Growin’ In Jesus

Written by FAVORED1 on January 22, 2010 – 10:27 am -

Friday, January 22, 2010

May GOD give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of GOD and JESUS our LORD. By His divine power, GOD has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know Him, the one who called us to Himself by means of His marvelous glory and excellence. And because of His glory and excellence, He has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share His divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to GOD’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our LORD JESUS CHRIST.

GROWIN’ UP IN JESUS

Good Morning Beloved,

I hope you’re having a wonderful and productive day today. Rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are His. Meditating on this verse reminds me of our children. Our ministry is full of these beautiful miracles of God. All ages and stages of development. We love newborns and toddlers. They are exciting to watch. Constantly changing. Learning new things everyday. How to sit.. to crawl…to stand… take those first wobbly steps. New words.. phrases. The first realization that they really understood the sentence they just said. Pre-pubescent kids are fun too. They almost have an unnatural wisdom and grow at breakneck speed. And then come the “tween” and teen years. At this point, between the hormones coursing through their little systems, and their insights and opinions on everything, as well as their need to question everything and everyone…. adults tend to shake their heads and pray for God’s strength not to seriously hurt their little darlings. At that point, there is a pulling away that while normal can be very painful for both parent and child. I used to tease my daughter Jah and tell her that she and her family were going to live with me. Well, spiritually that is how we progress. We start off as babes, excited growing by leaps and bounds.. falling… getting up.. skinning our spiritual knees… and crying because we don’t want the Father to touch it because we’re afraid it will hurt too much. Then after He has applied the cooling salve of His healing ointment on our wounded places, we wonder why we spent so much time running from Him in the first place. It is a time when our faith is on an all-time high. We believe God and trust Him totally. Simple child faith. Then we enter our spiritual puberty. This is a place where we’ve learned much, but our foundation is still being set. We tend to stick close to the Word, and have no reservations crying out to God when we feel lost or need help. Then comes adolescence… We’re “grown” now. Not you, but somebody somewhere. Now, we’ve heard every sermon, and could preach it better than the minister. If we’re not “prayerful”, we can become distracted and cold towards the things of God. Picking apart every scripture as if we have more knowledge, and spiritual revelation than the One who wrote the book. I’ve heard people expound on certain verses by saying, “well, see it really didn’t mean that because there was an error in the translation and they “probably” meant to say…” Spiritual arrogance. Remember, God’s Word says that “pride goes before a fall“ . The sad truth is, once a person has made up their mind not to believe in the inerrant Word of God and trust it as final authority, their life has already begun a downward spiral. The won’t have the peace and joy they once had. They become cynical, angry, distrustful and judgmental. All the time, their Father is looking on them with eyes of compassion and waiting for them to “come to themselves” and turn to Him. The Bible tells us that “who the Lord loves He chastens (or corrects). Chastening is never meant to drive the person away, it is for their own good. I had an experience with my daughter when she was about 4 years old. She stole a granola bar from the CVS. She didn’t even eat granola bars at the time. We were home before I saw the evidence of her theft. I wasn’t driving at the time, but I went back to the bus stop and caught the bus back up to the store and asked to see the manager. I told her to tell him what she had done. “I sorry I stealed”, she said quickly handing him the bar. She looked terrified. Like she was about to be arrested. Inside I was thinking, “that is the cutest thing… ahh .. my baby”.. but I kept a straight face. The manager was very wise and instead of laughing it off, or downplaying it because she was just so darned cute, he gave her a good talking to on the seriousness of her deed, and made her promise never to steal again. She is 21 now and one of most honest and trustworthy people I know. Did I do that to humiliate her? No. I did it because I loved her. I knew that in a few short years her “petty crime” would bring about stiff penalities and jail time. We (the CVS manager and I) had to nip her little criminal act, before it actually became a real live crime spree. For those who work in retail, shoplifting is an all to common occurrence… from the youngest to the oldest. I’m sure he was all to happy to see one child taught such a valuable lesson. It was worth the extra bus fare and the little inconvenience to raise such a remarkable young woman. God is looking at us in much the same way. His goal is a mature child of God made in His image and after His likeness, but developed after His nature. This child that He can trust with His anointing. That He can display as an example of His own handiwork. That He can use to bless nations.