Learning How to Mature Spiritually

“Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."             ( Jeremiah 29:12-13 ) 

One of the most frequent questions I am asked is how can a person learn more about God, or how can they get closer to God. Often times they ask me to teach them about God. Now I am a Bible Teacher, but I cannot grow them spiritually. Each person must take responsibility for their own spiritual growth, and I only have one answer for them...you must spend lots of time with God and seek Him with all your heart...personally. There is no shortcut! Spending time in His presence is the only way. Think about this...what you are actually doing is building a relationship with the Creator of the Universe. That is no small matter and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time...it takes effort...it takes discipline.

If you are married, I want to ask you to think back for a minute. Do you remember when you first met your husband or wife? What a wonderful time that was! You wanted to know everything about that person, so you studied them, you spent as much time as possible with them, you talked to them, you sat in silence with them...you may have even stared into each other’s eyes for hours. You wanted to know their favorite color, their favorite foods, what made them happy and what made them sad. You just couldn’t get enough of each other. It was almost a magical time. But what you were actually doing is that you were building a close relationship together. You were studying each other, you were finding out about each other’s likes and dislikes, you were learning how to please that person that you were so infatuated with. You were learning how to mesh your lives together so that at some point, you could spend the rest of your lives together and hopefully live “happily ever after”.

But did you consider that time you spent together as a chore or something you had to discipline yourself to do? No...of course not! It was what you desired to do. You loved that person so much that every minute you spent together was good. You couldn’t wait to get back together so that you could spend some more time together. And finally, when the time was right, you decided that you didn’t want to be apart anymore but that you wanted to be together every day...all the time for the rest of your lives. And so you were married. But think about it, even after 5 or 10 years together, would your husband or wife be happy if you got up in the morning and heard you yell as you ran out the door, “Oh yeah Honey...don’t forget to pick up bread for dinner tonight” or “I need you to clean out the garage today” Of course not! But unfortunately, that is the way many people are in their relationship with God. They give Him their “want list” for 5 minutes or so as they are getting ready to run out the door to go to work, and for many people, that is all the time they have for Him all day. Let me tell you this...you cannot build a relationship by giving God the leftovers of your day. You must desire Him most of all.

Friends, what most people don’t realize is that what we are actually doing as we mature spiritually is that we are building an eternal relationship with God...and it’s a love relationship. He wants us to learn to love Him and trust Him more and more...and that takes time. God is not pleased when we get up in the morning and sit down to breakfast and say, “Good morning Lord, I want you to bless my family today and keep them safe and watch over and protect them, oh and please bless my food, Amen” and then go about our day without even thinking about Him any more until your head hits the pillow at night and we say something like, “Lord, please keep me safe throughout the night. Thank you...amen.” That is not building a “love relationship” with God. If that is what we are doing, all we are actually accomplishing is going through the motions of religion. How can we know Him unless we spend good, quality time with Him personally every day?

You know sometimes the titles I see on devotional books shock me. I see things like “5 Minutes with God for the Busy Mom” or “Giving God Your Best in 3 Minutes or Less”. Of course these are fictional titles, but you get the idea. When we get too busy to give God some good quality time during our day, then we need to step back and rethink our priorities. I understand that we all live busy lives. I get it. I was a single mom and I had two very busy sons who were involved in everything. My main job was to serve as their taxi driver and chief cheer leader...of course that was after a full day at work. It’s not easy. But the MOST important time of your day is the time you spend with God. Never forget that!

Do you realize that there are multitudes of people who go to church every Sunday morning and then never look at their Bibles again until the next Sunday morning when they pick it back up to take it to church? But they never read it throughout the week. The only thing they actually know about God is what they hear the preacher talk about for 20 minutes every week during the Sunday service. Some of them will even go to a Sunday School class or Small Group meeting, and they may even join in the discussion, but most Christians absolutely do not spend time actually reading and studying the Word of God to learn who He is and what He desires for their lives. And many of those are the people who are looking for a short-cut to spiritual maturity. But I will tell you...you cannot grow spiritually until you fall absolutely in love with Jesus, just like that romance you had years ago with your spouse, and your desire is to know everything about Him. You must seek Him with ALL YOUR HEART!

So, here’s the only secret I know of to reach spiritual maturity...you MUST read and study your Bible every day, and you MUST spend good quality time alone talking with God everyday. In other words...you MUST desire to know Him and make Him the top priority in your life.Let’s be clear...God is not some far away aloof mystery being. He tells us to draw near to Him! He desires that we know Him! That’s why He sent Jesus into the world to die for our sins, because our sins were hindering the beautiful love relationship that God created mankind to have with Him, and so the only way He could eliminate sin was to send Jesus to die as payment for our sins. But once we repent of our sins and become a child of God, then the door is wide open for us to draw near to Him. The writer to the Hebrews wrote, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16) The door is open and we are free to talk to God any time we want about anything that is on our hearts. That is how much God wants us to love Him!

So now that we know the only way to mature spiritually is by prayer and Bible study, let’s talk about those two things and see how we can do better at seeking God with all our hearts.

HOW DO WE STUDY GOD’S WORD?

First of all we need to know that there is NO right or wrong way to do Bible study. Everybody does it differently. I remember when I first got saved, I wanted to know everything I could possibly find out about God. I would think of questions in my mind that I wanted answers to and so I would spend hours running references about that subject. I would look it up in my Bible and whenever the scripture referred me to another scripture, I would go there to see what it had to say. I would stay awake sometimes until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning just reading and studying, even though I knew I had to wake up early for work the next day. Also, I worked for a man at the time who was a Christian, and he had a big bookshelf of Christian books in his office and he allowed me to take as many as I wanted home to read, and so I would take armloads of them and read them, and then I would bring them back and take some more. I just had an unquenchable hunger to know God more and more. The strange thing is that I never even liked to read before I knew the Lord. But after I was born-again, I wanted to know everything I could about my new found Lord and Savior. And then I would go to church and learn, I would go to Sunday School and learn...everything I was doing was geared toward learning more about God. Now if you don’t have a boss with Christian books, there are plenty of them at the Library, and there is also a lot of Christian materials to learn from online. I didn’t have the internet when I first became a Christian and so now you actually have a bigger advantage than I did back then.

But let me give you one quick word of warning here. There are many, many things that you can access online, so make sure you are actually reading and studying the Bible. Without the true knowledge of God’s Word, you are leaving yourself open to deception. God’s Word is the only actual Truth...the other books are simply people’s interpretation of what God says. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." (John 16:13) So it’s good to read other books, but make sure you are always checking to make sure that the books and articles you're reading line up with the True Word of God. The Holy Spirit will guide you into all Truth.

There are many Bible study guides available, or you can read and study book by book to learn all you can. Often I just ask the Holy Spirit where He wants me to read and when I sense I am getting an impression from Him, that’s where I go. Or sometimes He will tell me in my heart to read the same portion of scripture over and over again and study it in depth or pay close attention to what the scripture is actually saying. Often, every time I go back and read it again, I see something different that I missed the times before when I read it. We find that what scripture is actually saying is not always what we think or what we have heard other people preach or teach. The most important thing is to read the Bible for what it actually says...do not look for what you thought it says or what someone told you it says. God’s Word is Truth and it takes precedence over every other idea or opinion. Also, ask God to give you understanding by His Spirit, and you will be amazed at the things He will teach you. The most important thing is to just spend time in God’s Word...not just skimming over a few little verses here and there, but really study to learn more about Who God is and what He desires for your life. He will guide you.

HOW DO WE PRAY?

There was a time as recorded in the book of Luke chapter 11 and also in Matthew chapter 6 when Jesus was teaching His Disciples to pray, and He gave them a model prayer that we commonly refer to as “The Lord’s Prayer”. The one found in Matthew 6:9-13 goes like this:

“In this manner, therefore, pray:

‘Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

I believe this model touches on every area of prayer that we need to use as a guideline of how we should pray. I will give a few thoughts on that subject here:

“Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your Name.” I believe we need to understand Who God is. He is Holy, He is Righteous, He is Just. When we go to God in prayer, we should always approach His presence with this attitude, understanding that it is a great honor and at a very huge price that we are permitted to approach the Throne of Grace in the first place. We should understand that when Jesus hung on the cross and breathed His very last breath, the huge veil or curtain that separated man from God was torn in two from top to bottom, thereby opening access for us to approach into the very near presence of God. Before this time, only the High Priest was allowed to approach the very presence of God, and then only once a year in order to offer sacrifice for his own sins and the sins of the people. There was a cleansing ritual that he had to perform in order to prepare to go into the Holy of Holies and if he were not properly cleansed, he could die in that awesome place. But Jesus paid the price as an atonement for our sins so that there is no more sacrifice to be offered, and He made the way for us to enter into the very near presence of God anytime we desire. What an amazing privilege it is for us to be able to talk to God. Yet so many people treat this privilege with dishonor and disrespect, and they act like the Holy God is their BFF or their Bestie! Some even call Him “the man upstairs” referring to our Holy and Awesome God. We need to enter into His presence with an attitude of reverence understand Who He is.

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.” The greatest desire of our hearts should be that God’s will is done on the earth. It is only by desiring to do God’s will that we will have the other parts of this prayer answered. The greatest failure of many people when they go to God in prayer, is that they go to Him with their “wish list”. They go to The Creator of the Universe...the One Who spoke the worlds into existence by His very Word...and we begin to tell Him what we want Him to do. How presumptuous of us! God is the One Who has ALL wisdom and ALL knowledge and Who sees and knows every minute detail of our being...even our thoughts are known to Him before we even think them, and we somehow think that we should tell Him how we want this world and our lives to operate. God has the plan...and our job is to find out what His plan is and join Him in implementing His plan. Think about it...even Jesus...even though He Himself is God, when He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His death, prayed to the Father, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39) When we go to God in prayer, we should be looking for God’s will to be done on this earth, not our own. It is His plan that will ultimately succeed. Oftentimes when I pray, I will go to God and ask Him, “Father, what would You have me to know tonight? What would you want me to pray?” People often ask me to pray for them that God will do whatever it is that they desire at that time, and I will usually tell them, “I will pray for you as the Holy Spirit leads.” That is the best way to pray. Our job is not to bombard Heaven with all our wants...God is not some "Santa Claus" in the sky. Our job is to find out what God wants and pray for that to be done.

"Give us this day our daily bread.” Even though we are to pray for the will of God to be done in our lives and the lives of those we love and care for, we are promised by our Heavenly Father that He will provide for our needs. He never promised that we would live in luxury or that we would have everything our hearts desired, but He did promise that we would have our needs met. The problem is that most of us think we need a whole lot more than God thinks we need, and so our prayers are hindered. In Matthew 6:33, we have an absolute promise from our Father, but we MUST fulfill the condition for this promise before we can claim it. Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  Friends, I can absolutely tell you from my own experience, if you will do your very best to live in holiness and righteousness, putting the needs of others even before your very own and seeking to become more and more like Jesus every day, you will never go without the food, shelter and clothing you need for your own personal daily life. It is a promise from God, and I have seen it fulfilled in my own life. I personally own very little in this world, but in 41 years I have never missed a meal unless I was fasting, I have never had to sleep out on the street and I have never lacked the things that I needed to do those things that God has called me to do. NEVER! Now...I will tell you that there was a time when God began to deal with me about downsizing and getting rid of a lot of the stuff I had accumulated over the years. By the time He finished with me, I had almost nothing left, but I found that the more I unloaded the things of this world out of my life, the freer I felt in my spirit and the more able I became to go and serve the Lord. Even now, I try very hard not to allow myself to accumulate excess things so that I can remain free to be obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit with very little that would stand in my way. Unfortunately, the things that most of us think we need, are not really needs at all, but worldly trinkets our fleshly bodies and our pride desires. God’s promise is to provide for our needs, not our greed. I hear people asking for money all the time because they want to do this ministry or that ministry. Well, my answer to them is this…If you will learn to “be content with such things as you have” and be faithful to seek God’s desire with all your heart and seek for the good of His Kingdom, then you will never fail to be without the things you need to fulfill the work HE has called you to do. It’s His promise. As you seek Him, He will change your desire to match His desire for you, and then as the scripture says, He WILL give you the desires of your heart. So tell Him, “Father, I am so thankful for Your promise to take care of my needs, and I am asking you to show me Your plan and what You desire for me to do.” He will never fail to answer that prayer.

“And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.” Friends, this is one subject I cannot stress the importance of enough to you. God absolutely cannot bless your life until you learn to forgive everyone from your heart. Now trust me, I do understand how difficult of a task that is. Some of us have endured pain that seems that you can never put it behind you, and the truth is you can’t...not by your own willpower. But through the power of God working in your life, it IS possible to not only forgive, but to step out of the bondage of bitterness in your heart so that you can be absolutely free in the Name of Jesus. Trust me, if I could tell you my own personal story, you would understand. FORGIVENESS IS AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY FOR YOUR LIFE! You cannot have a close relationship with God until all bitterness and unforgiveness is gone.

Friends, those things that are in our lives that we just cannot change, those things that have held us in bondage for years, many of them are there because of something that was done to us in our childhood. Some of us were molested, some of us were beaten, some of us were brainwashed and taught every kind of ungodly things. I have even known of moms and dads whose child or children were murdered, and they were able by the power of God at work in their lives, to forgive and to even love the person who murdered their child. Now THAT is God's grace. Friends, that thing that you have been holding on to for many years...it’s got to go if you are going to take one step closer to the relationship that God wants you to have with Him. He will give you power to do it, but you must be willing. Go to your Father in Heaven today and tell Him that you are ready to let it go and be free. He will be there to strengthen you and to help you. But YOU must be willing!

“But deliver us from the evil one.” Friends, it’s okay to ask God to fight your battles for you...in fact, He desires that you do so! When God fights your battles, you are guaranteed to win! You are guaranteed victory...but if He is not with you, you WILL be defeated. “Father, deliver me from the evil one. Deliver me from the grips of evil. Help me to overcome the habits, the struggles, the sins in my life. Help me Father...give me power Lord. Father...I NEED YOU!”

I want you to hear this Word right now Friends, because I think it will give you courage to keep on fighting the battles that come your way even when it looks hopeless...even when there seems to be no victory in sight. In Psalm 46, verses 8-11 David wrote these words:

“Come, behold the works of the Lord,

Who has made desolations in the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;

He burns the chariot in the fire.

Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!

The Lord of hosts is with us;

The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah” 

I want you to hear me today dear Friend...God is able to deliver YOU from the evil one. He is able to deliver YOU in your times of trouble. He is able to give YOU victory over sin, hell and the grave. He is able! So YES...pray “deliver me from the evil one”! Pray for God to protect you. He will do it. You can be certain of it! Hallelujah. 

And the last part of that prayer is this:

“For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” Friends, I want you to understand today that God is completely sovereign, God is completely holy, God is completely righteous, God is completely eternal, God is completely omnipotent, God is completely omniscient, and God is completely omnipresent! He is our ALL and ALL!

So how should you pray? Pray to your Father in Heaven who loves you so much that He gave His only begotten Son to save your from the penalty of your sins. Talk to Him about everything on your heart. There is nothing too difficult for Him to handle, there is nothing you can tell Him that will surprise Him, there is nothing you feel that will shock Him. He already knows it all. Be real with Him. Involve Him in everything that’s going on in your life. He longs to be intimate with you. He longs to help you. He longs to lead and guide your life so that your life will be exactly what He planned for you to be. Trust Him, He has never lied, He has never failed...and He will not start with you. Just trust Him and talk to Him every day. He loves you so much!