Spiritual Growth

Words that used to intimidate, setting standards I couldn’t meet, are becoming joyful promises of wellness!  Light is dawning in my heart and soul. True understanding is taking the place of reason…year-by-year, day-by-day, moment-by-moment.

How can this be? How does it happen?

Slowly, like the blooming of a flower from a seed. Little-by-little as we wait creatively and expectantly for it to unfold, attentive to the process. Sometimes via growth spurts and sometimes in the midst of seeming dormancy.

“And we have the prophetic word made firmer still. You will do well to pay close attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dismal (squalid and dark) place, until the day breaks through the gloom and the Morning Star rises (comes into being) in your hearts.” 2 Pet 1:19 Amp

It’s simple, through it all PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to His Word, LISTEN to Him…… and the Morning Star (Christ) will rise in your heart!

It will take time, and we must trust Him through the various seasons of growth, even those when it seems we wait in vain, because His promise is sure:

Those who have received the Holy Spirit progressively recognize, understand and become better acquainted with the gifts teachings and revelations so freely and lavishly bestowed on us by God. The Holy Spirit was given to us so that we might realize and comprehend and appreciate God’s gifts of divine favor and blessing! We have the mind of Christ and do hold the thoughts, feelings and purposes of His heart!

(my paraphrase from 1 Cor. 2:12-16 Amplified)

Understanding doesn’t happen all at once, nor in a few months or years, but progressively, becoming brighter and brighter like the dawn. It continues throughout a lifetime if we will continue to pay attention:

to His Word; our water

to Him; our nourishment

to seeking first His Kingdom; our focus

to every moment and every event our lives; our awareness.

We don’t have to make the Kingdom seed grow:

“Jesus also said, ‘The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens.’”     Mark 4:26

The farmer merely waters and weeds and pays attention, and the crops grow from the seeds that contain everything within them. The Kingdom of God is like that. God’s Seed is planted in our hearts. We nurture it by paying attention and watching it grow.

Thomas Merton writes:

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul—germs of spiritual vitality coming to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them. For such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.

Father has bedded us down in freedom, spontaneity and love, He has lavished it upon us. Will you see it? If you keep paying attention, you will.  No hurry.

In my journal Father said:

“Attention is all that’s required, an awareness of each moment and of My Presence will help you to receive Life correctly—as a medium of growth and not as something to try and control and manipulate to suit you.”

We must receive life as a medium of growth where our heart’s cry is “Father, glorify Your name,” rather than “Father, save me.”

When this becomes the cry of your heart, barren platitudes will eventually come alive to you. Words that used to feel like law, will feel like grace. Obedience will flow from love. You will discover that you were made for this; for glorifying God, for housing the life of God within you, for resting in the endless joy of knowing Him.

“Listen, listen to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” Isaiah 55:2