Growing

Hello friends! I hope that you are all having a great spring time, enjoying the start of warmth from the sun and slowly rising temperatures!

It always reminds me of God’s awesome creation power when I see the changing seasons and how he created everything to work together in perfect harmony. The tides come in and go out exactly when he decided, and now we can set our watches by the suns rising and setting.

Last week we were discussing the spiritual gifts in church. It is amazing how many different opinions I have heard about this subject, but I can assure you that the Holy Spirit is real and He is working in our lives day to day even moment by moment.

As Jesus promised:

John 14 v 16-17 And I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you for ever – The Spirit of truth.

Because of the Holy Spirit, we can live a ‘supernatural’ life. We can expect to see miracles, things that in the ‘natural’ are impossible, these things are made possible by God. The Holy Spirit is always there with us, to guide us, lead us, teach us, provoke our conscience, answer the questions we have and so so much more.

What this means is that this will take years of growth as a Christian. Believe me! No one ever “GETS THERE” wherever ‘there’ is supposed to be. We can ask the Holy Spirit to help us every step, of every day that we follow Jesus, to show us the next step in our lives.

Nothing that comes against us should be able to sway us, if our hope is in Him!

What we should be doing is growing and maturing TOWARDS the goal, which is maturity.

If you imagine a baby, when its born, you would not give it a chain saw and say, 'cut down that tree over there.' You can picture what the outcome of that would be. In the same way we would not say to a newly born again Christian, 'stand up and teach us all about the tribes of Israel', or biblical truth of marriage and relationships!

However, when a child reaches 10 or 11, a Father may hand his child a chainsaw. Having watched his dad cutting trees down for the last 10 years, he should have an understanding of what it takes. So his Father hands over the chainsaw, and staying very close, he talks his child through it as he saws down his first tree. But even then, that’s just the beginning. But his child is now on ‘solid food’ not ‘milk’ any more. If his child was still only on ‘milk’ I don’t think he would be able to lift the chainsaw, let alone cut a tree down!

The picture here is of a child who has watched his Father and learned what he needs to do, then as he reaches the right time, he picks up his tool of choice and only then does he start to learn his job properly. It will take many more years to ‘perfect’ and hone his skill, until one day he begins to teach his own child.

Our Christian lives are much like this picture: First we become believers, and there are believers all around us who have run part of their own race and gained their own experience. These believers will teach the younger ones in Christ. This is what we call discipling.

However, the Holy Spirit speaks to each of us. When we ask God for guidance in our life, the Holy Spirit will whisper to us in a quiet voice, We have to be obedient and try to follow the guidance, the result is blessing and success. God will use an obedient heart to do His will in the Kingdom of God.

So, this week I have been thinking a lot about this and trying that bit harder to hear the voice of God, through the Holy Spirit. It is not always easy because I have a will, and wrong desires.

Both want to be satisfied and that is the biggest problem we face.

Our own will is strong, it wants to satisfy itself with what ‘it’ wants.

So here is the battle we face each day – GODS WILL v MY WILL – in my case I'm in round 29 (if each year is a round)

The idea is that each round, God’s will gets more points than my will.

I long to be totally obedient to Christ, but I am a realist. I know that when I am in glory with Jesus, I will have made it and I will be perfect. Until that time, we must battle on and take on each day with the armour of God in place, listening to the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

One miracle I have experienced on a number of occasions in a ‘word of knowledge’

This where God speaks directly to your heart, about someone, or gives you a warning about a situation in advance of it happening.

This is a miracle, and something that only God could do. The difficulty we have is believing that it is God and stepping out to speak into someone’s life with the word we have.

God is good and if we are faithful, He will always give good gifts to His children.

Well, until next time