity. Do you want to be mature? Do you want to get out of the bond servant state? Then get rid of the self-centeredness. Self-pity rules among those who think only of themselves. They count every loss to be a personal affront and remember every occasion when they have been offended. They tend to be unforgiving because they have not the generosity to forgive. How good it is (though not easy) to be able to forgive and forget.
Remember—as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a bond servant, though he is owner of everything.