Dear Father, let this word be more than a sermon; let it reveal ourselves to ourselves. O God, search us, but not negatively. Let us behold what we are, a growing organism under the hand of God, a planting of the Lord that is growing and maturing, with all the divine qualities that You have created within us developing, and our awareness of You growing every day. In the name of the Lord we pray, Amen.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13:8–13.
The Holy Spirit has indicated that many people have reached a spiritual adolescence in which they find it difficult to not be rebellious because their awareness of problems and difficulties has increased. The days of childhood are departing from us; we are putting away childish things and becoming quite mature in our whole viewpoint. The Word says that when you were a child, you spoke as a child, you used to think as a child, reason as a child. That is true, but when you became a man, you do away with childish things.
All of us who have had little children in the family are aware of how it was when they first began to speak and would lisp. We may remember all our lives the way they could put words together and mix them up. There is something beautiful about remembering that, because at that time those were marks of development and growth. Later we told them, “Now you have to cut the baby talk or we’ll give you a spanking. You know how to talk.” Once they gained a lot of favor and love by baby talk; now as they grow older, they gain favor only as they begin to assume the responsibility of their age and the growth level of their age.
As children, our curiosity begins to grow and the childish things engulf us. Later, we put away those childish things as we begin to develop into maturity. With maturity comes the awareness of responsibility. A little child must learn to dress and take care of himself and do many things. As a person’s abilities and his coordination develops, there are certain responsibilities he takes with it.
This is what the Lord shows us in the Scriptures. The book of Ephesians reveals that the reason God is moving today in the earth is because He is giving apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. In Ephesians 4:13–15, we see why He is giving us these ministries. Until we all attain to the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man (The whole idea of all that God is doing is to help you grow up), to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ.
The whole purpose of what God is doing in the earth today is to help us not to be children tossed to and fro. We are not to be infants, thinking as a child, feeling as a child, speaking as a child, but we are to put away the childish things and enter into the maturity that is set before us.
That is exactly what God is doing to the people in this walk. They have had enough of the dealings of the Lord that they have a growing awareness of their responsibility for what God imparted to them. They know what is expected of them at this measure and level of their growth. Because they have had the apostles and prophets, the pastors and the teachers among them, no longer can they dwell in the same level. Year after year brings a responsibility to grow up into the Lord, to mature, not as children tossed to and fro by anything that would influence them, but to come up in the name of the Lord.
Now this business of growth and growing awareness is the thing that God is dealing with now. God has been speaking to me about our right to become the sons of God. “To as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become the sons of God” (John 1:12). Don’t think that maturity automatically happens to you. There are a number of factors that contribute to your spiritual maturity and several things that set about to bring it in your life. One contributing factor to be emphasized is that you must want to grow up. You must be tired of all the things you have done. Maybe God has excused it because you were just a child, but you must put away the childish things and desire above everything else to grow up.
There are people who resist growing up. They just do not want to grow up. I remember a young boy (he now stands over six feet) whose big ambition in life was to not grow up. His father told me one day, “I want you to pray for my son.”
I said, “Why?”
He said, “Well, he doesn’t want to grow up. He just wants to play. He doesn’t want to go to school. He doesn’t want to learn. He came in the other day, and when I started talking he started crying and said, “Daddy, I don’t want to grow up.”
I supposed you could say in your heart that you’ve had times when you didn’t want to grow up, either; when you wished you did not have the responsibilities of maturity. Once in Brazil when a pastor was talking about spiritual growth, he asked a group of children what grade they were in. Several of them were in second grade. Then he asked them what grade they wanted to be in. All of them said the third grade except one boy. He said, “The first grade!” He was wanting to go backward. He thought it was easier going downhill than up. I think sometimes people feel that way in their hearts.
The Lord purposes that there be a growing awareness within you. When I say a growing awareness as you grow up, let me point out what I really mean. Can any of you men remember when you became aware of girls? Can you remember when the first awareness of yourself began to come? Can you remember when you first became aware of your parents as persons and of the problems they faced? Can you remember when you first became aware of the value of things—what it was to begin to work for them? Can you point to the time when you first became aware of fear? and to be aware of what you were to fight and from what you were to flee?
When prudence gives way to immature courage, the person says, “I’ll stand and fight.” Sometimes it is better to run. Paul tells Timothy, Flee also youthful lusts. II Timothy 2:22. There are some things that you had better run from! Joseph knew that. When Potiphar’s wife propositioned him and seized hold of his coat, he ran away and left the coat in her hand (Genesis 39:1–13). Because he got out of there didn’t mean he was lacking in courage. Sometimes it is just better to run!
We learn when to flee, and we learn when to fight. As we begin to grow up, we become aware that this is a responsibility we have. The older we grow in the Lord, the more this responsibility looms as a major problem. We haven’t been running from much lately nor have we been backing off from much. We have tackled impossible things. We have tackled the giants of the land and the high walled cities. God has done something within our spirits to make us courageous. We have learned as we grow older that the heart cannot be set on many things, nor can our spirits drink from many different fountains. We have learned how to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that He is a jealous God.
As we grow older, we learn priorities. A little child doesn’t know much about values. I remember when I was a child I traded something very valuable for a piece of junk. Later, I read about Benjamin Franklin trading a good pocket knife for a willow whistle (there’s not much trick to making a whistle out of a piece of willow branch). When he got home, his father looked at him and said, “You paid too much for your whistle.” Benjamin Franklin became a shrewd businessman as he grew older. Not to pay too much for his whistle was a good lesson he learned.
As we grow up, we learn to not pay so high a price for what we want that we bankrupt our souls over it. The ministry is coming to us in these days so that we be no more children, tossed to and fro. We must learn that we don’t pay too much for the whistle, that we don’t give priority to things that should be secondary or nonexistent in our lives. We must learn what is the good and acceptable and the perfect will of God (Romans 12:2). This makes the difference in the people who linger in the shadows, while others press in and bask in the full light of the glory of God in the center of the camp. Those who learn these things are not content with the little immature cravings that belong to the babies, but they wean themselves and no longer have to be taken care of by nursemaids.
In this walk, God has brought something that makes us aspire to grow up. Most churches are filled today with babies, some of them six feet tall, requiring a pacifier continually. There are some people to whom one dare not talk straight. At the beginning of this walk a straight sermon often saw one or two casualties—they couldn’t take it. Now people come and say, “Teach more of this. Give us more of this word.” They become lovers of the Word. They’re not the ones who require to have milk because they’re babes. They want the strong meat because, by reason of use, they have their senses exercised to discern what is good and evil (Hebrews 5:14). A baby does not know that; a baby cannot know good or evil. He does not have the judgment nor the wisdom to know. You keep dangerous things from a child by putting them high where he can’t reach them. That is what God does with you! Because He loves you, He keeps things away from you until you begin to aspire to them. You begin to grow up, and what would destroy the baby now is the thing that feeds the young man. The baby would choke upon meat, but the young man, who thrives upon it, is strong, the Word abides in him, and he overcomes the wicked one (I John 2:14).
The Lord gave me a prophecy. He said, “This will be the history of the people that I will give to you to lead. ‘Thy sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth (How fast they would spring up), and thy daughters like the similitude of a palace.’ ” He said that the people, like oxen, would be strong to labor, and the sheep would bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets (Psalm 144:12–14).
I am aware of the necessity of feeding the people with meat. The day of molly-coddling is over. People seem to be born to a strong diet; they are born to something that seems to be fantastically mature. They are jerked out of their infancy almost immediately. I believe that prophecy is coming to pass! You will be that people who will do these things. Quick maturity will come forth. To some extent, maturity really is a matter of wisdom that God gives you. Revelation is a part of maturing. After you have acted immaturely and have been caught in a problem, you usually say, “Why was I so stupid? Why was I so immature that I didn’t understand what was going on?” But as you begin to grow up in the Lord, then you become aware of all the things taking place. Maturity is the difference between the little rookie going out to battle and the old seasoned veteran. The new boy going out is a raw recruit. He goes out, marching along, and doesn’t look where he’s going. But watch the old, seasoned veteran. He does not have a nice shiny uniform and he may not have the same brisk gait, but look at his eyes. He is watching and seeing everything. There is not a thing he is missing. He has been shot at enough. He has lived with life and death long enough. He has become a soldier.
The Lord is saying, Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life. II Timothy 2:3, 4. Many of us started out in this walk in the army of the Lord, carrying a lot of things upon our back. We were carrying a beautiful television set, the love of a fine car, different pleasures and hobbies, cameras, golf clubs. All these we were carrying as we went to war. As we went along, we realized that we couldn’t carry that load because we couldn’t please Him who had called us to be a soldier. So we discarded them, not because they were evil, but because they were weights. We had a battle to finish.
With maturity comes a sense of the objective God sets before you and a growing awareness of the day in which you live. When David was recruiting men from all over Israel, God brought him many men who understood the times. Even though they were in debt and distress, they knew what was taking place in the earth round about them. Because they had that knowledge, they went on to be mighty men. Oh, God give us people who do not do things mechanically or live day by day in existence, but men who live out their days with an awareness of what is taking place; an awareness of the world round about them; an awareness of the strategic moment in which they have come on the scene; that God has something special and unique and they will not be bogged down with things of the passing parade. They must cast it aside because in their hearts, as maturing children of God, they are coming toward sonship. There is a dedication to suffer with Him that they might reign with Him, and walk with a growing awareness of what it means to be a child of God.
I know we face many problems as the people of the Lord. But we are not discouraged with the circumstances; we are not discouraged with the assault. We move on with a greater faith, a greater determination in the name of the Lord.
I am still haunted by the record I read of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Many of them died, gave their lives and their property. Their families suffered. There was not one of them who did not endure the harassment and stripping away of everything he had. These were wealthy men, but they said, “We pledge our lives and our fortunes,” the day they signed it. They believed in America.
America never bothered to pay them back. One man who loaned a great amount never saw it again. He died a pauper, yet he had given a fortune to finance equipment that was bought from France. I wonder how many of us will never have a “thank you” for what we do. I wonder how many of us may give our lives in the assault as we see Babylon fall. We may be just another body lying there, one after another, to make steps for the man who will go over and take the wall. We don’t know.
Would your life be worth it if, by the efforts you make, the breaking through comes? Are you dedicated enough to this thing of the restoration, to the Kingdom of God? Are you seeking the Kingdom and His righteousness to the extent that you’d be willing to be just a body lying there for someone to step on and step upward as they reach up to Zion?
I feel a lot of us are giving our lives at this point. I have felt God’s dealings on my own spirit. I was thinking about the promises of the Lord, how real they were, and I remembered in Hebrews 11:13, These all died in the faith, not having received the promise. Many a man has died believing God, and the promises God made to his heart have not yet come to pass. God was not unfaithful, but it was yet another time for that to come to pass.
Smith Wigglesworth, who was always a great inspiration to me, told about three different times in His life when God gave him the vision of this walk with God that we’re in at the present time; each time God told him that he would not live to see it. He talked about the days of the double portion that would come. It is a fantastic story—this man had raised the dead and performed great miracles of healing. He was a man with little education, yet the anointing of the Holy Spirit taught him to read. Three times God showed him things that were to come, but said, “You’ll not live to see it. I’ll take you home first.” What an abrupt man he was, but what a man of faith. He died in the faith and is probably now in the cloud of witnesses. It is a good thing he is in the cloud with only a spirit and not a body, or he would double up his fist and hit some of us because he lived so intensely, with such vigor toward the thing that God was doing.
God is bringing us to a growing awareness that we are the sons of God. We are no more children, but we have the responsibility of being the sons, of going in and loosing all creation from the futility to which it has been subjected (Romans 8:20, 21). A growing revelation is coming to us. Oh, God anoint us because all that is necessary for us is to just look to the Lord and let Him start revealing these things.
When I was young, I was not aware of many things. I suppose things miss me now, but it is surprising how many things I catch. It surprises me sometimes that, as I go along, God just seems to nudge me and say, “Just a minute, son, you missed that.”
“Oh, something I should see?”
I look, and He breaks my heart. He makes me see another person’s need. He makes me aware, not of myself, but of someone else and his need.
By highlighting the process of growth and development, this message has listed some things God is doing for us in giving us this growing awareness. Now we are not so reluctant to say, “Yes, I do want to grow up. I do want to be mature. I want to take the responsibilities that comes with maturity.”
Grow aware, first, of who you are. Stop thinking of yourself as John Jones or Henry Smith and start thinking of yourself as one of the Father’s family, of a son who is growing up in God. Don’t think of yourself or others in relationship to personality traits, family, or even heredity. You are something far greater. Refuse to be bound by the heredity of your family lines. I am so glad I belong to the family of God. We don’t want to think of ourselves in terms of the limitations and restrictions. We don’t want to feel that we have to react in the same patterns of behavior that our relatives did.
There is a growing awareness of our function and ministry. It takes a long time for a man to find his place, what he can do, what he can do well, what he is interested in doing. One of our ministries is an absolute rebel. He has rebelled against the establishment and everything else. Yet he and I can get together and my heart just sings with him. He shared with me some things that have been written about using solar energy in heating houses. (In visions and revelations, the Lord showed me this many years ago. I actually wanted to plan one and go out in the desert and build it.) As I watched him I thought, “I wish I could do something for him. I wish I could give him the awareness I have developed through these years; not destroy that rebel spirit, but somehow help him to mellow.”
You young people have to do this. When I was young, black was black and white was white. It took me a long time to realize it was my sight that was faulty. I didn’t see what God was doing in people at all. I only saw where they stood on the little yardstick I would use to measure them by. This is how tall they were; this is how wrong they were. And I learned not to look at a man’s stumblings or what he goes through. I had a growing awareness to look deeper and see what God was doing in that man’s life.
Part of what God will do for us as sons in the end-time ministry, is give us a growing awareness of our function, our ministry now, and a growing awareness of our future ministry in the earth. God has a tremendous thing for us, beyond what has even been revealed to us. One thing that frightens me is a growing awareness of our responsibility for the gifts that He gives us. Many of us have been blessed. Many of us have been touched by God, and we don’t realize the responsibility that we have for the grace that rests upon us, for the gifts that He has given us. How are we going to walk in maturity? Are we going to exercise those gifts?
As I was waiting before the Lord I sensed deeply our responsibility to believe. I think when we are young, we move by impulse and inspiration. Something comes along so we say, “Oh, yes, we’re going to believe for Brazil. We’re going to believe for Mexico. Let’s believe for Canada. Let’s believe. It’s inspiring to believe. We believe.” After awhile the light-hearted followers will have run away to play children’s games, because they think as a child, they speak as a child, and they pray childish prayers. When the road is cleared of the children, then the backs of the sons who pray through the night are bowed down. Responsibility for intercession rests upon them—a responsibility to believe and to be the channels of God by which His will comes forth in the earth. They know someone has to do it.
Others can come and go, but those who grow up in the Lord have a growing awareness of their responsibility to stand in the gap and turn the tide in the day of battle, to pray when that prayer means the difference between the launching of an apostolic company or the end of it. They pass up sleep and they pass up their selfish pursuits because God has given them a growing awareness of the apostle and his need, and they cry unto God for him.
The time has come for us to grow up, to have a growing awareness of our need to think and feel and respond as Christ does. He cannot have a many-membered Body which is responding on a human level with emotional instability and going in different directions. He has to have a people who feel in their heart, “I must think as the Lord thinks; I must feel as He feels. My heart must beat synchronized with Him. I want nothing that He does not want. I shall fear nothing that He does not fear because I am His son.”
As we grow in the Lord and we become mature, there comes a growing awareness of our submission to His guidance and will. We say, “Lord, I know You have led me. I know You have guided me.” Then we feel that drive to move more and more into God, into greater revelation, into greater love, to just literally be swamped in this thing. It is no longer a matter of being in waters to wade or in waters up to the loin. We come to the waters that are too deep to be passed over, waters to swim in (Ezekiel 47:3–5). Because we know we are out of our depth, we cannot live for what we lived when we were children. We have put away the childish things which belonged to a day of lesser awareness, of lesser understanding, of lesser perception. We have put them away and said, “Oh, God, the day has come. Let me be lost in Your will. Let me be lost in the pursuit after Your Kingdom and Your righteousness. Let there be nothing else that I cling to except You, Lord.”
This message is very deep on my heart. I pray it will catch your mind and your heart, and it will be like a barb that you can’t pull out. I pray it will lead you into a deeper walk with the Lord. There are several factors in your maturity; this word is one of them. If you keep listening to enough of this word, you will grow up, because there is meat in it. Growl and chew at it, run away from it, but come back to it until it has become a living part of your very spirit.
God’s dealings mature us—the way He chastens us, the way He circumcises our hearts, the way He does such a deep work of the cross within us that we can hardly hold still for it. Another factor in our maturing is God’s direct revelation to our hearts. He not only reveals Himself, but He reveals what He wants us to do and reveals what He wants us to be.
Nothing makes a boy grow up so fast as to have a witness in his heart of what he is supposed to be. I thank God for that cold winter night in Iowa when the Lord called me to preach His word. I was between fourteen and fifteen years old. In the Spirit I was caught in vision to a number of countries of the world, and I spoke the different languages of those people as I went to them with the anointing of the Lord upon me. Afterwards I found there were still some traces of the boy left, but nothing in my life matured me as much as knowing what God wanted me to be, where I was going.
There is nothing like a revelation of the Lord to your heart to help you put away childish things and stop wandering around. You seek ministry—“Lord, heal me,” or “Deliver me from this problem.” But start asking God, “Lord, reveal to me the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Reveal to me what You want me to do. I will not be such an impetuous child. I’ll not find myself failing You so many times, so given over to unstable emotions. I can reach into You, Lord, if You just show me. Reveal to me what I’m to be. Show me in my heart what You want me to be. Let me cleave to You. Let me cleave to Your word with all of my heart.”
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. I Corinthians 13:9–12.
That day is not far off; it is right on us. He is not talking about heaven. He is talking about the greater revelation that comes in the Kingdom and in the remnant that precedes its establishment. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I have also been fully known. But now abide faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13:12, 13.
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. II Peter 3:18.
Did you find this touching you, and your heart open to His word? Then a little prayer will help now.
Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we kneel before You. We want to walk in love as Your children. We want to put away the childish things. We want to search our hearts, Lord. Can You make us more aware? Give us this growing awareness that belongs to the sons of God. Help us to take a step in it now—another step toward the sons of God. Oh, God forgive us where we’ve been so centered upon things, thinking upon things as children, and bring us this which helps us to walk as Your dear sons.
Upon our shoulders must rest a sense of responsibility—a growing awareness of what is to be before us in the Kingdom of God, and how we’re to fulfil it. And Lord, it starts with me. I have wanted so much. I want to keep my values straight. I want the first things of the Kingdom to be first. I want to be that vehicle for Your word, such a necessary word, to come forth in the earth. The foundation of the Kingdom has to come. It is not an apostle of the church now, it is an apostle of the Kingdom that must come, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, a teacher of the Kingdom that must come. Though we dwell in the church age, we are projected as sons to be sons of the Kingdom.
Lord, we want to learn how to be kings and priests. It is not easy to be a king; it is not easy to be a priest and stand between God and the people continually making intercession. It is our hour, Lord; come and dwell with us. Lead us out of our childhood fancies; bring us into what you want us to be. Forgive us, Lord, for our last tantrums; the childish tantrums resulting in bitterness, rebellion, resentfulness—God forgive us of that. Oh, teach us how to react as sons. Let it just be set in our minds that when we face anything, we shall react as a son of God, not as a child. We shall not think as a child or speak as a child or mind childish things. But, Master, we’re going to walk with You. Amen.