First, let's consider what spirit growth is NOT. I love the River of Peace! I love being carried through my days upheld and guided by the Spirit with a peaceful, easy feeling and divine synchronicity working upon all my appointments, phone calls and chores. It is so beautiful when that happens--and it has been happening a lot lately. But that is not spiritual growth. It is spiritual delight--and it is the result of spiritual growth, not the growth itself.

Then there's Bible time in the morning with tea and my favorite reading chair, or teaching sessions at conference when the speaker carries you to new horizons. I said in seminary, "Just lock me in the library for a year and send in pizzas and I'll be happy." But that is not spiritual growth. It is spiritual knowledge. You only have to look at the Pharisees to see they spent way too much time growing their brains, while their hearts were shrinking! That's reverse growth through excess knowledge.

Spiritual Growth

Yesterday afternoon I was "jazzed by Johnson." I was on the web for hours watching a lot of excellent Christian teaching on Morningstar's site and also on Youtube: Rick Joyner, Bob Jones, Drerek Prince, Bill Johnson and others. Two things Bill Johnson said really resonate with me. He was describing the need for us to learn to live "out of the culture of heaven" since we are a people uniquely joined to those heavenly realities. One aspect of the culture of heaven is that the spiritual presence of Jesus is everywhere and everyone is guided by His the immediacy of revelation and inspiration coming from Him. I got so excited by hearing him say this because that is EXACTLY what it is meant to be like for us!!

Jesus IS with us! This God of Peace is with us at all times and the peace of His presence can guide us (if we learn to value it and let it lead) and His Spirit can impart the immediacy of revelation we need (as in "do the next right thing" and other modes we have of receiving from Him). Then Bill said that as good as Kingdom principles are, they are inferior to being guided by His presence and His voice.: "Principles are only for those times when we cannot discern presence and voice; principles hold us within boundaries and keep us from doing something goofy." BUT WE ARE MEANT TO SEEK THE PATH OF LIFE DIRECTLY FROM THE LORD!! Sure, it is scary at times, flying "blind" with only your spiritual radar to guide you, but it is thrilling at the same time. And what a treasured place of intimacy--He KNOWS every little thing that we pick up on as a leading from Him. When we see the fruit of following a leading--no matter how slight--it leads us into the joy of discovery of the endless wisdom and goodness of His will. It becomes a shared "secret" moment with Him. And He is just as pleased as we are...

"What's my purpose?" The man sitting across from me at the addiction recovery mission where I work, wanted to know. He'd been beaten nearly to death once, losing a vital body part; he'd been stabbed next to the heart (literally within an inch of his life); and he had been shot several times. A close family member had told him, "God is saving your life for a reason." He already knew the Lord, but he had NO CLUE what that reason was. What would you tell him? I have heard these stories many times. The amazing thing to me are not the fantastic escapes from death ("to the Lord God belong escapes from death" Psalm 68:20), but the stunning fact that no one yet who has ventured to say "God saved me for a reason" has had any idea what that reason was. This is so wrong!

OK, so what was his purpose? I FIRMLY believe this: the reason why God kept that man alive by miracle rescues is the same reason He keeps you and me alive. Everyone of us has a #1 assignment which is also our number #1 purpose/reason for being alive. Could I have a drum roll please? It is exactly what Jesus told us it is: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37-38). For the word commandment simply substitute "assignment", "purpose" or "reason for being alive"--they all fit and they all help "flesh out" the meaning.

How can God possibly delight in us? It is quite a stretch just to believe that He can love and forgive us. But that He actually delights in us and rejoices over us, has passionate affections for us, is totally devoted to us—this really goes against the grain!

First, let us identity the enemy’s work: he and his kingdom have been continuously at work on you since you were born making it seem that God is angry with you, or that He pulls away from you, or that He is losing patience with you—whenever you do, say or think something wrong. Now it is completely true that your sins cause a separation from God (Isaiah 59:2) and that the enemy will take full advantage of those separations to come in with accusations against you (Revelation 12:10). However, if you are a Christian, the feeling of this separation is entirely on your side: it is not at all true that the separation is on God’s side.

Life can get complicated--especially when you are trying to unravel the emotional damage that has bound you up in a tangled web of pain and sincerely want to be free of some event in the past. Forgiveness is one of the main keys to freedom, but it is not the only one. Forgiving others is only ONE piece of the nexus of pain that can get stuck to us when we have been hurt and abused. Emotional pain can come upon us in 5 different ways! That just doesn't seem fair. It's as bad as flying roaches--did it REALLY have to be that way? Still, there is no point to complaining about it. If you live in the South (as we do) you just have to learn to slap the pests back down to the ground and stomp on them there!

1. There is pain that is held in place (and often amplified by) by my own unforgiveness. This is the most common source of pain after an hurtful event. Once I have forgiven from the heart the people who hurt me, the "tormentors" (ie. demons) have no right to use that pain against me, so all the pain leaves as I fully let go of the offence and give it to God (see Freedom through Forgiving, Lesson 15).

You have incredible power! Do you know that the single greatest power in your world lies right there within you—at all times? It is the power of choice. God says in Deuteronomy that He is calling heaven and earth to witness against us (since we keep denying we have this power) that He has given us the power to choose LIFE or to choose DEATH. He wants us to know that we have the power.

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Centering clay on a potter's wheel is a messy and very demanding operation—lot's of concentration is required! Why? Basically, because the clay doesn't want to be centered. It resists "surrendering" to the potter's hands. Don't you?

I learned pottery during my hippie years one summer when I was trapped in DC, trying to get to the West Coast on my motorcycle, but with never enough money to leave town. I had no idea in those days how terribly resistant I was to the Potter's Hands. I thought that life was just against me at times, but at other times I lucked out. I never saw the spiritual analogy to the pottery I was learning to do and the work of the Potter I was experiencing. Back then I had no spiritual life with the Lord to compare things to.

Last night I was browsing through notes that I had taken in my first year as a Christian exactly 29 years ago. The amazing thing for me was seeing how many of those early truths are still the truths that I am digging into today, truths that I am trying to do my level best to get across to others each and every day. Sure, I have learned lots of facts and many bits of valuable knowledge along the way that weren’t in those early lessons, but it sure seems that the Lord couldn’t wait to rush the delivery of the main revelations during that first half year. We don’t walk away from truth; we walk more deeply into it—and greater liberty, praise and devotion perpetually flow from that same inexhaustible fountain: grace and truth.

One note I found was on Israel's three great pilgrimage festivals and how they relate to us. I had Passover = salvation; Pentecost = baptism in the Spirit; but for Tabernacles I literally just drew a blank line. That was early in 1983. God filled in that blank 8 or 9 years later when I was reading a commentary on Leviticus as a bedtime devotional (you should try it sometime). Suddenly, I saw it! The clue was that it HAD to be about the Father, since the first two festivals were about the other two Persons of the Godhead...See where you fit into the Great Pilgrimage!

Are you aware that there are three pathways to healing? Although they are quite different, they share at least one very interesting characteristic--I will get to that in a moment. First let's delineate the three: for years we have believed that if we pray to God and go to the doctors then we are doing all we can. But modern medical science has conclusively shown us that as many as 80% of our diseases are coming from emotional stress (see The Emotional Roots to Disease). That gives us three God given ways of mending us that are totally legitimate and desirable for Christians to pursue:

1. Doctors and medicine. God gives us both the Lukes (aka the "beloved physician" of Colossian 4:14) and the "balms of Gilead" (Jeremiah 8:22). Clearly he wants to heal us through doctors and medicine and at times that's all that is needed. However, we should keep in mind that the Bible consistently takes the position that the spiritual relationship of the sufferer is far more important to the outcome than simply tending to the body alone. You hear it in the way the Lord is calling His people to repentance in these two passages from Jeremiah: since the usual way of seeking healing isn't working, shouldn't you be seeking the Great Physician?