Growing in Christ

leastone said:

To All:

My reasons for starting this thread are out of obedience to the Lord and because so many of us seem to be struggling to grow in Him. While I in no way know all there is to know of Him, and seek daily to learn from Him - both directly through His Word and His Spirit and from others who sit at His feet in Love - He continues to prompt me to take the risk and share what I have learned.

After He led me to share the following in another thread, He is now telling me to put this here. (In fact, in His gentle way, He will not leave me alone about it!) My constant prayer is to be pleasing to Him always, and be a blessing in some small way to others. And so it is with humility before Him that I offer this.

All I ask is that others will also post here what they have learned and are learning, that we may all grow in Him and come to the unity of faith, bonded together with Him in the Spirit of His great Love.


There was a time in my life when I did not think God liked me very much, when my whole life seemed to go from misery to misery. Yet, I believed; I knew the Bible very well; and I knew there was a love in me for Him. But I could never seem to get close to Him, and never really saw any specific answers to my prayers. I always felt as if I was following Jesus from way back in the crowd; as if I was climbing hills, only to catch a glimpse of Him going over another hill far in front of me. Finally, I just got fed up and told Him, "Lord. I don't care if You like me or not! I am still going to love You!" And right then, I made up my mind to know Him personally.

So what I would like to offer you are some practical steps that He led me to take (although at the time, I did not realize it was Him leading me) that He used to grow me and teach me and help me find Him. And what a difference this has made in my own prayer life.

1) Guard your tongue. Become aware of what you say out loud, for your words can rob you of any blessings He has for you. No matter how you feel, how depressed you get, etc., don't allow yourself to start speaking from those feelings. There are a multitude of scripture in the both the OT and NT which teach this.

2) Praise God. This truly helps in guarding the words of your mouth as well as overcoming negative feelings. You don't have to try to conjure up reasons for praising Him for the situation, just make up your mind to praise Him in the situation. He lead me (and I still do this at times when necessary) to say out loud: "I praise you Father that I am not moved by my feelings, but only by your Word. I praise you Father that I am not moved by what others say about me, but only by your Word." And so on. Truly, praise works!

3) Get His Word from your mind to your spirit. Two ways to help with this are (a) to never read the Bible without praying first, asking the Holy Spirit to guide you in it; to open your heart to receive what He is teaching you; to open your understanding to grasp it. Etc. And (b) go through the NT finding every passage where it talks about who we are in Christ and who He is in us. In other words, everything positive that applies to us being new creatures in Him. Make a tape recording of your own voice saying these passages, applying them to yourself. Our spirits pay attention to what we say, and since it is with our hearts that we believe - not our minds - by saying His Word aloud we can re-program our inner man according to that Word. Example: "I am the Righteousness of God in Christ." Then, play that tape! I would put on headphones at night and play it as I went to sleep, night after night for weeks.

4) Don't try to believe for more than you have faith to believe. Faith is like a muscle; it must be exercised in order to grow. Just as you would not begin lifting weights with the maximum amount - the goal you want to reach - until you built up to it, so don't try to believe too far beyond what you know you can believe for. Judging this is tricky, I agree. But you have to start somewhere and I believe the Lord will guide you. Many, many times I have wanted to believe, but had to admit I really did not have that big of faith. Don't set yourself up to fail; but don't set your sights too low either. Exercise your faith and it will grow, until you can believe for big miracles.

5) Make it your primary goal to know Christ Jesus. More than anything else, seek to know the Giver rather than the gift. Humble yourself - in your attitude especially - before Him and trust Him to guide you. Remember that love is not a feeling, rather love causes feelings. We know He loves us - just like we know anyone loves us - because He says He does. His love for us is not dependent upon our feelings about it, anymore than our parents love for us was dependent upon our feelings. Realizing this is extremely important in our being able to trust Him, for our trust - our faith - is very much dependent upon our knowing and believing in His love for us in Christ. And we know He loves us because His Word says He does, and God does not lie.

6) Remember we have an enemy and he is a liar! Daniel prayed and even though the Lord heard his prayer the first day, it took 21 days for the answer to come. Pray, believe (because of His Word) that in the Name of Jesus we can be sure that the Father hears and answers our prayers, and then persevere in thanking Him for answering our prayer. The enemy delights in robbing of us of our joy, faith, confidence, peace, etc., as well as the answers to our prayers. Stay the course!

7) Practice listening. Set some time (20-30 minutes) aside each day to sit quietly before the Lord. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. Get a notebook and write what you hear inside. Don't worry about getting big revelations - because you probably won't; and don't worry if you don't get anything - because you may not for awhile. Consider it as you would any conversation: both sides talk in a conversation, not just one. So you are allowing the Lord His opportunity to speak to you and not you just talking to Him. And write down what comes to you. And even when you do begin to hear from Him, don't expect some earth-shattering revelations. For a long time the Lord had me practice this, just to learn how to hear Him no matter what was going on around me. And I am still learning. But measure everything you hear against His Word! And seek to be obedient to what He tells you. It is when we are faithful on the little things that He will trust us with bigger things.

8) Seek His will first and always. The Lord will never get in line with us; we must always get in line with Him. In all your prayers - for others as well as for yourself, seek His will.


May the Lord bless others through this, and continue to bless us all in the coming posts from His faithful ones.

LeastOne

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mrs.wilde said:

hello every one, obviously every one here are in love with Jesus. i am very simple person. please forgive me if i offend any one. i am not good at find the way not to offend anybody since i go straight to the point. anyway, i believe the key to grow closer to Him is wholehearted commitment. without commitment there is no growing. i have been christian for 6 years and what helped me first as new christian was read New Testament thoroghly and change my life according to His teaching. Some takes time but so many i could change right away and i did it without any excuse. i guess i can change easily because i dont have much like most americans. i am not rich, not talented not so smart(it was smart of me to become christian though) i am not much of anything. i think thats why i can love Him so much. most early followers are poor and needy. poor and needy country's christians are wholehearted ones. in wealthy country people have to give up so much . i believe thats their stumbling block. again please forgive me if i sound gudgemental sincerly mrs wilde

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foreal said:

Keep writing. Keep writing. Words: The devine expression Jesus Christ: the way the truth and the life. How can you know truth?

KNOW GOD
God is in all and with all and through all: Have an intimate working knowledge of God activated by faith, which is authority. Now authority is knowledge or the ability to gain. The more you know God the more you act in his authority. The more you apply your faith the more you can know, thus, resulting in a deeper knowledge of God.

Now Jesus (The truth) is the manifest expression of God or the word of God. Knowledge is expressed through words so as your knowledge of God grows so your ability to express truth grows as well. Now when I say express truth I not only mean speaking I mean living. That is living my life in such a way that I shout God I point to God and his true nature

God is…. What? Who? How do you increase your knowledge of God?

THE WORD
Jesus Christ written about in the scriptures
The bible is true because the words are true not because the book is true. God’s word is revealed through his people acting and living and working in the will of God which is spoken in the sriptures. As you learn AND APPLY the scriptures you will begin to know God.

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ZoraLink201 said:

I needed to read what leastone wrote. May God bless you Leastone!

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favoritetoyisjoy said:

Here's another one. Parris is another one of my brothers. I do realize that the word "apples" is not actually mentioned in connection with Adam and Eve in the Bible. Thank you Court and brinny, I am so pleased to make your aquaintance.



Hi Rick,
Thanks for the reply, I find the dialog very encouraging.

I wrote yesterday about Adam and Eve, how they must have come to regard walking with God in the cool of the day as a routine. While I was writing in my journal this morning it struck me that my comparison of myself to them was more appropriate then I had even recognized at the time. Two years ago, the high that I had on God became routine. I sorta said that by mentioning the "Candy Man" attitude I had toward God but now I think I know just how appropriate that comment was. I got complacent. Parris saw it. He kept reminding me to take my vitamins, to keep searching, to stay warm, but I didn't. I drifted away. It was too easy for me. That is, I let it be easy when I should have kept right on worshipping and trusting. We keep reminding ourselves that God never leaves us or forsakes us and that is so true. We do the forsaking and leaving, not Him. "Ho hum, God blessed me again, delivered me, manifested Himself to me, just look at those apples."

I have a little theory. When we are mad at God, is it that we are really mad at ourselves? When we feel God has forsaken us, is it really that we have forsaken Him? "Well, this woman you gave me offered me an apple and I ate it." Perhaps this idea can become a tool, maybe we can remind ourselves to stop doing that when we catch ourselves attempting it. Maybe we're just turning our guilt around and trying to make it God's responsibility.

Recently when I was dreading something at work, a possible no-win situation, and I was quite on edge about it, I remembered Paul rejoicing in prison, and I said to myself, "Well, I guess this is one of those times when I should be rejoicing". I immediately saw some humor in that, I started smiling to myself, and I found the anxiety dissolve. The outcome of the situation was a good one, I was delivered again. As pat as it sounds, there is no substitute for trust and the refusal to allow negative thoughts to take root in our minds. It seems too simple but it's not. Instead, we stubbornly try to get to the bottom of it rather than let go. Trust, rejoice, worship. God is in charge, whether by death or by life, He directs our path. His will is perfect and so will the outcome be perfect, always. If I'm on God's agenda it's all good.

Sigh. I think I need to burn my ship on the beach every day. A new one seems to appear each morning. I love you.

Scott

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brinny said:

Thank you BLUEEYEANGEL. Because of you I've found this thread again. I LONG to grow in Christ. Of course this means crucifying the flesh (and my flesh is furious with me) yet I continue, praise God. But it be hard. The support and encouragement here is heartening, praise God.

God has a way of bringing me back into focus, calming me, and enabling me to let go of those things I have a tendency to clutch....like when an offense happens and the crying out of my flesh to give the offender a "piece of my mind".

I must keep deciding to clutch God instead and stomp those fleshly tendencies that have been so entrenchingly who I am in the flesh.

And by His inexplicable grace I continue, moment by moment......just one moment at a time....step by step.....onward and onward.

We can use all the encouragement we can get.

God bless us, every one, as we journey on.

2 Corinthians 5:17Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

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ZoraLink201 said:

Hello all,
I have a problem:

I am a big procrastinator when it comes to reading Scripture.


Do y'all have any advice on how I can start to read daily?

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soblessed53 said:

Very inspiring thread. God Bless Everyone! I Love Jesus!

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