When our spirit became alive to the Lord, our spiritual eyes and ears were opened to communicate with The Spirit of God who lives in another dimension called the unseen realm.
John 3: 8 The Spirit breathes (gives life) in (secret) place to will, and you hear the voice of him, but cannot tell of source motion towards and signifying secrecy, led. In this manner to be everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
This is an accurate translation of the Greek. I added the words in between the Parentheses. And Jesus is talking to Nicodemus who was not born from above yet “cannot tell, but those who are born again can” This is talking about the unseen realm.
Now you know why I love studying the original manuscripts, to take a guess I would bet no one understands that verse correctly. And there are hundreds of verses Christians misinterpret in the Bible.
Our spiritual growth is a growing awareness of the life of the Lord. This life of the Lord begins to grow in us as we come into submission to it.
It is called the mystery of the Kingdom-the Lordship of Jesus over our lives. This life is not forced upon us; we willingly submit to it. Our desire for it becomes so great that we hunger and thirst for it, and then we are filled with it.
That which hinders our spiritual growth is anything and everything that distracts our focus from our Lord.
In a subtle way these things get our attention and enter our heart.
When God becomes first place in our heart, then everything else becomes secondary or non-existent and we can grow quickly in the Lord.
It is in the surrendering of our will, or the submitting of our Life (soul) to His Lordship that we find or experience His Life (inherent in himself). This life of the Lord will grow until it swallows everything else up.
That which starts out as a tiny seed in your spirit, grows until everything within you comes into submission to it.
A living Word is a God breathed word.
The living Word transforms your mind, emotions, will, conscience and heals your body and fills you with the glory of God so that you start shining like Jesus on the Mount of transfiguration.
I have not yet reached that place but am moving toward it. I am starting to experience this transformation every day, and it is exciting.
The seed in us cannot sin, the seed is the living word-Christ in us. The seed grows as God reveals his word, the divine attribute that he wants us to walk in.
We live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God which is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.
The living Word must become a part of you, or it won’t work! It must be written on your heart. You must hear it over and over again until finally it becomes the way you think, feel and act.
You believe in the Word that is alive in the spirit realm because of the finished work of Christ on the cross and then it is imparted to our spirit, as faith which is a living spiritual substance.
Then when you learn how to be continually filled with the Spirit, all the functions of your soul will come into alignment with your spirit, through the life of God flowing into your soul and it will come into manifestation in the natural realm.
Believing has to do with our soul our thinking, feeling, conscience ( we have to have a clear conscience) imagination(we have to see ourselves as already possessing it) and this is a process, unless our mind is renewed where whatever we confess comes to pass, but that only happens when we are perfected in love.
GROWING UP 3
We are to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. One word from God, one verse of Scripture will change your life. And then God will give us another word, and we go from grace to grace, faith to faith, strength to strength and glory to glory!
Our awareness of the Lord should be growing every day, as all the divine qualities of His nature come forth in us and begin to develop.
The fruit of the Spirit is the divine nature of God. It is called the fruit (singular not plural) of the Spirit, not the fruits of the Spirit, because they are all a part of His divine nature, the fruit of our spirit joined to the Lord.
They are just different aspect of the love of God, that we need to practice until it becomes our daily response.
As we grow in the Love of God, we also grow in the perception of God. The pure in heart see, and in the seeing our heart becomes pure.
The love of God and the wisdom of God grow together. The moment we are not moving in the Love of God, that moment we are not seeing clearly.
The word of God tells us to get wisdom, that it is the principal thing (the primary source of something, the basic way in which something works). But we cannot separate this wisdom from the Love of God.
God is love, this love is totally selfless-its concern is for other people’s wellbeing. There is wisdom in this love that absolutely makes perfect sense.
Are our reasoning faculties are renewed, the things of God are just common sense. Before our reasoning was not compatible to God and blocked us from communicating with him.
We are being called upon to trust his wisdom and love. We took upon human flesh that we might learn not to trust in ourselves, but in him. You are in the school of planet earth, are you learning to trust in God and not your own thinking?
Anything that God calls us to do is for our own good, and it makes perfect sense, if we have the wisdom of God to understand the why of it.
James 3: 15This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 16For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. 17But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
James 1: 2My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 4But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. 5If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 6But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. 7For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. 8A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Unless God opens our eyes to see the truth, we don’t understand why we are going through something. But God only opens up our spiritual eyes when we are willing to do the Father’s will. This requires trust-or life commitment.
It is not God’s will that anyone perish, but all come unto repentance.
This repentance is a gift of God; it is the opening of our spiritual eyes so that we can come into full agreement with God. It is the result of God’s thoughts flowing into our mind.
It is not God who destroys us; it is we who destroy ourselves. God has come to save us from ourselves.
But people miss the visitation of God, because their spiritual eyes are closed, they cannot see the truth, they are set in their own ways.
They hold on to a life that is just a vapor that appeared for a moment and then vanishes away. Instead of giving God their mortal life (soul) to YHWH and let Him transform it, they hold on to it and end up losing it.
When God opens our spiritual eyes, he puts the fullness of Himself into our spirit, but we walk in a measure of that.
We begin to walk in a measure of His very own love and faith which begins to grow as it is practiced and exercised.
When we walk in a Living Word from God we receive, it becomes written on our heart so that it becomes a lifestyle, we naturally respond that way.
James 1: 2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.
Do you murmur and complain, worry, get discouraged when you encounter problems in your life? Well then, that verse of scripture has not been written upon your heart. You do not have the mind of Christ in that area of our life; your mindset is an enemy of God!
When you encounter problems do you rejoice, get all happy and excited. Paise the Lord! Glory! Hallelujah!
The purpose of the problem is to point to the solution. Problems are pointers. They point to the provision of Jesus Christ on the cross, they point to the promises and provisions hidden in the Word of God.
Do you count it all joy when you fall (to fall into the midst of something so as to be totally surrounded by it) into Varied, many–colored, adversity, temptation, trial, a putting to the test, spoken of persons only.
We’ll then that word has been written on your heart. You are transformed in that area of your life.
This is what a walk with God is all about we live by every God breathed word revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. This is called the vital aspect of redemption.
Jesus had the Spirit without measure, and of his fullness we have all received. But this fullness can only benefit us, through the revelation of the word, which comes in degrees and is imparted to our spirit as faith.
It is this faith and love in God that He Himself has put into our heart that causes us to grow spiritually as we begin to submit to His perfect will.
It is in this submission that we begin to see more and more clearly unto the perfect day when we fully know, just as we are known.
The love of God growing in our heart is what causes us to lay down our natural life to Him, and as we submit ourselves to Him, we partake more and more of His divine nature.
The more we obey God the more we receive of His nature operating in us. Our obedience is a participation in his nature, the angel’s obedience is more of a mechanical obedience, and you know what happened to some of them when Satan rebelled against YHWH, the angels that have not fallen walk in the fear of God and the church waters it down, calling it a reverential fear. When I let the Spirit of God search my heart my body literally trembles, of course I feel the love of God in it also, but I can turn it off, because it gets too hard to handle.
But I am still reaping some of the things I have sown, when I did not have a walk with God, and when I relate to people in my soul and not my spirit. So sometimes I must take a look at my past so I can relate to how it has hurt others.
My boys were taken out of my life by my x-wife when they were 2 and 4, and I lost contact with them, and they had a hard life because of it.
I was just starting to make progress with my older boy, and I told him how my nephew could use both hands and could swing a bat both lefty and righty and that was great he was teaching my almost 4-year-old grandson to catch a ball with his left and right hand.
But when I heard him using the F word and other words on a video with my month-old granddaughter present. I told him how my father and mother never swore but I picked it up from my friends, and it is the hardest habit to break. He got offended and he did not like it and once I said I am still your father, and he didn’t like that, so he stopped talking to me for the time being.
Our brain is like a computer programed by our life experiences and habits, so I will kick something and say praise the Lord, or when I do swear, I say praise the Lord right after. I am reprograming my computer.
In growing up we must lose our life (soul) and then we find his eternal life filling our soul.
In reality we are not losing our live, but we are finding it, we are becoming more like Him in the process.
Though our outward man (body) is perishing, our inward man (spirit and soul) is being renewed day by day. The more we seek God the more we find Him; we become willing to sell everything to get this treasure in the earthen vessel.
God becomes the only thing that really satisfies us and everything else becomes secondary or non-existent in our lives.
But the word says that we cannot come to Him, unless we believe He exists and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. This is the gift of God- (that He has made Himself available to us)-and to the degree that we desire Him, and seek Him, to that degree we find Him.
It becomes our one consuming desire, to know the Lord, and to the degree that we know Him, to that degree we are changed into the same image. This enables him to live in our soul, until we are finally filled with all the fullness of God.
It is as we grow spiritually that we become mature in our whole viewpoint of Life. The more we love God the more we partake of His wisdom.
It is as we get caught up in the pursuit of Knowing God intimately, that we forget all about ourselves-which is the problem. Living independently where He doesn’t become our all in all.
Now the first requirement in growing spiritually is that we must want to grow up. God is not going to force His will upon us. We must desire His will above all else, or we will not experience it.
It is the Spirit of God who works in us this desire. This desire becomes all consuming, where we desire nothing else, when we hunger and thirst for it then we are filled with it, which gives birth to the power given us to accomplish it.
As our motivations become purified, then our ability to experience what we desire comes to pass.
The reason we don’t experience the fullness of God is because we are pursuing something else.
This is where the wisdom of God comes in, to be willing to sacrifice everything else to attain this one thing. And it is in this maturity where we attain this one desire (knowing the Lord) that we have the wisdom to rightly relate to anything else the Lord adds to us.
With maturity comes responsibility. When we grow up in the Lord, he entrusts us with all things. We become kings and priests after the order of Melchizedek.
We rule over and intercede for others. We come into the mind of Christ, where we have the necessary love and wisdom so that God can entrust us with other people’s lives.
The whole purpose of what God is doing in the earth today is to cause us to grow up in Him.
The reason God gives gift ministries (individuals) Apostles, Prophets, evangelists, and Pastors and teachers is so that we be no more children-being tossed to and fro because we have not come into the character of Christ, the unity of spirit.
We are still being influenced by things that are to be secondary or non-existent in our lives.
With the impartation of the divine nature comes the responsibility for that which has been imparted to us. With every gift of God comes the responsibility to allow the Spirit of God to govern it.
We become stewards (somebody who manages somebody else’s property, finances, or household) of everything God gives us.
We have been bought and paid for with a price; we are not our own person.
We govern everything in Him, through Him and for Him. We become a part of one big family-the Kingdom of God. He who becomes the greatest becomes the servant of all. God becomes all and in all.
It is a self-less kingdom. The old self cannot inherit it. It is a kingdom of divine love and wisdom where everyone in it knows the Lord. And this government will never end but is eternal and ever expanding. Everyone in it is in willing submission to it.
Maturity in the Lord does not automatically happen. We grow in the divine nature, which means that we grow in divine love. We learn how to love God with all our heart; we learn how to trust God with our lives.
As we grow up in the Spirit, we learn that our heart cannot be set on many things, and we cannot drink of many different fountains, we learn priorities, about values, that which is important, and that which will pass away.
We become willing to let go of things that are to be non-existent or secondary in our lives. We must learn and then prove- what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.
As we grow in divine love and wisdom we become aware of all the things that are taking place. This maturity is a result of divine revelation; we possess knowledge that we didn’t have before.
As we look back, we no longer condemn ourselves for our foolish behavior. We see that we were immature because we couldn’t see clearly; the focus of our life was on something that should not exist, or it was on one of those secondary things that took our eyes off the Lord.
All sin is foolishness in God’s eyes. No good thing will God withhold from those who walk uprightly before Him.
The problem is we get our eyes on the good things which are secondary and mean nothing unless Jesus is the Lord of our lives. It is only through His wisdom that we can relate properly to things, because we are seeing through His eyes, his viewpoint.
As we grow in God, we partake of His Nature; we share His glory or character which causes us to see all things in a different light. We now have God’s viewpoint concerning a matter.
There are two kinds of knowledge-human knowledge and God’s Knowledge. The knowledge of God comes with the impartation of His nature, which is called revelation knowledge. It is experiential knowledge because we are experiencing the presence of God in it.
It is not just knowledge in the mind, but the knowledge that causes the seed of God to grow into the image of God.
Knowledge apart from God’s character puffs us up, it is called self-knowledge it makes us think that we are somebody.
The knowledge that comes through God revealing it to us causes us to humble ourselves and glorify Him because He has shared it with us. It is His wisdom; we are only a partaker of it because He loves us so much.
But with this wisdom comes a responsibility to now act accordingly. Before we knew no better, now that we know, if we don’t walk in it, we lose that anointing, then we must fast and pray for it, it is an outward anointing, where we are walking in the supernatural, where the Spirit of God is abiding on us like a dove.
We will always have the inner anointing that will lead us into all the truth, but we must learn how to hear God’s voice. If we are not hearing it clearly it is because we have not obeyed the last thing he told us to do.
We walk in the light of God so that we can become a manifested son of that light, we become one with God because he trusts us to walk in the revelation we receive from Him. He shares his secrets with his friends.
God gives us His love so that we can love Him and others with it. God gives us His faith, so that we can believe Him with it. God gives us His faithfulness which is the growth of faith, so that we can be a good steward of that which He gives us to possess. We possess all things for Him.
He becomes our inheritance and we become His inheritance. God becomes all in all. We will always be a worshiper of God, but it is in our worshiping Him that we partake of Him.
We do not want to be worshiped; we give Him all the Glory. Everything is in divine order and flows perfectly.
We experience His life-we are a partaker of the glory of His children-Rom 8:16, this glory is different from the Father’s Glory. And this is the only thing that satisfies us. Everything else is secondary.
We are entering into the time of the double portion of the Spirit of God; we are becoming the first-fruits of the Spirit of God.
This is a result of the veils taken off the Word of God which is now being released in the earth.
The revelation and understanding of His word causes us to worship Him. And as we worship Him, we partake of His Spirit, as we partake of His Spirit we are transformed into the same image.
As we enter this maturity comes the responsibility to father or mother of all those God brings into our life in His Kingdom, through the outpouring of His Spirit into the earth through us.
God does not do a lot of things sovereignly anymore, because he has a many member body in the earth and has given us dominion over the earth, this is the first dromion that Adam was given.
God is bringing to us a growing awareness that we are the sons of God, and it is in this awareness that we realize that we are responsible to loose the creation from the futility to which it has been subjected.
It is a growing revelation; it is God growing in us- His nature is coming forth in us. As we grow up in the Lord, we are going to understand this more.
And with this maturity comes a responsibility to act accordingly. It is as God comes forth in us that we become the vehicle through which He expresses himself.
We begin to think and to feel the same way that God does as we enter into this oneness with Him. The word of God becomes a living part of our spirit as he reveals what he wants us to become and to do through Him.
As God’s love is perfected in us it casts out all fear, we begin to see face to face-this is the impartation of His glory in us, it is the revelation of the Kingdom within us that comes prior to its establishment upon the earth.
This revelation comes to a remnant of His people, those who learn how to love Him with all their heart, they become His bride in whom he imparts the authority to rule over His kingdom in heaven with him. We are called to be kings and priests unto God, and this only comes to pass when we grow up in Him. With maturity comes responsibility.