2 Keys to your Spiritual Growth

During the past two months, of what could be called a wilderness season, I discovered that there are two areas of spiritual growth that determines whether you are just a surviving Christian or a thriving Christian. Firstly, it is knowing your identity and who you are in Christ, i.e., who God says you are and what you have inherited as a child of God. And secondly, it is knowing who God is and who He says He is, by having an intimate relationship with Him.

You cannot walk in victory if you still have the mindset of a victim and behaving in defeat. To fully discover your identity in Christ and operate in your inheritance of what you have been given and how God sees you, a great start is to read Ephesians 1, and on a piece of paper, write down all the “I am” statements.  Read these as declarations to yourself every day, until you start believing them in your heart.  Acknowledging that you are loved, chosen, redeemed etc, are the building blocks to your true identity as a Royal Prince or Princess of our King.  Once you have sealed those in your spirit, do this for every passage of Scripture that you read, and you will discover many more powerful “I am” statements for you to declare. Once you start believing them, you will start walking, talking and acting like God intended you to.

You cannot fully trust God if you don’t really know Him. We may know of God, and be familiar with His role in the Bible stories, but until you can fully grasp who God is as a person, and have an intimate relationships with Him, you will always lack a confident trust and belief in Him and His promises. To learn who God is and what He has promised you, you need to be reading His Word to discover this, and be open and quiet to listen to His Holy Spirit speaking to you. A helpful way I was taught, is to get A4 sized paper, and mark down in the left column A to Z, leaving a few lines in-between each letter.  Then, whenever you are reading your Bible, look out for the many characteristics of God that you can find, and write them down in the corresponding first letter of that word.  For example, under H, you will eventually have one of the words as ‘Holy’, and under K, you will need to write ‘Kind’.

My prayer is that you will join me on this adventure of discovering and building ourselves up in these two areas.  I am confident that as we start walking in our true identity and discovering how great is our God as we grow closer in our relationship with Him and start believing it, these keys will help set us free to fly like an Eagle and excel at being a true Christian disciple.

The Last Will and New Testament of Jesus Christ - Claiming your Inheritance

(Ephesians 1:11-12)
Under the righteousness of faith and grace we, as sons and daughters of God, have inherited His promises and provision, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As a joint heir with Jesus Christ, and adopted into God’s family and a Sonship in His Royal Kingdom, are you enjoying the riches of your inheritance?

The Bible tells us that all that belonged to Jesus is now ours, not only for when we die and go to heaven, but to be partaking of right now, today. Because of God’s grace that makes us righteous, we are the rightful beneficiaries of Jesus’s last Will and Testament (new).

Sadly, many people are not enjoying the blessings and favour of what they have already inherited because they believe their reward only comes in heaven, and that God’s grace is sufficient for now.

In Bruce Wilkinson’s ‘The Prayer of Jabez’ Devotional, there is the tragic story about Connor O’Reilly, a penniless Irishman in the last century, who was given a ticket for passage on an ocean-liner by a wealthy relative to emigrate to America. However, the relative failed to mention that the ticket included all the meals, so O’Reilly bought bread and water to eat in his room, whilst the other passengers enjoyed a delicious banquet of food in the ships dining room.

This story got me thinking of how many Christians are eating stale bread every day when God has prepared a glorious and lavish feast for us - All we have to do is claim it, taste how good it is and enjoy it. The feast was purchased for us by the blood of Jesus and includes all of the promises of God.

It is like living in the Wilderness when there is a Promised Land waiting for us to be occupied. Yet Satan robs us from possessing the land of our inheritance by keeping us ignorant of it.

As co-heir with Christ, we can share in the inheritance of Christ and everything that He possessed, which means that what belonged to Jesus now belongs to us. All of His power, His peace, His joy are what we can experience if we will just claim it as ours.

God wants you to know and experience His abundant provision in your daily lives, as your daily bread, where God’s kingdom is brought to earth, like it is in heaven.

So, if you haven’t yet claimed your earthly inheritance or are in doubt of what all that you have inherited from Christ, why not ask God to reveal this to you, so that you can start enjoying in the glorious feast He has prepared for you…