This is a compilation of articles on Spiritual growth. If you think spiritual growth is elusive to you as a Christian, the answer lies here, as you are shown the design of God for your spiritual life, helped to understand where you are on the chart He measures your life against, and know what you should do to make rapid progress.
Topics covered include: Changed by the presence, Conditions for growth, Discernment, God's refining process, Increasing in learning, My high places, Supplements to the Christian faith, The Lord's dealings, The path of honour, The thought warfare and Walking with God.
3. CONTENTS
1
„My Ears You Have Opened‟
1
2
Building Up Zion
5
3
Change of Garment
8
4
Changed by His Presence
12
5
Conditions for Growth
16
6
Discernment
17
7
From Unprofitable to Profitable
22
8
God‟s defining process
25
9
Increasing in Learning
28
10
Joy and Strength
31
11
Meditating on God
36
12
My High Places
40
13
Supplements to the Christians Faith
44
14
Partaking of the Coming Glory
47
15
The Body as Slave
50
16
The Lord‟s Dealings
53
17
The Path of Honour
56
18
The Patience of the Lord
60
19
The Thought Warfare
63
20
Walking with God
66
21
Appendix
70
1
4. 1
„MY EARS YOU HAVE OPENED‟
Psalm 40:6: Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You
have opened; burnt offering and sin offering You have not asked.
Does God still speak today? The answer is yes except your own God is
dead. The instinct to communicate inside all living things and God cannot
be less than what he creates.
The one who made eyes, can he not see? And by extension we can say
that the one who made the mouth, can he not speak?
One revelation that God would want you to have about him is that he is
a God who speaks. He is in total contract to other carved objects that have
mouth but they do not speak.
The next question you may ask is: how does God speak? First, you
should know that God has spoken (in the pages of the 66 books of the
bible). In a verse in the book of psalm, it is written that once God has
spoken twice have I heard (Psalm 62:11) – I read/heard it in the
word/preaching (general for everybody) and I am hearing it in my heart
(specific for me).
The scriptures are not called the word of God (John 10:35) for the fun
of it. The thoughts of God have been documented in the bible and that is
our primary window into the word of God.
But the words are not mere letters. What we need to know is that the
words were written down under the influence of the Holy Spirit (2Peter
1:20-21). It is the Holy Spirit who would guide us into the truth (John
16:13-14) which they unveil. There is prayer to that effect in the book of
psalm where a psalmist prayed: open my eyes that I may behold wondrous
things out of your law (Psalm 119:18).
This is reminiscing of the prayer of Elisha that God should open the
1
5. MY EARS YOU HAVE OPENED
eyes of his servant to see what was not immediately obvious (2Kings 6:1517). We need to approach the scriptures with a heart of faith (Hebrews
11:6) as opposed to the pseudo intellectual approach of our time that is
bent on stripping the bible of its spiritual angle.
Paul, spoke of the spiritual faculty needed to appraise spiritual truth
(2Corinthians 3:7-18). He said that with open faces we behold the glory of
God as in a mirror and we are changed from glory to glory. He compared
what happens when those who have not turned to Christ read the
scriptures, saying for this group a veil covers their mind, but when we turn
to Christ that veil is removed, just like when Moses (standing for the first
five books in the bible and by extension the whole of the scriptures) turns
to the Lord, he removes the veil, but when he turns to the people after his
encounter with God on the mountain, his face is covered.
Get this picture: looking at Moses from God‟s standpoint, there is no
veil. That is what we are called to do: see the whole of the scriptures from
God‟s point of view, and it can only be by God‟s Spirit; from that
standpoint, you will see it clearly.
The other way round, the veil that covers the bible is removed when we
turn to the Lord. Moses removes his veil when he turns to the Lord
because actually the Lord is who you want to see in the Lord and that
causes you to be changed from glory to glory. Moses experienced a fading
glory in his time be experience ever increasing glory. Paul added that liberty
to be changed by the word is by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Lord who
we encounter in that word.
And the communication of the Holy Spirit is only appraised by those
who have Holy Spirit (1Corinthians 2:9-16). They are equipped to hear the
voice of God. It is spiritually discerned.
Hearing from God is your birthright as a child of God, as a sheep in his
pasture, with Jesus Christ asserting that His sheep hears his voice; also John
wrote that we have an anointing from the Holy One that teaches us all
things (1John 2:27). Those are the potentials that we carry as children of
God.
Therefore our approach to hearing from God must not be that of trying
to pry information from an unwilling suspect, it is the fostering of
relationship between two family members, Father and child. That is the
normal spiritual course of things.
For the uninitiated, the unregenerate and the carnally minded, all I have
been talking about can be mere figment of the imagination- foolishness.
They do not realise that God knew they were going to say therefore he
recorded it in the bible that His “foolishness” is wiser than men
(1Corinthians 1:25).
When the bible says that the fools say in his heart there is no God
(Psalm 14:1), it reveals to us one way that God speaks: to our heart. The
6. MY EARS YOU HAVE OPENED
foolishness in the heart of the fool makes him think there is no God; the
God in the believer makes him think the thoughts of God. God
momentarily takes over the thought process and injects His own thoughts
there, except it comes as a command, with a clear tone of authority and
direction.
When David prayed: let the words of my mouth and the meditation of
my heart, be acceptable (Psalm 19:14), it adds to the idea that truly, God
can influence the meditation of the heart injecting His own thoughts there.
God said to man in the bible, “my thoughts are not your thoughts,”
before saying, “my ways are not your ways (Isaiah 55:6-9).” Note that the
thoughts came before the act, therefore God guiding us starts with him
putting his thoughts into us, so we may walk in his ways.
In that same passage, God says that as high as the heaven is higher than
the earth, his thoughts and ways are also higher than ours respectively. That
is why Jesus Christ came, and set up a new arrangement whereby as the full
representation of the Godhead (Colossians 1:9), he comes to live in us
(Colossians 1:27), and the Holy Spirit is given us to reveal the thoughts of
Christ to us (John 16:13-15). Jesus is the bridge between God‟s thoughts
and ours, and God‟s ways and ours.
Reading the bible is our initiative to put God‟s thoughts into us while
his speaking to us in our thoughts is God taking the initiative, which is what
is meant in the focus verse that “my ears you have opened.”
Let us be wary of things that want to close our ears to hearing from
God and most of them have to do with emotional imbalances, like worry,
fear and doubt.
Worry
Since the heart state is very important for hearing from God, the parable
of the sower where four different conditions of the heart are revealed, with
one pointedly affected by the cares of this world, worry about many things,
which would not allow the word of God to thrive in such a heart (Matthew
13:18-23).
Another kind of heart is shallow, having no place for the word of God
to take root enough to translate into action. Such a heart suffers from a lack
of depth of devotion, being the stony ground.
Fear
Paul wrote to Timothy saying that God has not given him a spirit of fear
(2Timothy 1:7), but the spirit of sound mind, which is also the mind of
Christ (1Corinthians 2:14-15). The spirit of fear and the mind of Christ are
mutually exclusive.
Sometimes in the bible, before God speaks to a group of people, he tells
them: fear not (Genesis 15:1, Numbers 21:34, Joshua 8:1, Luke 5:10, 8:50).
7. MY EARS YOU HAVE OPENED
The first indicator of disconnect between God and man was the emotional
turmoil of fear, where Adam said that he heard the voice of God and was
afraid (Genesis 3:1-10), signaling the degeneration of relationship between
God and man. Fear is a sign of distrust, and God gets “paralysed,” when he
is not trusted (Mark 6:1-6).
Doubt
James fingers doubt as something that will block the ear (James 1:5-8).
He said when you ask God for wisdom, which also translates to direction,
you will not be able to get it from God, if you doubt that truly he is
committed to giving you direction, and not that you are trying to force it
out of him, when you don‟t realise his commitment to you.
What all these goes to show is that a heart at rest is the one that is
sensitive to the voice of God, uncluttered by fear, doubt or worry. It is
interesting that all these anti hearing from God factors are all in the realm
of the emotions, which is notorious for being hard to tame.
Nevertheless, because of God‟s commitment to reach out to his
children, he can cut through any emotional jungle by the force of his grace.
God cuts through all of them to reach out to Gideon (Judges 6:1-15),
ditto Paul (Acts 9:1-20), and from the Song of Solomon we hear that God
can cause those he has chosen, the bride of Christ, the church to hear his
voice (Song of Solomon 8:13). And just as the focus verse says: my ears you
have opened
We are called to live by opened ears and God is ready to release his
grace (Titus 2:11-13) on you to cause all doubts, fear and worry cease as he
elevates his word in your life, as he elevates his words above his name in
your life (Psalm 138:2) (name is the identity, word is the reality [word takes
you beyond just identity]), as he causes the flood of confusion to recede,
and the sure ground of settled divine direction come forth (Genesis 8:1-12).
Whatever the raging storm blocking your spiritual ears, God is ready and
he is by his own force of grace, saying, “Be still (Mark 4:39)” to such
emotional storms and the divine initiative is causing you to hear his word.
Buy book