spiritual growth

One night after a worship service a friend of mine and I stepped outside and were suddenly awed by the beauty around us. It was one of those crisp, clear winter nights when the brilliance of the moon and stars nearly takes your breath away. I said to my friend, "Tommy, will you look at that!" Then he looked up with one of those Holy Ghost whole-face smiles and with a voice full of tenderness said, "My Daddy made that!"

"My Daddy...." I'll never forget the way he said that.

Things in this old world aren't getting any better, and in recent times, the Holy Spirit has been speaking an urgent message to my heart. He's been saying, Press in. Draw in to a more intimate relationship with your heavenly Father. If you don't, you won't make it. If you do, you will see more glorious outpourings of God than you can imagine.

There's an old Full Gospel tradition that says God gets glory from the wonderful way His children bear pain and agony and that the world is impressed by that. What a lie! That's simply a tool of the devil to keep God's children in bondage.

People of the world already have all the pain and agony they want. They aren't looking for a way into it. They are looking for a way out. They don't care what you preach. It's the religious people who get worried about that. The world, the sinners, are smarter than that. All they care about are the results.

Do you want to know why the Body of Christ has been in such a mess over the past few years? Do you want to know why the devil has been able to make a public display of our weaknesses? Do you want to know why, instead of being unified and strong, we've often been torn apart by division and criticisms that come not from without but within?

It is because, as the Lord said in Hebrews, the people of God have need of milk and not of strong meat. They're babies! The people of God for the most part don't know His ways.

Creating new things, changing old things. Because you and I are made in the image of God that's something we're always trying to do. But if we're to be successful at it, we need to learn a lesson about it from the Creator Himself, our very own heavenly Father.

You know, He didn't just come upon creation by accident and say, "Well, what do you know! There's light!" No, before He began to make His universe, He first had a desired result (an inner idea, or image, of what He wanted to create) and then said, "Light be!" and light was.

When you're up against the wall, don't start begging God to break through it for you. That's not the way He works. He'll give you the plan. He'll give you the power. And He'll guarantee the victory. But your hand, not His own, is the instrument He's going to use to get the job done. You're going to have to stretch forth your hand by speaking and acting on the Word, even when circumstances are against you.

Do you ever have trouble hearing from God? Do you find yourself caught in confusing circumstances needing guidance, and yet even after praying and reading the Word—you're still not sure what God wants you to do?

I've had that experience. I knew His written Word and acting on it changed my life. But I was uncertain when I had to make decisions about things the Word didn't specifically address. Things like whether to move to one city or another, for example.

Do you know why so many believers are losing the battles in their lives?

They're fighting the wrong enemy!

They've been deceived into believing that just because a person said or did something to hurt them, that person is the one they need to fight. But they're wrong.

You see, the Bible says we don't wrestle with flesh and blood. And since people are definitely flesh and blood, they're never the source of our problem.

"But, Brother Copeland, you just don't know what So-and-so did to me!"

Did you know that the force of faith has the power to rejuvenate your physical body? It's true. You can see that in the life of Sarah. Most people don't understand the full extent of what God did in her life. All they know is that He enabled her to have a child in her old age.

But if you'll look closer, you'll see that there was more to it than that. When Sarah laid hold of the promise of God by faith, it began to restore her physically to such an extent that when King Abimelech saw her, he wanted her for his wife.

I used to wonder why we believers didn't see more of the power of God operating among us than we do. With what we know about faith and the Word, it seemed to me signs and wonders and miracles should be happening all the time.

So, one day I asked, "Lord, why isn't the power of God turned up to a higher volume in the Church?"

Do you know what He said? He told me we weren't walking in enough love yet.

Envying, strife and divisions had reduced the early Corinthian Christians back to the natural, or carnal, state that they were in before they were born again. It had so stunted their spiritual growth that they couldn't understand the things the Apostle Paul wanted to teach them.

We often think of "laying down your life" for someone else in terms of dying. That's what Jesus did. He loved us so much He laid down His life by dying in our place so that we could live.

But now, He's asked us to lay down our lives in a different way. He's asked us to show our love, not by dying for others, but by living for them.

Exactly what does that mean?

Unfortunately most of us don’t know the first thing about fighting the kind of war this scripture refers to. For, as Ephesians 6:10-12 says, it’s not a battle of flesh and blood, but of the spirit.

Most believers are so earthly minded (or carnally minded) that they never even realize where the enemy’s attacks are actually coming from. They blame circumstances and people, and they waste their energy fighting natural conditions instead of supernatural causes.

We need to wake up to the warfare that’s going on in the heavenly realm!

Abiding in Jesus isn’t something that comes automatically to any believer. It’s a lifestyle that involves discipline and effort.

We have to choose to give ourselves to our union with Him, to give Him first place where our attention is concerned. If we want to grow spiritually, if we want to walk in power and in fellowship with the Lord, we’ll have to spend the time it takes to know Him.

That’s not something we can do for a while and then forget about either. We must continue in it every day. For the moment we stop moving closer to Jesus, we always start drifting away.