If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord, like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.
I would say the way that we expand our capacities is that we must be faithful, first, in feeding upon the Word of God in the original manuscripts, because translators of the Bible are bias, and upon the blessings and perfect provision that the Lord makes available to us through the finished work of the Cross.
Second, we must also sense that there must be very consistent exercise or working with the Holy Spirit, because that which you receive and do not put into action, you lose.
Third, you must learn to stretch under adverse circumstances to appropriate growth and strength to meet an impossible situation.
It’s the challenge of the impossible, or put it this way, the challenge of the thing beyond your human ability that causes you to grow in God. Did you get that?
It’s the challenge of the thing that’s a little bit beyond your ability, something that you can’t quite handle.
When we grow up in Christ to a certain maturity where we begin to walk with God, the Father begins to discipline us ordering our steps, where the appropriation of more of the Lord, is the only way out of the situations we are placed in.
And often people come to the house of God quite discouraged because they have faced some problem that has defeated them and defeated them, and they come discouraged.
Instead of sensing that the Lord is going to throw that thing in front of you until you beat it. And it’s not a matter of condemnation. As far as God’s action is concerned, it’s a matter that He very consistently puts things in front of people that are a little bit beyond their capacity or their abilities so that they reach into God and they appropriate.
This is the way that a man or a woman in Christ expands their capacities for God, always under the pressure of having to face something or do something or be something a little bit beyond what you are or beyond your best effort to that date.
This is something always to remember. Never be discouraged with yourself. Otherwise, you’ll be hung up with an inferiority complex.
Everything that you face will produce a reaction that there just isn’t anything in you to meet the situation, and you’ll become so introverted in looking at your limitations that you miss what God’s trying to do for you in causing you to look to Him to appropriate strength and grow thereby.
Our primary destiny on earth is to be conformed and transformed to the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.
Remember always, when you come to the house of the Lord and you say, oh, I’m so discouraged. I have so many problems. I’m facing so many things.
Whenever you face those things, remember that the best growth that a person makes is not in days in which everything goes well.
The best growth that a person makes is during adversity. Read the book of Acts and you’ll see that the church grew when it was being persecuted.
When the pressures were on, that’s the time that the people of God became sanctified and grew up in the things of the Lord. And they were able to abandon their own selfish interests and live for something so much greater than themselves. Willing to die for something greater than themselves, the Kingdom. These are the things that we see when we read the acts of the disciples.
I remember hearing this, and I believe it is true, because it was from a good source, that the trees back in the Midwest of America grow, get their growth during the winter months when the snow and the ice is on the ground. No leaves.
That’s when the trees grow. The trees don’t grow in the spring and summer nearly so much. They branch out, they get leaves, they become fruitful.
But those old trees, they put some roots down and they put some solid growth when the winter was just as cold as it can be. And you think it would be the opposite.
A person makes his best progress when adversity is upon them. Somehow, they anticipate, and they stretch, and they reach into God because they know that God can meet their need.
And when it’s all finished, they’ve grown considerably in the process. This is a thing that we must remember.
Some of you have gone through things that could be a little bit discouraging, but I’m going to build you up if I can and get you to appropriate the blood and the life of Jesus Christ for yourself to believe that God is with you, that God’s going to bless you, that you’re going to grow in the grace of the Lord, that not anything can defeat you or hold you back from the purposes of the Lord.
Of course, we’re impatient, a human quality. And I think that God understands us, but I don’t think we understand that limitation of time that He’s imposed upon us. I feel like saying to God sometimes, I know you’ve lived for eternity in the past and have experienced my future in eternity to come. That I don’t fully understand, that as far as you are concerned my life on earth has already been lived and I am already perfected in eternity.
But do you understand that I’ve got just so much time? That the days are passing, that I’m living my life out fast and all I’ve accomplished is building a website.
I have only been walking with God going on five years, before that I was still basically living for myself.
Come on, I need a little bit of help here, to fulfill my destiny. And there’s something in that cry for the Lord. That desperation, but I have learned that it should be exercised and channeled in the way of appropriation, not in a desperation that breeds questioning toward the Lord.
I held on to my life and almost lost it and I am still reaping what I have sown, now I am supposed to find it, but I am running out of time, my voice does not sound right, and I am still physically out of shape, what you have set before me to do is impossible.
You may feel that God’s called you to do things and you can’t get them done. Welcome to the club. Welcome to the club. I review the things that I have felt by revelation upon my life from the time that I was Christian in 1983 that God wants me to accomplish in the spirit in my lifetime. Most of them are yet to be done. And so, you see the birthdays coming and going and you see the years passing and as you see them fleeting by you say, Is it possible?
I know that in six months YHWY could do the things that I have envisioned and believed for a lifetime. Now that is my faith.
I’m not looking forward to just six months. But I know that God is not limited. I see in the Scriptures he’s taken sometimes a lifetime to prepare a man to walk in that which was just a matter of hours.
I wonder if John the Baptist’s ministry consisted much more than about two years at the limit, something like two years. And do you know that John spent all his life preparing for one announcement that he was going to make? Was it worthwhile? Yes, of all men born of women, Jesus said, there is none greater than John the Baptist of all the prophets and all the men.
Yet he that is least the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. We meant, though, of course, that of all men that were born of a mission to introduce Christ, there wasn’t any that was greater than John the Baptist.
No matter what circumstance you’re facing by consistent feeding upon the Lord Jesus Christ is necessary to the expanding of your capacities, the exercising of yourself in the Lord.
Doing the thing that you know you have to do regardless of what you want to do. It’s always easy when you set a course on prayer and you’re a little weary in the morning. You say, well, I’ll set the alarm. I am to tired I won’t pray this morning. I won’t do this. I won’t do that.
It’s easy to just bypass the spiritual things, not give them the attention that they should have. Exercise yourself from the Lord. Be faithful. Faithful in that which God sets before you.
And never be discouraged because God sets before you things to do that are bigger than what you feel you have a capacity or ability to do.
That’s the way you grow, is that you reach into God for something better and greater than your best effort, the best work you’ve ever done. Believe God.
You are assured by the Son of God that the Father sees the very number of the hairs of your head, and he knows all of your thoughts, you are of great concern to the Lord?
Do not doubt or waver in his love for you but accept this day that the Lord shall speak to you and the Lord shall lead you, he shall find ways of making known his will unto the seeker.