Facebook on Wednesday, 13 April 2011 at 16:22
The Three Stages of Spiritual Growth Part 3
Fathers
"I write unto you, Fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning"
1 Jn. 2:13).
John repeats the above
sentence twice.
The Fathers know Him that is from the beginning.
Their understanding of God goes way beyond the comprehension of Christianity. When
you know God as Father, you realize that you came out of His substance. Adam is
your Father according to the flesh, but God is your Father according to the
spirit.
"Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence:
shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?" (Heb. 12:9).
"And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall
one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation?" (Num. 16:22).
"Let the LORD,
the God of the spirits of all flesh
set a man over the congregation" (Num. 27:16).
"The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the
heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man
within him" (Zech. 12:1).
God is spirit and He is our Father. All mankind have a spirit.
"He that is joined to the
Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17).
God is the God of your spirit, not your flesh
.
This is one reason that all men are included in redemption. Your spirit was
brought forth from the very substance of God. In your spirit, you and God are
one. If you learn how to live and function from your spirit, then God is once
again manifested in humanity.
There will come a day in
your spiritual growth when you will become a spiritual Father.
you know God as Father, you realize that you came out of His substance. Adam is
your Father according to the flesh, but God is your Father according to the
spirit.
"Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence:
shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?" (Heb. 12:9).
"And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall
one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation?" (Num. 16:22).
"Let the LORD,
the God of the spirits of all flesh
set a man over the congregation" (Num. 27:16).
"The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the
heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man
within him" (Zech. 12:1).
God is spirit and He is our Father. All mankind have a spirit.
"He that is joined to the
Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17).
God is the God of your spirit, not your flesh
.
This is one reason that all men are included in redemption. Your spirit was
brought forth from the very substance of God. In your spirit, you and God are
one. If you learn how to live and function from your spirit, then God is once
again manifested in humanity.
There will come a day in
your spiritual growth when you will become a spiritual Father.
A Father is one who is a mature believer who carries the presence of God within him.
He will reproduce God’s life, God’s will, and His glory in others.
A Father in the natural is one who reproduces human life. A Father in the spirit reproduces
spiritual life. Jesus said,
"It is the spirit that quickeneth;
the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit,
and they are life" (John 6:63). When we learn to speak from our
spirit the words of God, then our words also become spirit and life. We can
impart life to others by our speaking. True ministry imparts life and builds up
the saints.
"Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and
read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of
Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the
living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2
Cor. 3:2-3).
To become a Father means that God’s life has swallowed up the carnal life and you are now a
representative of Him on the earth.
A Father in the natural is one who reproduces human life. A Father in the spirit reproduces
spiritual life. Jesus said,
"It is the spirit that quickeneth;
the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit,
and they are life" (John 6:63). When we learn to speak from our
spirit the words of God, then our words also become spirit and life. We can
impart life to others by our speaking. True ministry imparts life and builds up
the saints.
"Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and
read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of
Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the
living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2
Cor. 3:2-3).
To become a Father means that God’s life has swallowed up the carnal life and you are now a
representative of Him on the earth.
It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.
Another way to share the three stages of spiritual growth is:
1. God to you
2. God in you
3. God as you
As God to you, you understand that God came to man.
Another way to share the three stages of spiritual growth is:
1. God to you
2. God in you
3. God as you
As God to you, you understand that God came to man.
He came to you to redeem you and restore you back to fellowship with your Father.
He came not just to the Jews, not just to the Christians, but he came to the
world. God to you is the first revelation in the mystery of God. Every man has
a spirit, the substance of God. And God came to you to quicken and regenerate
your spirit, so that you could once again have fellowship and commune with Him.
God to you
a spirit, the substance of God. And God came to you to quicken and regenerate
your spirit, so that you could once again have fellowship and commune with Him.
God to you
means:
that God is for you. No matter how much sin I am in, no matter how many
times I fall and fail God, He comes to me every day with the offer of pardon
and redemption. The carnal mind will always keep us in sin and bondage, That is
why God is to you. You need to understand that God paid the price for
every act of disobedience and transgression so that He could reconcile you to
Himself.
"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not
imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of
reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19).
These verses tell us
that God in Christ comes to you realizing that you are not responsible for the
condition you are in, so it is not your fault. You are pretty much in prison to
the carnal mind. God, willing to show His love, sacrificed Himself on the cross
so you would understand that He knows that you can’t in your carnal human
condition help yourself, so He came to help you. He came to be the reconciler
that would reconcile you back to God. When Adam and Eve fell, God wasn’t mad at
them; He had already made provision for their redemption. Their redemption was
based on God’s choice, not on their choice. There are people who have never
heard the gospel, but that does not stop God’s provision from working for their
good. Eventually God’s redemption will be realized fully in them.
That is God to you.
God In You
When you realize that
God is to you and you begin to seek Him and come into a deeper understanding,
and begin to hunger and thirst after Him, you then begin to realize God is in
you. Paul told us that our hope is "CHRIST IN YOU" (Col. 1:27). Our
hope is not in a "rapture" that will automatically change us into
Christ’s likeness. That is a fairy tale and a fallacy.
The only hope we have is
Christ in us. Because He is in us, that is our hope of glory. If Christ is
truly in you and you are not experiencing Him, even though He is in you, it is,
at least in this present time, doing you no good. Knowing it intellectually is
not enough. All Christians know God came to them to save them, but most never
experience God in them to deliver them from a life of self. We have people in
churches around the world who say they are born again but never experience God
in them to deliver them.
God wants not only to come to you with
redemption, but He wants you to realize that
He can live in you, instead of
you. I was a Christian for years before I experienced Christ in me. I knew
intellectually and was taught that Jesus was in me, but I had no experience of
His living through me. I experienced God’s love and forgiveness, but I didn’t
know He could live His life in me. God in me is a marvelous revelation. That’s
the "young man" that John talks about. God in us with His ability and
creative Word to change us and the very atmosphere in which we live.
That is God in us and that is wonderful. However, when you experience God in
you, you still have the flesh to deal with. So yes, God is in me, but the
self-life still raises up so there is a certain amount of warfare we must do,
not with the devil,
but with self. There are Christians who have spent years
fighting the devil and trying to pull down strongholds, when they themselves are
still little children in the spirit.
with is not the devil outside of us, but the spirit of antichrist that is in
our flesh. Some get upset when I say that Christians have a spirit of
antichrist, but nevertheless, that is the case. Has God ever asked you to do
something and your flesh said NO? That is antichrist. Anything in you that is
against the workings of God is antichrist. In the mass of humanity, both
Christian and non-Christian,
the antichrist is at this present time ruling and reigning in a people.
basic things of God because of the antichrist nature that is in their flesh.
The experience of God in
you is the first step in learning how to deal with that antichrist nature that
is in us. You should never be condemned for this. You have inherited the
antichrist spirit. You did not do anything to cause you to be this way.
There are only two men
growing on the earth today: Adam and Christ. (We will deal with this more in another
chapter of Coming Out of Darkness.) These two men are growing on the
earth at the same time. There is a mass of humanity that is growing within them
the antichrist spirit. I know this is hard for some to accept, but you can be a
Christian, go to church, read your Bible, give a tithe to the church, be full
of good works, and still be growing the antichrist within you. This antichrist
is not always easy to identify. The Revelation calls this spirit
"MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH"
(Rev. 17:5).
A mystery is not always
easy to figure out. Babylon means confusion. I do not know of a more confused
group of people of the earth today than the people of Christianity. This is not
the fault of the people. Our leaders have taught us confusion for years. We
have some of the most popular ministries of our day winning people to Jesus,
telling them after they are saved to "Go to the church of your choice. If
you want to be a Catholic go to the Catholic Church. If you want to be a
Lutheran go to the Lutheran Church." This is confusion! God is
redeeming people and calling them out of confusion, not bringing them to
Him and putting them in it. Christians need to realize that antichrist can and
is growing in the Christian system.
I am not against the
Catholics, Lutherans, or any other people. I will go to a Catholic or any other
church to minister to the people, but I will not and cannot support that
ungodly antichrist system. That system is absolutely robbing God’s people of
their heritage. There are two mysteries in the book of The Revelation and they
are both growing at the same time. They are both growing within us, and one of
them is going to overcome the other. This is why I say that the choices you
make are very important. The choices that you make will either feed the
antichrist carnal nature within you or will feed the spirit of the living God
can do all things through Christ." Please don’t take a spiritual baby and
put that burden on them when you yourself can’t do it.
We need Christians who
understand these principles and can minister them to the Body and help them
grow. It doesn’t matter how many times we fall and miss the mark. Just keep
making the right choices and keep seeking God until He grows in you.
"For
he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek him" (Heb. 11:6).
Anything in you that is
saying no to God is antichrist. That could be anger, resentment, bitterness or
anything else that is not godly. Some people think they have been good Christians
all their lives, and then something happens that they don’t understand, and
they get mad at God. When you get angry with God, you have a serious problem
and do not know the heart of your Father. You get angry with Him because of
circumstances beyond your control. That is an antichrist spirit. We need
Christians who will be honest with God and take responsibility for their
actions. Just be honest and come to the light, don’t run away from it.
God As You
As little children, we
realize that God is to us. As young men, we realize God is in us.
Then we begin to experience God as us. All three of these stages are
progressive. The Spirit of the Lord changes us from glory to glory. As a little
child, we can experience something of the Father’s reproducing life. Unlike
natural babies, spiritual babies can reproduce spiritual babies. In fact, you
can and will reproduce what you are. However, when you begin to mature and
become a Father, you will be able to impart life to the babies that will help
them grow into children, and then young men, and eventually, Fathers.
I can’t tell you a whole
lot about being a Father because I haven’t experienced a lot,
that God is for you. No matter how much sin I am in, no matter how many
times I fall and fail God, He comes to me every day with the offer of pardon
and redemption. The carnal mind will always keep us in sin and bondage, That is
why God is to you. You need to understand that God paid the price for
every act of disobedience and transgression so that He could reconcile you to
Himself.
"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not
imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of
reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19).
These verses tell us
that God in Christ comes to you realizing that you are not responsible for the
condition you are in, so it is not your fault. You are pretty much in prison to
the carnal mind. God, willing to show His love, sacrificed Himself on the cross
so you would understand that He knows that you can’t in your carnal human
condition help yourself, so He came to help you. He came to be the reconciler
that would reconcile you back to God. When Adam and Eve fell, God wasn’t mad at
them; He had already made provision for their redemption. Their redemption was
based on God’s choice, not on their choice. There are people who have never
heard the gospel, but that does not stop God’s provision from working for their
good. Eventually God’s redemption will be realized fully in them.
That is God to you.
God In You
When you realize that
God is to you and you begin to seek Him and come into a deeper understanding,
and begin to hunger and thirst after Him, you then begin to realize God is in
you. Paul told us that our hope is "CHRIST IN YOU" (Col. 1:27). Our
hope is not in a "rapture" that will automatically change us into
Christ’s likeness. That is a fairy tale and a fallacy.
The only hope we have is
Christ in us. Because He is in us, that is our hope of glory. If Christ is
truly in you and you are not experiencing Him, even though He is in you, it is,
at least in this present time, doing you no good. Knowing it intellectually is
not enough. All Christians know God came to them to save them, but most never
experience God in them to deliver them from a life of self. We have people in
churches around the world who say they are born again but never experience God
in them to deliver them.
God wants not only to come to you with
redemption, but He wants you to realize that
He can live in you, instead of
you. I was a Christian for years before I experienced Christ in me. I knew
intellectually and was taught that Jesus was in me, but I had no experience of
His living through me. I experienced God’s love and forgiveness, but I didn’t
know He could live His life in me. God in me is a marvelous revelation. That’s
the "young man" that John talks about. God in us with His ability and
creative Word to change us and the very atmosphere in which we live.
That is God in us and that is wonderful. However, when you experience God in
you, you still have the flesh to deal with. So yes, God is in me, but the
self-life still raises up so there is a certain amount of warfare we must do,
not with the devil,
but with self. There are Christians who have spent years
fighting the devil and trying to pull down strongholds, when they themselves are
still little children in the spirit.
If Christ is
truly in you and you are not experiencing Him, even though He is in you, it is,
at least in this present time, doing you no good.
What we need to dealwith is not the devil outside of us, but the spirit of antichrist that is in
our flesh. Some get upset when I say that Christians have a spirit of
antichrist, but nevertheless, that is the case. Has God ever asked you to do
something and your flesh said NO? That is antichrist. Anything in you that is
against the workings of God is antichrist. In the mass of humanity, both
Christian and non-Christian,
the antichrist is at this present time ruling and reigning in a people.
Christianity is looking for this man to come in
an outward way, when all the time he is working and growing in their flesh and
they do not recognize it.
Our carnal nature is permeated with the antichrist
spirit. Most Christians are in the darkness and do not understand the verybasic things of God because of the antichrist nature that is in their flesh.
The experience of God in
you is the first step in learning how to deal with that antichrist nature that
is in us. You should never be condemned for this. You have inherited the
antichrist spirit. You did not do anything to cause you to be this way.
There are only two men
growing on the earth today: Adam and Christ. (We will deal with this more in another
chapter of Coming Out of Darkness.) These two men are growing on the
earth at the same time. There is a mass of humanity that is growing within them
the antichrist spirit. I know this is hard for some to accept, but you can be a
Christian, go to church, read your Bible, give a tithe to the church, be full
of good works, and still be growing the antichrist within you. This antichrist
is not always easy to identify. The Revelation calls this spirit
"MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH"
(Rev. 17:5).
A mystery is not always
easy to figure out. Babylon means confusion. I do not know of a more confused
group of people of the earth today than the people of Christianity. This is not
the fault of the people. Our leaders have taught us confusion for years. We
have some of the most popular ministries of our day winning people to Jesus,
telling them after they are saved to "Go to the church of your choice. If
you want to be a Catholic go to the Catholic Church. If you want to be a
Lutheran go to the Lutheran Church." This is confusion! God is
redeeming people and calling them out of confusion, not bringing them to
Him and putting them in it. Christians need to realize that antichrist can and
is growing in the Christian system.
I am not against the
Catholics, Lutherans, or any other people. I will go to a Catholic or any other
church to minister to the people, but I will not and cannot support that
ungodly antichrist system. That system is absolutely robbing God’s people of
their heritage. There are two mysteries in the book of The Revelation and they
are both growing at the same time. They are both growing within us, and one of
them is going to overcome the other. This is why I say that the choices you
make are very important. The choices that you make will either feed the
antichrist carnal nature within you or will feed the spirit of the living God
that is within you.
People quote scriptures like
"I can do all things through Christ"
(Phi. 4:13). No you can’t, if you are a carnal
Christian.
But if the Spirit of God begins to grow in you and begins to swallow
up that carnal nature, then you can be like the Apostle Paul and say, "Ican do all things through Christ." Please don’t take a spiritual baby and
put that burden on them when you yourself can’t do it.
We need Christians who
understand these principles and can minister them to the Body and help them
grow. It doesn’t matter how many times we fall and miss the mark. Just keep
making the right choices and keep seeking God until He grows in you.
"For
he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek him" (Heb. 11:6).
Anything in you that is
saying no to God is antichrist. That could be anger, resentment, bitterness or
anything else that is not godly. Some people think they have been good Christians
all their lives, and then something happens that they don’t understand, and
they get mad at God. When you get angry with God, you have a serious problem
and do not know the heart of your Father. You get angry with Him because of
circumstances beyond your control. That is an antichrist spirit. We need
Christians who will be honest with God and take responsibility for their
actions. Just be honest and come to the light, don’t run away from it.
God As You
As little children, we
realize that God is to us. As young men, we realize God is in us.
Then we begin to experience God as us. All three of these stages are
progressive. The Spirit of the Lord changes us from glory to glory. As a little
child, we can experience something of the Father’s reproducing life. Unlike
natural babies, spiritual babies can reproduce spiritual babies. In fact, you
can and will reproduce what you are. However, when you begin to mature and
become a Father, you will be able to impart life to the babies that will help
them grow into children, and then young men, and eventually, Fathers.
I can’t tell you a whole
lot about being a Father because I haven’t experienced a lot,
but I can tell you what it is. It is no longer just God to you or God in you, but it is God as
you.
you.
This does not mean that your human carnal nature is God.
This does not mean that Gary Sigler is God.
What it means is that God’s Spirit in my spirit has totally swallowed my carnal nature. I am now as He is. I and my Father are one. The Apostle Paul experienced this, he said,
"I am crucified
with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who
loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
"I am crucified
with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who
loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
This is what will
produce the glorious Church. A group of people who no longer live in
themselves. Their carnal life has been swallowed up in the victorious,
transcendent, resurrected life of Jesus Christ. It is no longer just God in
His people but God as His people.
produce the glorious Church. A group of people who no longer live in
themselves. Their carnal life has been swallowed up in the victorious,
transcendent, resurrected life of Jesus Christ. It is no longer just God in
His people but God as His people.
Unlike
natural babies, spiritual babies can reproduce spiritual babies. In fact, you
can and will reproduce what you are.
I have experienced at times being so
caught up in the Spirit of God that I have known that it was God appearing
as
"For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in
them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" ( That is what tabernacles is all about.2Cor. 6:16). What a wonderful revelation, God to you, God in you
and then God as you.To be continued
caught up in the Spirit of God that I have known that it was God appearing
as
"For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in
them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" ( That is what tabernacles is all about.2Cor. 6:16). What a wonderful revelation, God to you, God in you
and then God as you.To be continued
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