Category: Key Growth Posts

gifts

The Kingdom Of God Flows Through Our Spiritual Gifts

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“A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other” (1 Cor. 12:7 NLT). God wants us to be channels of His power to restore His people so he infuses gifts into us so we can use our spiritual gifts to build up one another. He gives gifts of hearing words from Him to edify believers (prophecy, words of knowledge, words of wisdom) he gives gifts that alter the physical world (healing, miracles) gifts that connect directly to the world of the Spirit (discernment of spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues) and gifts that are not manifestly supernatural (helping, administration, service, encouragement, mercy, giving). This generous endowment from God is rooted in the kingdom of God that Jesus brought to earth. When Jesus came he did more than just teach us how to live and then die for our sins. He also came to inaugurate the Continue Reading →

Big brother

Jesus Is Our Big Brother

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The family of God has an unusual genesis. It has a Father like other families but it also has another member who made the family possible: a big brother. In the family of God everyone has a big brother and Jesus is our big brother. He is the “oldest” of the siblings because He is the first of the newly designed humans, the first of the new Adams. He was the first to live an ideal human life and he did this is order to blaze a new trail for the rest of us to follow. The power he had to be the first new ideal human is available to us too. When we first believe, we receive a new self that is like Jesus’ pure human self but it is an infant new self. God’s goal was to choose people “to become like his Son, so that his Son would Continue Reading →

maturity

Do You Passionately Pursue Maturity?

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Jesus and his Apostles clearly taught us that we should pursue maturity. But why? In this post, we want to focus mostly on the motivation of becoming what God made us to be. If your teenage child stopped growing intellectually and emotionally, would you not consider this a cause for great concern and make an exhaustive search for an answer to the problem? Wouldn’t you realize that unless your child resumes their development, they will not become what they should become? Wouldn’t you make every effort to help them pursue maturity and reach adulthood, along with its benefits? Likewise, if we allow ourselves to become complacent about our growth just because we have reached “teenage” maturity, then are we not choosing to fall far short of what we are meant to be? Are we not making our Father sad? Are we not sabotaging Christ’s efforts to join with us and Continue Reading →

Friends people meeting laugh

Spiritual Friends Fulfill Our Hearts- Part One

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Do you ever feel like you want some close spiritual friends you can take off your mask with and open up to? Are you feeling a hole in your spiritual life where spiritual friends should be? We were designed to have close spiritual friends in mutually edifying relationships where we can reveal our true selves and be channels of God’s grace. The New Testament refers to this as fellowship; the Greek word is koinonia, which literally means participation. What does the New Testament teach about fellowship? One of the principles we observe in the Apostle Paul’s life is that we should support one another, especially in troubled times. This is stated plainly in Galatians 5:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (ESV). This implies that we actually let other people know what our burdens are! Think about how often we don’t do this. How often do Continue Reading →

sun, heaven, luminous light

The Trap Of Seeking The Presence Of God

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The greatest blessing in the New Creation will be to see God and be close to Him. Nothing will be better than being in His presence. We long for this and endure sacrifices now so we can present ourselves as pure when Jesus returns and we see God. So, shouldn’t we also be seeking the presence of God (the felt presence of God) in this mortal life? Shouldn’t we desire as much of God as He is willing to give now? Shouldn’t we always be seeking the presence of God? Of course we should. But there is a question as to priority. How high should we prioritize seeking the presence of God? First, we need to ask what we mean when we say the “presence of God.” If someone asks us what this means, we might say we just want whatever He wills. But the reality is that we want Continue Reading →