Devotionals on Spiritualness

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• Old Testament history exemplifies New Testament truths – truths for spiritual living.
• Other Types Hagar:- the bondwoman who so exemplifies Israel and the covenant of LAW – fleshly Hagar and the law – which was set aside for spiritual Israel and grace. Sarah:- the free-woman so exemplifying spiritual Israel and the covenant of GRACE – chosen Sarah; the barren wife who was set aside and buried by her husband.
• Job, a man God trusts to be a witness in the spiritual battle of the ages.
• His wife, like Job a spiritual believer, who becomes prey to Satan’s wiles.
• to spiritual and carnal believers alike – to the one that overcomes and to the one that is overcome.
• In-depth Look As I have explored more and more the spiritual links of the Christian life with Job..

• Many a work which has mightily served the Lord and been a great spiritual testimony has lost its former glory, purity, and impact because it has become a Work, a Movement, an Organization, and its ramifications and responsibilities have become such as to completely rule out any such retreat with God, where that work is put back and a real openness to the Lord for anything else, more or other, is enquired after.

• For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4).

• That which constitutes this prophetic function is spiritual perception, discernment, and insight.
• It is not for the work as such that he is concerned, but for the spiritual state that dishonors and grieves the Lord.
• This faculty of spiritual discernment makes the Prophet a very lonely man, and brings upon him all the charges of being singular, extreme, idealistic, unbalanced, spiritually proud, and even schismatic.

• the need to take heed of scripture day by day, lest we slip and fall – preparing ourselves for His soon return and our spiritual growth.

• Romans 8:1 The Spiritual Walk Our acceptance by God has no conditions.
• The Spiritual Sphere And throughout his epistles, he gives countless instructions for a spiritual life.

• for faith is a spiritual knowledge of Christ, which progresses into maturity.
• Our Christian maturity is to be completed – and spiritual growth is to be entire.
• a peculiar people, distinct from the old creation in Adam, – a royal priesthood that has been battling the spiritual forces of evil for centuries.

• Spiritual Walk We are to lay aside every hindrance and any weight that may inhibit our spiritual walk.

• Embracer of Burdens In the unseen realm, the enemy knows time is short and he’s multiplying mayhem, but in the spiritual realm the enemy is being defeated..

• With all that the Lord needs and desires to do in the recovery of His first thought, His original idea for His people, not the least is the recovery of the spiritual family.
• Any fresh movement of God which relates to His original thought will most certainly reintroduce the spiritual family, and all that that means.
• There is a tremendous value connected with the spiritual family life and with the training in the family.
• There is an immense value in the training of the spiritual family and that necessitates very close relationships.

• Shining Example Paul is one shining example of that small company, and the walk of Paul illustrates the spiritual battle that rages in the heavenlies - a battle in which a small company is called out to stand firm.
• Paul exemplified a faithful life engaged in the spiritual battle of all ages.

• Sin’s reward for spiritual death is separation from God - separation from all that’s good.

• Perhaps one of the most significant things to any who are ot ignorant of his (Satan) devicesis that there never has been a specially spiritual movement of God in the earth, calculated to serve Him in a particularly useful way, but what Satan animosity thereto has been manifested along the line of division, schism, discord, separation, and a breaking down of fellowship.
• It is the most spiritual things which suffer the greatest shocks in this matter, and again we say this carries its own satanic significance.
• A suggestion of suspicion, if it finds lodgment, is enough to completely paralyze the work of God and spiritual progress.
• There never was a time when positive spiritual work was more jeopardized by suspicion than now.
• It is in the eavenliesthat this is most registered; that is, the higher ranges of spiritual things.
• The Lord Jesus met it not in spiritual people, only in religious people.

• The measure of spiritual value is determined by the measure inwhich God promotes it, not the measure of human activitiesaccording to human judgments and energies in the name of God.

• If we do not arm ourselves daily for the spiritual battle we will be overcome, for it is the one who overcomes that the Lord seeks to sup with Him and honour.
• Worldly Wisdom  It is the tragedy of spiritual weakness and decline, through neglect or rebellion.
• Spiritual Battle Heaven forbid!!
• God wants a company of believers to overcome in the spiritual battle.

• Spiritual or Carnal Some chose the spiritual way but many chose the carnal route. Some became men of faith but many chose to be faithless. Some were recorded in Hebrews 11 but many lost their opportunity.

• Usurped Governance But Adam handed his reins of governance to a spiritual entity – a rebellious angel.

• Spiritual forces in high places must be subdued – before Christ’s kingdom rule.

• As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” John 17:18,19 The Lord wants us to be signs to the world – signs that His grace is sufficient. He desires His own to go the way of the cross – and to suffer and die. Maybe in the physical, but predominantly and principally in the spiritual..

• Spiritual Blessings God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. God the Father chose you and me in Christ before the foundation of the world. God preordained that we are to be adopted as His sons because of the Lord Jesus. God has blessed us with abundant blessings, in and through His beloved Son.
• Spiritual Poverty Many believers do not appropriate these truths and live in a kind of spiritual poverty.
• But the course of spiritual experience, of spiritual life..

• Godly Thinking He had a Single Mind – in spite of all the problems and circumstances of life. He had a Submissive Mind – regardless of the way that people behaved towards him. He had a Spiritual Mind – where he set his heart on the right thinking. He had a Secure Mind – where worry and fear was replaced with trust and love. He had a Surrendered Mind – where each thought was captured and given to God.

• Spiritual Birth You must be born again, were the staggering words Nicodemus heard that night – words that must have echoed around his head and reverberated through his mind as he came to terms with the inner spiritual darkness, in which he himself was groping.
• Spiritual Life Man must be born of the Holy Spirit – if he is to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. The spiritual life of which Christ spoke is something entirely separate from the Law. The spiritual life is rooted in grace and truth, which comes to us from Jesus Christ.

• A lot is made of Paul. 'What a great man Paul was naturally, what intellect he had, what training, what tremendous abilities!' That may all be true, but ask Paul what value it was to him when he was right up against a spiritual situation.

• It is the only sufficient tool we need as we address all the important issues of life, in a manner well-pleasing to Him: emotional issues; relational issues; family issues; social issues and spiritual issues.
• We have the indwelling Holy Spirit and the Word of God to ensure our spiritual victory, if we will but yield to Him, walk by faith and appropriate all that God has provided, so that we can: abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

• That is where spiritual power has gone out.

• To understand that this inner conflict is a normal part of the spiritual growth of a believer is an important step toward learning to walk in spirit and truth rather than walking in the flesh.

• Spiritual Eye When through the workings out of His purpose in the depth of your inner being, He takes you to an end of yourself, and gives you your own Job experience… then He will draw you with His cords of love to the very extremity of your hope and you will say – in the understanding of your own 'Job' experience….
• I heard Him with mine ears but now I see Him with my spiritual eye of understanding – I see Him as I have never, ever seen Him before.

• He gave us new spiritual life in Christ at the resurrection (Rom. 6:4, 5).

• His purpose in Christ is devoid of any spiritual want or need – and it is ALL grace.

• The growth and consolidation of one's spiritual life is predicated upon clear knowledge of the dual facts of Romans 6:11 - dead unto sin; alive unto God.

• But the truth is that most of our spiritual development comes through such trials.

• They began to see that, while He was the glorified, personal, Son of God, He was Himself the embodiment of a great, a vast heavenly and spiritual order and system.

• But it is one failure after another; and when I think I have got on a bit, something turns up, and I find myself as bad as ever, and the thought of this damps all my spiritual joy.'
• In this stage of spiritual development there are continual discoveries of the old man which makes that old self more and more repulsive, and there is also the presentation of the Lord Jesus again and again in which the soul finds increasing delight.

• They have thereby learned the grace and sympathy of the Lord Jesus, and they have been the subjects of so much tender interest and consideration flowing from the spiritual affections of His saints, that they have been conscious of infinite gain and enrichment.
• It is a real loss for the attention of believers to be turned from the spiritual dealings of the Lord Jesus with His own, and from all that is the moral result of those dealings, to be concentrated upon the thought of bodily healing and self-centered experiences. -C.A.C.

• In some of the Scripture's most intense spiritual struggles we find this word 'smote'.
• Testing of Faith God permitted Satan to 'smite' Job in this unseen realm of spiritual warfare... not because God was having sport with Satan… or Job; not because God was indifferent about Job’s bitter anguish;  not because God was angry with Job or unresponsive to his torment.
• it is not I that live but Christ that lives in me.  Galatians 2:20 Like Esther – both Peter and Job were trusted to overcome in the spiritual battle – and like Queen Esther, both Peter and Job could have been asked the question… art thou come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
•  Exemplary Faith God permitted Satan to 'smite' Job in this unseen realm of spiritual warfare, because Job was a man of exemplary faith, within his generation; because Job was a man that was more deeply trusted by the Lord than most.

• We all find ourselves in life’s cul-de-sacs, having to retrace our spiritual steps.
• This ‘love motive’ is a good motive, but it is not the correct path to spiritual maturity, for this path of devotion can lead the old-self trying to live for God, by being good, and the consequences of this path is often in living the self-life instead of the Christ-life.
• However this love motive can often cause believers to remain in spiritual babyhood.
• We have to ask Him to examine our rebellious and carnal nature – to know the difference between 1) Christ as substitute and Christ as representative. 2) between sanctification truths and identification truths. 3) between the new-life in Christ and the old-life in Adam. 4) between the spiritual believer and a carnal Christian.

• God... who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)
• Let us remind ourselves of the Word which is at the basis of our meditation: i>The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.That means that all the resources which are in Christ are available for us.

• It is not just life; acceptance; redemption and righteousness that are in Him, but the creation; our hope; spiritual blessings; consolation… and consummation – and Peace and Effectual Prayer and Strength and Riches are all “In Christ”.
• Spiritual Truth IN HIM you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; IN WHOM also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” Eph.1:13 Through time and through eternity, this heavenly fact is expressed in many forms, Through the cross, this eternal reality is wrought in literal and experimental forms, but always, Always, ALWAYS the same principle emerges:- always, ALWAYS the same abiding, infinite, glorious, spiritual truth is manifested.
• Spiritual Blessings Should not I who am a child of God, chosen before the foundation of the world..  should not I, as one of His chosen ones, lift up the Lord Jesus? Should not I who will demonstrate His grace to heavenly powers in eternity..  should not I thus lift up the name of Jesus?  Should not I similarly sing forth His praises through my voice and my pen?
• Spiritual Truths It is all about Christ and everything is to be in Christ.

• Living Life But through the course of spiritual experience, (of spiritual life), the believer is to discover, to appropriate, and to live by all that the life represents and means.

• It is a sign, but it is not the thing itself, and it passes with spiritual infancy.

• There is the substitution of the power of the Spirit for the power of a right will and human effort, the substitution therefore of occupation with the glorified Lord Jesus Christ for occupation with spiritual growth; for then and thus alone is growth obtained. -F.W.G.

• Centre Stage Some believers are spiritual believers, and the Spirit is at home in their lives.
• Spiritual believers are simply those that give Christ centre stage in their lives – the Spirit of Christ dwells in them – He abides in them – and they walk like Him.

• Spiritual Behaviour To watch in every season and pray without ceasing seems an unrealistic request, and yet we find both Christ and Paul giving believers a seemingly impossible task, but the physical action must be transliterated into a spiritual behaviour.
• Spiritual watching and spiritual praying are two sides of the same spiritual coin.
• They became entangled in their attempts to perform the spiritual in the physical,` They tried to carry out the letter of the command rather than the godly principle.
• Spiritually Alert We too must grasp the spirit of Christ’s earnest entreaties to watch and pray. We too must be unceasingly spiritual alert maintaining an unbroken attitude of heart. We are to clothe ourselves with a temperament of anticipated watchfulness. We are to develop a perspective of ceaseless prayerfulness. We are to watch and pray in spirit and in truth, at all times and without ceasing.

• and have come to fullness of life..  for in Christ we too are filled with the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—reaching full spiritual stature.

• Each have a spiritual revelation, which has come from the Father.
• Work of God A band of timid and fearful men who all forsook their Lord, denied Him and fled, became a most powerful group of fearless spiritual warriors – the most powerful group of fearless spiritual warriors the world has ever seen.

• Because God has so spoken and given revelation to some chosen instrument and a truly spiritual work has been done, others have taken it as a model and have sought to imitate it in other places.
• These were of a school in which the great lesson of the difference between natural and spiritual was taught experimentally.

• And yet many of us as believers present the same failure - flaunting and mishandling our spiritual riches in Christ Jesus.

• You may have been in the fires and have been having a pretty hard and painful time in your spiritual life, but that only means that God has been preparing you for something more.

• As that held good in His case the spiritual resources of sustenance, maintenance, strength, and energy were supplied.

• But the course of spiritual experience, of spiritual life, is to discover, to appropriate, and to live by all that the life represents and means.

• You have a feeling there something not quite clear here, not transparent here, not safe here... don feel happy about this, I can tell you why but I just don feel quite happy about this... there something in me that says: beware.I am convinced that in a day like this of deceptions and misleadings and all that, the great need is our spiritual discernment; of knowing the Holy Spirit in this way, that He able to warn you.

• Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, is the Bible’s clear instruction, for there can be little or no stability in the Christian life when this truth is doubted – but until this is resolved in a believer’s heart there can be little spiritual growth.

• The one spiritual baptism positions the believer in Christ' (Rom. 6:3, 4; Gal. 3:27; Col. 2:12), and into His Body (1 Cor. 12:13).
• Thou Father, Thou Son, seest me' is the immediate consciousness of the soul, when there is spiritual perception of the Father.

• Then, if we are really going to come through to the place of spiritual power as did Peter, that ground of the enemy must continually be forsaken and refused.

• Man’s 2 Natures As children of God we were given a new life in Christ – a baby life that needs to grow. Our life should be a fruitful, victorious life that matures into a spiritual believer – a life submitted to the Spirit, so it may be conformed into the image and likeness of Jesus. But we still have a sin nature that seeks to gain supremacy over our new Christ-life. We were freed from its power over us, at the cross, but it remains our deadly enemy.
• New Life in Christ The new life in Christ should be nurtured, while the old sin nature must be subdued, and though all Christians are positionally sanctified, (set apart unto God), we must also grow in our Christian life to be practically sanctified – and it’s all by grace. Whether we are talking about our sanctified position or the sanctifying process that continues throughout life – our spiritual growth, our growing in grace, our maturing in the faith and the good works that God has prepared for us to do, are ALL by grace.
• In this way the new life in Christ will have a chance to grow and mature, and gradually be conformed into the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus. If we ignore the clear guidance in scripture on how to live a spiritual life, that’s pleasing to God, and submit to the old sin nature, we place ourselves back under the bondage of law.

• It is a mistake to measure spiritual maturity merely by the presence of gifts.

• Word of Truth It treats the Word of God as historical fact, empirical reality, and spiritual truth.

• A Full Study Of JOB Spiritual Conflict Job’s belief was that God only blessed and prospered the upright, man of faith – but calamity after contradictory calamity conflicted with his creed.
• But Job had entered into a spiritual conflict between God and Satan – a spiritual battle that would encompass the 6000 years of 'Man’s Day'.  And never once did God make it clear to Job the battle that raged in the spiritual realm.
• Though he slay me yet shall I TRUST Him. (AV) Job 13:15  Though He slay me yet shall I WAIT for Him. (RV) Job 13:15.  It seems that Job was never made aware of his role in the raging, spiritual battleground..
• Spiritual Victory Yet unbeknown to Job and evil’s cruel plan – Christ’s It Is Finished cry, would pierce the far reaches of creation’s extremity.  A plan conceived in eternity past.
• Job’s revelation of the Lord was incomplete, yet Job held fast to his creed, despite overwhelming odds – triumphant in faith, as God (over time) unfolded more and more of His revelation to Job’s spiritual eyes.
• We know some of the spiritual battles raging – through Scripture. We know some of His eternal plan – through His unfolding plan. God’s character has increasingly been revealed through His Word..
• but am I really ready and willing to recognise Him with my spiritual eyes?  Am I not only prepared to speak of Him in truth, with my lips – or am I really prepared to understand Him deeper within my heart.  That I may KNOW Christ.

• It should grieve us to realize how many abandoned babes in Christ there are - spiritual orphans.
• In these days of spiritual dearth there is an ever-increasing need for the ministry of nurturing new believers, that they may be rooted and built up in Him, and established (Col. 2:7).

• This is what constitutes spirituality - this is what makes a life or service spiritual: it is the drawing upon heavenly resources, living the life as out from heaven.
• That constitutes a spiritual life and a spiritual walk.
• Everything is so utterly from above - and so utterly not from man - that the life or work becomes spiritual as a consequence.

• Worldly strivings and fleshly ambitions may briefly sustain an earthly body, while the inner man dies of hunger, for lack of spiritual food that is eternal.
• Spiritual bread is no bland wafer or tasteless slice of food.
• Man’s Need of Acceptance Satan has robbed many believers of their full ASSURANCE of eternal salvation, and many crave for reassurance of spiritual life here and eternal life to come. Many seek through good works and spiritual activity to confirm their acceptance..
• Hungering and Thirsting Then be reassured Christian – for this is the sign of a healthy spiritual state. He who hungers and thirsts after righteousness will be filled – and that’s a promise.

• We are going to see the outward form of things, which is earthly, man-made, man-constituted, an imitation or a representation of spiritual things, breaking down, shaking at its very foundations.

• Spiritual life is only found in the blood of Christ.
• Spiritual man, as pictured by Abel, has understood this by faith for 6000 years.
• Fruit of Faith The fruit of faith may indeed produce spiritual feeling and truthful sentiments, but the fruit and result of faith must never be confused with faith itself.
• Religious Verses Spiritual It is the religious man verses the spiritual man.

• What is true in the secular has now become very largely true in the spiritual.

• He hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus' (Eph. 1:3).

• If our Lord were to give rest from the processing required for spiritual growth, by what means would He accomplish His work in us?
• It has been well said that spiritual believers are honored with warfare in the front line areas.
• But they are also privileged to witness the enemy's crushing defeat, so abundant is the power of God, and thus highly is the spiritual believer honored. -L.S.C.

• As I have seen the physical walk of Old Testament saints translated into spiritual reality, I have been awed by the wisdom of God: how unsearchable are His ways.
• as I have seen the physical walk of Old Testament saints translated into spiritual reality – I have seen the finger of God – pointing accusingly at MY bloodied heart.
• Jacob the man of flesh, but Israel the Prince with God, the spiritual man.
• How often does the scriptural type reflect our own spiritual reality.
• That night carnal Jacob became spiritual Israel.

• Spiritual Walk A life with Christ as central is a life that abides in Him; rests in Him; trusts Him.
• The fruit of a life that looks to Christ in all things is one that walks as He walked.  And Christ walked in spirit and truth by obediently listening to the Father’s voice.  Christ lived a life in submission to the Holy Spirit – He lived a spiritual life.
• and we can live a simple, beautiful, purposeful, spiritual life when Christ is central.
• We have been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, for we are in Christ.
• Spiritual Believer When we claim the benefits of our heavenly riches in Christ we abide in Him.
• That Christian is Christocentric, because he abides in Him and walks like Christ – he lives a spiritual Christian life that is pleasing to God.  He is a spiritual believer.
• Abiding in Christ Both have been endowed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places – in Christ..  but only one is abiding in Christ and living the Christ-life – the spiritual man.  Only one has appropriated their heavenly portion, which is theirs in Christ..

• Whether we recognize it or not, these difficulties and troubles which come to us are to train us for something and to develop in us the spirit of sonship; that is, to develop spiritual intelligence and spiritual ability in us. -T.

• It is the Father Who bountifully blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

• Because real spiritual progress and the Presence of the Lord depends upon bringing everything that we know right up to date.

• There are many perils lying in the direction of truth, even spiritual truth; and there are not a few of the Lord's people who have fallen into those perils.
• Preponderance on any one side will always lead to spiritual injury, and very often to disaster.

• In all of our spiritual existence we are debtors to the rich, free, sovereign grace of our Father.

• The whole subject of spiritual power is most important.

• In the light of such a spiritual eye-opening a whole lot of things would go: but being a heavenly vision, there would be no tears, no sense of loss, and no fond farewells.
• In saying this we are only contemplating the full-tide of spiritual life known before any of these things came into being.
• There are very few communities of Christians even the most evangelical, and spiritual who wholly escape the tendency or propensity to persecute or ostracize other bodies of Christians who might be regarded as rivals in their field of activity... God... hath at the end of these days spoken... in His Son.

• Are you laboring for spiritual growth?
• How we have striven and strained to increase our spiritual measure and our spiritual stature.
• What a burden we have taken upon us in relation to the maintenance of our own spiritual life!
• We have almost assumed the whole responsibility for our spiritual life, and made it as though it depended upon our labors in prayer, our labors in the Word of God, our labors in the Lord service, our effort, our stress.
• No one will think that we have said you must have no care whatever for your spiritual life, but there is such a difference between assuming responsibility for ourselves and recognizing that God has assumed that responsibility.

• There can be worldliness within the church and a spiritual immaturity – there can be lack of scriptural knowledge or a tickling of ears with pleasantries.

• The spurious, spiritual mysticism of pseudo-religiosity crept in with God’s truth and as a result, some lived by emotions and a false spirituality instead of Scripture.
• Deceptive Philosophy Paul warns us not to be deceived or deluded by the persuasive words of such teaching: see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world – rather than on Christ.

• You may bring the noblest thoughts which ever sprang from a human mind, you may couch them in the most fragrant rhetoric that ever distilled the perfume of literature in the book lover's nostrils and you will not quicken a single pulse of the new and spiritual life.

• Spiritual Knowledge What are the things upon which your thoughts are focused?
• How easy it is to rely on denominational type doctrine for our spiritual thoughts, How undemanding to rest your eternal future on your own spiritual knowledge.
• How facile to rest your spiritual growth on a reservoir of religious facts.
• Spiritual Concentration But this type of thinking causes a spiritual stupor to descend upon an individual. This type of thinking causes men to drift into a deep, spiritual sleep.
• It is not more spiritual activity that is needed - but Christo-Centric Concentration.

• I urge you... to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is your spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1 NIV)

• In the New Testament circumcision is regarded as spiritual and inward.
• It is a spiritual thing, an inward thing; it is of the heart.
• That is spiritual circumcision.
• The Cross, spiritual circumcision, says No!

• How much more does our spiritual life require a reliable Source.
• He uses the natural Adamic-life to instruct us in the spiritual Christ-life and His teaching principle is based on an essential truth – the ‘source‘ rule, which is found in Genesis 1:24: everything after its own kind – flesh after flesh, and spiritual after spiritual.
• Carnal and Spiritual The carnal is complete in Adam: for I know in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing.
• The spiritual is complete in Christ: like Christ ….
• He instructs us about the natural, and uses these commonplace experiences to train us in the spiritual.
• He writes: Christ’s resurrection was our resurrection to a life of holiness, just as Adam’s fall was our fall into spiritual death.
• And by union with Christ, we partake of that spiritual life that He took possession of for us at His resurrection, and thereby we are enabled to bring forth the fruits of it; as the Scripture showeth us by the similitude of a marriage union.
• Though complete in Him through spiritual birth, maturity grows over time.
• Spiritual growth, requires a heart-hunger for an intimate relationship, and an intimate relationship only develops as we get to know Him Whom our soul loves.

• Our Father's spiritual goal for his own is neither continuous straitness nor continuous poverty.

• It is by His revelation through the Word that we behold spiritual realities; it is by His loving discipline that we enter into those realities.

• All spiritual values depend on this confidence and conviction.

• To put that in the other way, if your appeal for moving on with the Lord seems to people to involve their having to move away from this or that or some other thing, then there is warfare; which shows that Satan in his eternal campaign of idolatry, has got a footing amongst Christians in relation to things which take the place of the Lord Himself, good things though they be in themselves; and you find, if you are spiritually sensitive, that you are not just encountering the established institutions, but you are encountering a terrific spiritual force.

• How vital is this – in spiritual warfare, intercessions, and supplicating prayer.

• That is spiritual growth: t pleased God... to reveal His Son in me....It is so important that there should be this continual, living unveiling of Christ in the heart if we are to reach God full end.

• True spiritual leadership involves this principle: Death working in me works life in you (2 Cor. 4:12, Cony.).

• But then immediately followed the terrible experience of the wilderness testings. Spiritual privileges do not exempt us from the fiery trials.

• Religious ministry may be psychic, orthodox, heretical, social, humanitarian, educational, political, or spiritual.
• How much there is that is called spiritual that is but flesh!

• Spiritual Fruit Galatians 5:22 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is :-

• To understand what is meant by those last three words is to have an explanation of an immense amount of history; spiritual and temporal.... The nature and features of the curse, as the Bible everywhere reveals, are frustration, thwarting, bafflement, discontent, abortion, confusion, travail, breakdown, and an ever-defeated struggle against despair and death.... Why is it that so many things which have greatly served the purpose of God have eventually fallen apart; broken up; and have little more than a great past to live upon?

• As I hear of despair from ones who’ve been the spiritual mainstay of many others – I do wonder.
• Spiritual Counterpart Valuable lessons have their spiritual counterpart – and this is no exception.

• Spiritual Bliss How many of us, like these shepherds, have been in the very presence of God?  How many of us, recall that wonderful transfiguring time, and long for its return?  How many even question the glorious promises, bestowed on us from earlier days? How many start to wonder if the closeness, once discovered, when in His Presence..  was but an illusion; a dream; a forgotten hope; a lost delight – as they also leave that high point in their lives and walk away (leaving their first love).
• No doubt the shepherds' preference would have been to remain forever in this zenith.  But former spiritual bliss should make us more diligent and devoted in little things: You have been faithful over a little, I’ll set you over much; enter into the joy of your Lord.

• His risen new life comes from the second spiritual birth, in Christ Attempts to amend my old life is to deny that I am nothing.

• And I believe that explains a very great deal of what the Lord is doing with His own spiritual people in these days.

• Healthy spiritual growth is founded upon it.

• Most of us have prayed for more faith, desiring to be like a spiritual giant in the faith..
• often aspiring to spiritual 'success' – without embracing its aggressive pain.

• And they thirsted not when He led them through the deserts: He caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them. . . . . . .for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ (Isa 48:21; 1 Cor. 10:4).

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3)
• You are to be ground and cut, and hurt by other diamonds, by other Christians, by spiritual Christians.

• The whole thought of God, running right through this letter, is spiritual fullness; and any religion even Christianity mixing and confusing soul and spirit, the sentient and the spiritual (as did the Christian-Judaism and as does organized Christianity) is doomed to the destiny of Judaism.
• It seeks to explain their nature and history in the light of Christ and true spiritual Christianity.

• But solid food is for adults - that is, for those who through constant practice have their spiritual faculties carefully trained to distinguish good from evil.

• Pneumatology – unless rightly-divided,  the Scriptures can be accused of distortions.  Bibliology – God’s work in the church is mixed up with His plan for Israel.  Ecclesiology – our position in Christ, and spiritual inheritance is confused.
• confusion reigns in the area of eternal security and spiritual warfare is distorted.

• Even good people who have been blessed of the Lord, to whom He has shown His favor and whom He has used very greatly, may in the end be involved in spiritual tragedy if for some reason compromise has entered in.
• If spiritual fullness is to be reached, we have to be governed by Divine and heavenly principles, and not by human considerations.

• In Him we live and move and have our being is the fundamental truth of the spiritual life.
• When the Lord Jesus says: Abide in Me it sounds so simple and so ordinary, but it contains all this history, and this great principle and truth: If you get out of your environment you are exposed to all the poisons and all that creates spiritual disease.

• Then comes the spiritual burden of Christ - to be more like Him.

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3).
• The New Testament believer's spiritual growth is not based upon Old Testament doctrine.

• Spiritual equilibrium alone will bring forth much fruit both in us and in others.
• We were created for more than our own spiritual development; reproduction, not mere development, is the goal to mature being - reproduction in other lives.
• The flowers that are bent on perfecting themselves, by becoming double, end in barrenness, and a like barrenness comes to the soul whose interests are all concentrated upon its own spiritual well-being, heedless of the needs around.

• He expects them to realize their position of absolute oneness with Christ, for He ‘has blessed them with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ’ (Eph. 1:3).” -F.J.H.

• The must becomes a spiritual thing, not a legal thing.

• Paul’s Teachings Paul outlined in great detail these glorious positional truths to encourage our hearts. His desire was that we are united in love and understand the riches of God’s grace. He longed that we have complete assurance of the mystery of God – namely Christ: in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Colossians 2:3  Paul’s epistles certainly are overflowing with much to rejoice our heart, but he also gives us some severe warnings, which encourage spiritual alertness.

• Pharaoh is an old testament type that can be expressed as a spiritual truth today.
• Spiritual Truth The truth expressed in this example is no different from today’s end times, for if truth is being presented and yet repeatedly rejected, God finally sends a famine – a famine of hearing God’s word – a famine of listening to God’s voice.

• Spiritual Maturity We are exhorted on many occasions to be maturely established in the faith. We are encouraged to press on to the high calling of Christ. We are entreated to gain spiritual perception and godly discernment. We are enjoined to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.
• Spiritual Infancy Why then is there such lack in the body of Christ?
• Why such spiritual infancy? Why is there such a dearth of spiritual perception – a deficiency of discernment? Why are there so many that live out their Christian life in spiritual infancy?
• Spiritual lack and stunted growth is most often a failure to grow in spirit and truth.
• Spiritual Discernment We are told that we will know them by their works – but how to differentiate?
• There is but one way - spiritual discernment, bestowed by the Spirit of Truth, which is given to those prepared to die to self-interest and self-worth
• God’s purpose spans far greater horizons, which is the believer’s sanctification. It is being established in the faith – spiritual maturity – growing in Christ.

• they are quite unfitted to bear the burden of spiritual ministry.

• There is nothing in the earthly or spiritual realm that can divorce us from His care.

• This significant issue is crucial to a believer's spiritual walk, for denial of our eternal security is a distortion of scripture, a denial of God’s plan of salvation and it defames God’s character.
• Scriptural Harmony The harmony in Scripture on the issue of eternal security is truly beautiful to behold, but when salvation passages for the unbeliever are confused with those on growing in grace and spiritual maturity, confusion is inevitable.

• The first man was a natural man – an unsaved man – a man condemned to be separated from God forever, for the wages of sin is death; spiritual death – spiritual separation from the Father.
• Heavenly Man The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.

• Two things mark spiritual growth; one is a deeper sense of the sinful old nature, the other is a greater longing after the Lord Jesus Christ.
• The sinfulness is discovered and felt as the power of the Holy Spirit increases; for many a thought and act passes without pain to the conscience where the Lord Jesus is less before the soul, which will be refused and condemned as the knowledge of the Lord increases in spiritual power within. -J.B.S.

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing … in Christ.Ephesians 1:3
• God has bestowed on His children all and every single possible spiritual blessing.
• God has secured all and every single possible spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.
• God has secured all and every single possible spiritual blessing – in CHRIST.
• His spiritual benefits encompass all that is past, present, and future.
• Spiritual Blessings Everything that touches our lives on earth – or our home in heaven..
• James 1:17  God has blessed all and every saint with every spiritual blessing – in Christ.
• for nothing is impossible to the Lord – yet we often live in spiritual bankruptcy.
• Heavenly Blessings In Ephesians, we read blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: for He has blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.
• He has blessed us with ALL spiritual blessings in heavenly places.
• He has blessed us with ALL and EVERY spiritual blessing IN CHRIST.
• From the moment we trusted Jesus as Saviour, all spiritual blessings became ours.
• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing - in Christ.

• Effort, disappointment, self-reproaches, and self-occupation, make up the weary round of their lives, with now and then, perhaps, a gleam of spiritual happiness.

• Legalistic Impediments Legalistic rituals, rites, and ceremonies can most certainly impede spiritual growth, but what are these things?
• The spiritual cure for triviality, is a new note of greatness born of the realisation of what it cost Jesus to produce His salvation in us – a sanctified life.

• Spiritual Quality So in what way are we to reflect this spiritual quality of exhortation? How are we to be best used of Him to come alongside precious brothers and sisters?

• The only possibility of spiritual progress lies in our discovering the truth as God sees it; the truth concerning Christ, the truth concerning ourselves in Christ. -W.N.

• We can think that our meagre faith counts little against certain spiritual giants.

• Spiritual Separation Misunderstanding the meaning of the word “death” has a direct impact on our understanding of Romans 6.

• Trying to do good works in our own strength and living under legalism, (under law) rather than being led by the Spirit, prevents spiritual growth, and sadly this blocks our fellowship with the Father.
• Indeed, such hindrances to spiritual growth are rooted in unbelief.
• Spiritual growth is not a matter of how much we pray or witness..
• Christians likewise are reminded that spiritual maturity comes by faith, and not by what we do.

• Sufficient Strength But Paul like us, had to come to an understanding that our strength in is Christ and not in ourselves and Paul like us, had to learn the many spiritual blessings that flow from suffering.

• Spiritual Growth Faith is necessary for the initial (salvation of the spirit).

• Only a regenerate man has had the breath of life breathed into him by the Spirit of life.  Only a believer in Jesus is able to function on the spiritual plane – by faith.  Only a new man in Christ, who has passed from darkness to light can act by faith.  Faith is simply believing God.  Faith is simply trusting God to do what God has said, and faith comes by hearing which comes through the Word of God.
• Man, within his spiritual capacity, is able to avail himself of what God has said, and then man (redeemed man), is to live and to act and to pray accordingly.  The ‘just’ shall live by faith… the ‘righteous’, ‘redeemed’, ‘spiritually-alive’, ‘new man in-Christ’ shall live by faith.  Why, you ask – why should we live by faith?  What, you ask – what is the point of simply trusting God to do what God has said?  Let us eat, drink, and be merry, and party in this life, for tomorrow we die!!   Why you ask… because God has ordered His amazing creative plans and purposes to include you.  Before the foundation of the world, He set these plans in motion, to involve you.  He has designed that those with patient endurance will receive the great promise: for you have need of patient endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.” Heb.10:36
• the salvation of the soul – spiritual maturity: And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless, unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1Thes.5:23
• Biblical Faith Now Faith.,. (faith which brings you to saving of the soul – sanctification – spiritual maturity) faith is the substance of things hoped for.  Faith is the evidence of things not seen.  If God has said it in His God-breathed Word..

• Living a fleshly or carnal life, instead of a spiritual one is disobeying the Lord – and prayers and intercessions will only be received from the one that is pure.

• That ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding (Col. 1:9).

• And you find that list moves out into the dimensions of the knowledge-surpassing love: ..that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.Spiritual illumination leads on to being filled unto all the fullness.
• Spiritual illumination, therefore, is a basic thing to God end.
• We can never come to the fullness of Christ by the mere enquiry and investigation of our own brains into spiritual things.
• The Testimony of Jesus has as its essential law: spiritual illumination and revelation through the Word.

• The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. (1 Corinthians 2:15 ESV)
• Recognizing that, we see that this further thing is necessary, that we are a truly spiritual people.
• It is very often difficult to define what is meant by spirituality, or a spiritual people.
• But for the moment it can be put quite simply and quite safely and soundly in this way, that a spiritual people is a people who are governed by the Word and the Holy Spirit to this end: that in everything within and without, Christ is All and in all.

• Christ is presented as the Head of His Body – a spiritual body in whom He resides.
• There is one need for all humanity – one need for believer and non-believer alike, to SEE the Son of Man – to have his spiritual eyes opened.
• Spiritual Understanding And through the writings of Paul, we are told how to live in Christ..
• and in the writings of John, we are told Who will give us this spiritual sight.. THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH: 'He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come'.
• John 16:13.  And John’s gospel, letters and apocalypse explain spiritual understanding… and we are to live by faith and not by sight.
• Spiritual Foolishness We are not to rely on signs and wonders; feeling and emotions.

• True spiritual experience will result from our standing immovable in our position in Christ.
• Whatever may have been our experience of holiness, and the measure of spiritual attainment in the past, we can never get beyond the need of abiding in Christ and the continuous reckoning of faith. -R.W.

• There follows a dissertation of a carnal Christian compared with the spiritual man..
• Two Options First a carnal Christian life:– born again but walking in the realm of the flesh and second a spiritual Christian life:– born again and walking in the sphere of the spirit.
• Indeed, Paul here prescribes the remedy to the carnal life versus the spiritual life.

• Identification Another vitally important foundational truth is identification Identification with Christ is essential for the spiritual growth of a believer, and chapter 8 of The Green Letters briefly outlines these foundational truths… through the thoughts and writings of a range of time-honoured saints of God.
• These truths are the birthright of every child of God, and no one can dispense with them without dishonouring our Lord” (Spiritual Secret, p.116).
• This passage is the foundation as well as the key to the possibility of a ‘walk in the spirit'” (He That Is Spiritual, p.154).
• Austin-Sparks: “The first phase of our spiritual experience may be a great and overflowing joy, with a marvellous sense of emancipation.

• Let any of our old man, whether of our old temper, our old way of judging, our old disposition, any of it come up at all, if we are children of God, we know quite well that at that point a barrier is set up and we cannot get past, we are held up in our spiritual life and we have to go back and have that thing cleared up.

• It is true that we may have a tremendous amount of knowledge and information as this world can give it, and yet the wisest, the wealthiest in knowledge or in any other way, coming into Christ has got to learn the ABC in spiritual things.... It will not be long before we are made to know that we do not know anything.
• There is no royal road to spiritual knowledge, we have to start right at the beginning and learn the things of the Lord as we go along.
• Spiritual knowledge is a different thing.

• Now, God’s promises are ours – His Word is ours and Christ Jesus is our own Saviour.  Spiritual blindness is replaced with spiritual knowledge, understanding, and light.

• The law was applied to the natural man, that he might produce; grace is given to the spiritual man, that He might produce.Almost every believer makes the same mistake as the Galatian Christians.

• Now no one will think that I am saying that there are no spiritual people in that system of things.
• I am not saying that; but I am saying that if that represents for them their spiritual life if they must have that, if that is the realm in which they live... that they do not see beyond that and are not free from that as a thing in itself then they have missed the meaning of Calvary, and they are bound to miss all the meaning of Christ crucified the wisdom and the power of God.
• You see, we are up against a terrific business; we are up against a spiritual opposition which is colossal, and only a spiritual position is adequate to that nothing less.

• But this is just the beginning of that deep work of the Cross which is to deal with the carnality of our cherished affections, our spiritual comforts, our dearest friendships, our creeds, and our denominations, our devotion to which prevents the dying of the old man that makes impossible whole-hearted devotion to the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. -J.M.

• If I say I am under law, and stop there, I am left in spiritual anarchy.

• As far as our Father is concerned, the early and middle years of the Christian life have to do primarily with our spiritual development.

• Natural Man Natural man is incapable of any spiritual intercourse with the Spirit of God. This is a law that God dictated and God has His one way – His only Way; His only Truth; His only Life. Divine life imparted to a born-again soul is essential for communion with God. Divine life, (the free unmerited gift of grace from God) is the only uniting bridge.
• if that unbridgeable gap is to be crossed – if the immeasurable gulf is to be spanned. But this first step to God is often halted a few steps down the path on the new-creation, and the spiritual newborn is halted in his spiritual life and spiritual growth. For just as the first requirement for the free unmerited gift of grace was by faith.. so too the ongoing wilderness walk through the plains and pains of this earthly life.
• Spiritual Maturity Living by faith is not the automatic outcome of the born-again believer. A life of sanctification is not the natural outcome of saved humanity. Spiritual maturity is a decision the believer makes – it’s a day-by-day choice. The ‘laws’ of sanctification (not the Law of Moses) must be applied by the believer..
• Spiritual Strongholds Without the innate sin nature, every new believer would certainly choose life.
• But abuse from others and neglect from self, ravages the fragile new-born soul, and spiritual strongholds erected throughout life inhibit this maturation process.

• Don’t allow moral, intellectual, or spiritual insanity to drag down these obstacles.
• Spiritual Progress Don’t rebel before your spiritual progress is completed. Don’t kick against the pricks or you may forgo what He desires to teach you. Don’t seek to circumnavigate the slow, steady, majestic, difficult way He’s planned – do not weep.
• As Job said: “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my spiritual eye of understanding sees You.

• That is the spiritual life - Christ in us in all His fulness.

• All that was ever intended by God concerning Israel and was lost by them, is carried on in the Lord Jesus, and then transferred by Him to His companions and the companions of the heavenly calling the new Israel, which is spiritual.

• An unfinished course, a curtailed spiritual advance, an accepting of something less than what God had appointed and intended.
• Spiritual leadership always involves loneliness.

• And that is the difference between a congregation, so many Christians, or units coming together as units, and a spiritual organism, a local expression of the Body of Christ: and it is the Body which is God's thought, not a congregation, not a bunch of flowers.
• It is true they are all of the same species: they are Christians, they are children of God, they are all sharing the same Life, but oh, they are not there as one organism in one place growing with the increase of God, passing through corporate convulsions of death and resurrection and making spiritual increase in that way....

• We are then commanded to be His soldiers and to enter into spiritual war. I may be in the early flush of youth or I may be advancing in years; I may be invalided on a couch of sickness or I may be in the heyday of health; I may be imprisoned in a lonely cell or free to roam the wide continents – but He has a plan for each of us, and He plants or transplants us as He sees fit.  And He calls each of us to be faithful in the place where He has planted us.

• It is not a spiritual experience, that depends on a spiritual atmosphere.

• Physical Example Every Old Testament story presents New Testament truths – spiritual truths.
• What was done in the physical realm is to be translated into the spiritual realm.
• Spiritual Truth We don’t fight physical Goliaths, for our foes are spiritual forces – our enemies are armies of principalities and powers in the heavenlies.
• Ours is a spiritual battle, engaged in the invisible realm with the unseen forces of evil.
• Spiritual Courage Physical courage may be admired – but it can sometimes be foolish. Spiritual courage when battling the unseen enemy is truly what counts. That inward strength does not come from pumping up your own nerve.
• Spiritual bravery is not resultant on displayed heroism or gallant deeds. Spiritual boldness is displayed in men and women, who place their trust in God and look to Him, for deliverance. It is people who will stand amidst the crumbling circumstances of life and cry.. I know in Whom I have believed. 2 Timothy 1:12
• Unhesitating Trust There was one requirement in the physical realm as there is one requirement in the spiritual.
• How much more should we pay attention to our heavenly Father’s instructions in our own spiritual battles?

• His defence is not in the physical alone – it spans the breadth of the spiritual attack.

• Isaiah 68:14 But deeper and more expressive, spiritual overtones of joy, are also discovered, where Christ demonstrates that: for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross…  Hebrews 12:2 and He endured the cross so that: no one will take your joy away from you….  John 16:22
• Christ establishes here a deep spiritual truth about joy – true joy – inner joy – that even in sorrow, pain, longing, bereavement..

• Eternal supply Intimacy with our Saviour and Lord, is the most precious grace He has given us, for He is the well-spring of our life, both physical and spiritual.

• Ours are in the realm of the spiritual as theirs were in the realms of the physical.
• Response to Praise Don’t nurse your wounds when others, through ignorance or stupidity, cause you pain – but remember the Christian’s secret of a successful and profitable spiritual life.

• As I trail a wrong path, I blunder, until I start to see with spiritual eyes of His understanding/ (as did Job).

• Christ took upon Himself all our spiritual accountability and clothed Himself with all man’s evil and wickedness.

• The fit and healthy athlete is a physical picture of our spiritual endeavour.
• Spiritual Muscle The spiritual muscle and might that He desires to be built up in our hearts..is love, joy, patient endurance, gentleness and goodness, meekness and mercy.

• All the encumbrances of the binding grave-clothes that hinder my spiritual progress, must be stripped away.

• Spiritual maturity can frequently go into hibernation, through a believer’s fleshly ways.
• Rom.8:28. There may be ramifications for seeking fast-track spiritual development, and there may be consequences for a paucity or lack in a spiritual life, but there will also be reward… if that one earnestly seeks God in his lack, indifference, disinterests or rebellion, for God has a purpose for all that are blood-bought saints in Christ Jesus – but He chooses to do it His way, and will often wait many years for our compliance.
• Job.13:15. It is the expression of a self-life… that confesses the truth – a life willing to admit that God alone has the answers. Christian growth can often be stunted at rebirth with poor ‘discipling’.  Spiritual maturity can frequently go into hibernation through a believer’s fleshly ways..

• Spiritual Victory It also takes time and much heartache for us to learn these lessons too.
• But in the spiritual realm, the enemy is defeated – the saints are being freed – freed unto the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

• He knows everything visible and invisible; natural and spiritual; good and evil – in time and in space and in eternity.  He knows the end from the beginning.

• The indwelling presence of God within the Christian is no myth or folk-legend.  This is no speculative nicety, no theoretical yen – no considered spiritual opinion.
• False Understanding But many choose to confine His presence to the realm of conscious feelings, or seek after a plethora of spiritual experiences to 'prove' God speaks the truth.

• for by one man’s sin came death – spiritual death and finally physical death, for all.

• Right Thinking But right thinking about God and the Son of His love is critical to spiritual growth, for every thought we have of God, influences the decisions we make. Think about the following.. No nation in the history of the world has risen above their perception of God. No civilisation has peaked above their consciousness of Who God is. No peoples have exceeded their religious thinking of the nature of God.

• He didn’t favour any great spiritual beings, with their treasures of wisdom and might.

• True Submission There are no shortcuts in spiritual growth, and God’s training has eternity in view.
• Spiritual Growth He trained Moses for 80 years before letting him lead the children of Israel.
• He took Job to the edge of despair before his spiritual eyes were unclouded.
• for 20 more years had to pass before fleshly Jacob submitted to God – 20 years of training passed before submitting to become spiritual Israel.

• Governed by God The pre-eminent mark of a spiritual man is a life governed by the Spirit of Christ..

• It is to bring us into a place of spiritual responsibility.
• He seeks to bring us to a state of spiritual maturity, to full growth.
• We do not just want to be servants, bits of a machine, but sons who have become one with the Father, and in whose hands He can put spiritual responsibilities.

• Leave it alone and see what God is doing, and God is doing a spiritual thing, not a temporal thing.
• God is breathing upon every temporal representation in order to have a spiritual expression of Christ!

• a plan involving spiritual war that will continue through centuries.  A plan that will continue on until all things are consummated in Christ. A plan you and I are part of. A plan to bring forth the eternal fullness of Christ.
• Deeper Truth Many only see Job as God’s upright servant, who got caught up in spiritual warfare.

• Performance Orientated We live in a world system where the culture of the age is performance orientated. Acceptance at home or at school is all too often dependent on what we say and do. The legalism that is inherent in society is often transferred into the spiritual realm. We transfer the way the world thinks and acts into our relationship with the Lord – but this is counter to God’s way of working and opposite of His way of thinking.

• At any rate, the world will know something if we are really living in touch with the Lord, and there will be a language which only the spiritual can enjoy and understand.
• There will be those spiritual counterparts of the seed of Abraham, a people different from all the rest.
• You cannot fit them in with other things, and it is not because they are awkward and difficult and deliberately irritate people, but there is that which by reason of their spiritual constitution marks them off; and if they did but know it, this is the secret of their influence in the world.
• The progress and increase of spiritual Life means this, that the gap widens all the time between the children of God and those in the world who are not such.
• To conform is to lose spiritual power.

• We are raised in Him (Eph. 2:6); we are complete in Him (Col. 2:10); we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Him (Eph. 1:3); the entire work regarding us is not done in us but in the Lord Jesus - the Father has done all in His Son.

• So often in the battle we go to the Lord, and pray, and plead, and appeal for victory, for ascendancy, for mastery over the forces of evil and death, and our thought is that in some way the Lord is going to come in with a mighty exercise of power and put us into a place of spiritual maturity as in an act.
• He takes us through some exercise, through some experience, takes us by some way which means our spiritual expansion, an increase of spirituality so we occupy the larger place spontaneously because of our growth I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

• But in relation to our spiritual maturity – God takes His time.
• Spiritual Growth But he grows slowly and looks very insignificant for many decades, as silently within the Word of God nourishes the spirit, soul and body – while without the raging storms and buffeting winds of life, develop a trusting faith.
• Spiritual Maturity God knows what’s best in the life of each believer to bring him to strong, full maturity – and God takes time to bring a man or woman from new-birth to final maturity, God takes time to conform each of His children into the likeness of His beloved Son.
• The Spiritual Way How graciously does the aged apostle Peter, who failed so miserable put it:- but grow….

• We are to rest in Him for spiritual growth, and He will work through us for spiritual service.

• Spiritual Warnings The first snare is to do with surfeiting / dissipation / excess / self-indulgence. Surfeiting means to dissipate/ to throw away / to squander / to disintegrate… but this warning against the physical excess can translate into a spiritual warning.
• Unceasing Readiness The next snare is drunkenness / intemperance which is so often a form of escapism, but the warning against the physical act can translate into a spiritual warning.
• It can be confirmed in the spiritual with a similar blindness to the realities to come.
• And ignoring the warning to ready for His return at all times is the spiritual equivalent.
• Put on the New Each believer has a life that needs honing – yet spiritual realities are not always faced. Each servant has talents to use – yet opportunities to live for Christ can be wasted.
• Such a one that doesn’t face the spiritual realities of life – ceases to guard their heart.
• Trust in God The final snare is to permit the trials of this life to overwhelm us with worry,  lest at any time your hearts be overwhelmed with the cares of this life. And the caution against the physical sin translates into a spiritual warning.

• A Spiritual Gift It is not normal to allow the fountain of our goodness to fall on all that we meet.

• Spiritual Man Job presents as a spiritual man, who in this world has deep tribulation and distress - an intercessor at the start, and a prayer-warrior at the end of his spiritual walk.
• A man that does not understand, but a man with a teachable spirit; a man who trusts in the Lord, but a man that is prepared to question God; a man whom the Lord trusts in the unseen world of spiritual warfare.
• Spiritual and Carnality Like Job, his wife is a virtuous woman, who holds to her husband's trust in God, but one who allows the long, spiritual battle in Job’s life, to cause her faith to fail.
• Job’s friends cannot be 'overcomers', as they are not part of the spiritual warfare.
• In her spiritual walk, Job’s wife was overcome, but was protected by Job’s integrity.
• Indeed, they were not trusted by the Lord to participate in His spiritual warfare.
• Spiritual Walk The man walking in the spirit is willingly prepared to be taught the deep truths of God – even if they conflict with one's long-held understanding of God… even if it means having to adjust one's deep-seated mindset about God; even if it means having to rethink one's whole perception of God.
• High Calling The new man in Christ will be the one trusted to enter the spiritual battle.

• In the life of any believer, spiritual or carnal, God has much refining to do.
• In the life of any believer, spiritual or carnal, God has much refining to do, for God’s way is to make the reality of Christ, increasingly real in each one of us.

• Many more hit pillows or pavement with a deep emptiness in their belly and bowls. However shocking such statistics – more horrific is the world’s spiritual hunger. However scandalous the malnourished hordes of humanity are.. spiritual need is an even greater lack.
• Greed and Disinterest Acute, bodily needs are almost trifling compared with humanity’s deep spiritual want, and yet the deep-seated spiritual need is less discernible in today’s masked culture.
• Man’s intense, spiritual dearth is often hidden, disguised, or camouflaged.
• Spiritual Deficiencies Though very real, the physical need of man is a parable of the grotesque paucity..
• an allegory lurking behind closed church doors and spiritual slums of the globe.
• Can you argue that God is not good, or gracious to allow such spiritual deficiency?
• No, the burden of responsibility for spiritual food firmly remains on each individual.
• Such spiritual lack must be firmly laid at the feet of each person with tickled ears.
• Every man and every woman has choices to make between famine and fullness – spiritual famine or spiritual fullness .
• Provision of God God spreads His table with great abundance – even in the presence of our enemies, and Mary sang, He fills the hungry with good things – pressed down and spilling over. For whoever hath, (hunger for the Lord) to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, (spiritual hunger) from him shall be taken away even what he hath.
• Everywhere and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.” Philippians 4:12 Whatever our station in the physical realm, whether 'full or hungry' remember that your spiritual food is of the greatest importance to you.

• Spiritual Lessons Life’s journey is an education. It affords us opportunities to learn many spiritual lessons.
• It develops in us moral and spiritual qualities. It may not be the easy way; it may not be the happiest route; it may be marred by difficulties' it may be tinged with disappointments, but all things work together for good to those that trust Him – to those that are the called according to His perfect purpose.

• Indeed, He is the only One in the world today that can guide man into all truth, for the Scripture is living and the Scripture is spiritual, and spiritually discerned.

• Spiritual hunger and thirst are fulfilled in the Lord Jesus, while at the same time they are enlarged for more of Him.
• It is as we take the Lord Jesus by faith into the affections of our hearts that we make spiritual progress.
• The head may be filled with general theological information without producing one spark of heart-affection for the Lord Jesus, and the soul remains in a state of spiritual emaciation.
• Many have been misled by thinking that by reading the Bible you become like Christ - transformed; but you will find diligent students of the Word, who may never say anything incorrect in doctrine, yet who never seem to grow in grace and walk in spiritual reality.
• All blessings of this dispensation of grace are wrapped up in a Person, and, by means of the Word of God, we make spiritual progress as our hearts learn to find everything in Him - the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. -C.A.C.

• This is the great master key to spiritual life and liberty.

• But the spiritual mind, the subdued heart, the lowly spirit, will say, and that without a single particle of reserve, Let me only enjoy the sweet company of the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ in my trial, and I ask no more.

• Our spiritual puppy-love is soon lost, to be replaced through the years by our bridal-love.

• Walking in the Spirit, our faith is heavenly, spiritual; walking in the flesh, our faith is earthly, carnal.
• It is imperative that the believer knows his position in grace, because grace is the source of all spiritual supply.

• For the Apostle the settling in to the sovereign ordering of God in his imprisonment issued in increasing illumination leading to spiritual emancipation.

• Earthly and Spiritual The people of Israel marched around the walls of Jericho to gain victory – today we march a seventh time around the city gate of our spiritual Jericho.
• The earthly walk of Israel is given to demonstrate what we face in the spiritual – both are used by God to draw us to Him – to teach us to trust in His strong arms of love.

• The Lord would have prayer touching things heavenly, things spiritual, related to that which is not of time, but of eternity; not of this world, but in relation to His eternal, heavenly intentions.
• No, our prayer must be: Today, Lord, I want that which is of greatest account in relation to spiritual values and if that must be by way of trial and adversity, I do not pray to be delivered from it.

• Spiritual Battle The Old Testament tells why the created world is under the control of a rebellious angel.
• The New Testament presents the same heavenly order of the devil’s demonic ploys, and the spiritual battle of the age is raging against Satan’s heavenly realm – an unseen war, where wicked powers rule gentile nations from high places.
• One New Man The work of God’s Spirit throughout this present age has this spiritual focus:- redeemed man..
• prepared by the Spirit to bring forth the fruit He requires; saved Jews and Gentiles, participating in a spiritual battle and heavenly war.. a bride for Christ, prepared as co-regent with Him in His heavenly kingdom – the one new man in Christ – the Church.
• Overcoming And the one new man in Christ, is seven times exhorted to overcome in the spiritual war, for overcoming is God’s will for all believers.

• God has bestowed on us blessings of position, privilege, power, and responsibility, for this is a spiritual conflict with principalities and powers in heavenly places – and we are in Christ; identified with Him and our sphere of operation is heavenly.
• Spiritual Realm We are part of this spiritual battle – but the war of the ages was won at the cross.
• The privileges and blessings bestowed on all in Christ – are in the heavenly realm, and we are to live and function in the spiritual realm, because of our union with Christ.
• Our physical position is with our feet planted on the earth - the terrestrial plane, but our eternal, spiritual position is in Christ in heavenly places - the celestial sphere.
• We may be poor in the world goods, but we have every spiritual blessing, in Christ.

• The point is this, that, inasmuch as that is the side of vision presented, you and I have to seek the Lord for spiritual capacity to see it.
• When the Lord's people get a new spiritual Holy Ghost revelation of the Sovereign Headship of Christ, and begin to hold fast the Head, they let go of everything that is local, and personal, and different, and scattered on the earth.

• Their spiritual resources of life, power, wisdom, knowledge, and purpose must be heavenly and by mediation of the Holy Spirit alone.
• The spiritual relationships and associations must be heavenly.
• We can never arrange this, or decide to do this heavenly business to any consequence (except failure) unless each one concerned is in it by revelation of the Holy Spirit, and is born into it through spiritual travail.

• Hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ' (Eph. 1:3).

• Therefore, that portion of our lives that is not His living is not Christian living; and that portion of our service that is not His doing is not service; for all such life and service have but a human and natural source, but Christian life and service have a supernatural and spiritual source.” That supernatural, spiritual source – is the Spirit of Christ in you.
• Carnal or Spiritual Your Soul that has the capacity to sin, and will continue to until we are with Him.
• Your new soul-life is the new man in Christ, the spiritual man that works for good.

• Third We are to be careful that we are not enslaved through human philosophy. We are not to be influenced by the empty deceit that saturates human tradition. We are not to adopt the basic principles of the world, instead of those of Christ. Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that comes from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. Colossians 2:8

• Spiritual Life The personal, physical presence of Christ in the world was first revealed at His birth.
• He, Who was from God (proceeded from God or be sent by God) shows the necessity and nature of spiritual birth: that which is born of the flesh is flesh..

• Many believers have gone only as far as justification can take them - spiritual birth, and a bit beyond.
• hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3).

• The point is that the Lord was making for spiritual increase, but an obstacle encountered was this unpreparedness to leave room for the sovereignty of the Spirit.

• A Living Fountain He Who cried out, I thirst, is still, ever willing to satisfy the spiritual thirst of all who will come to Him.

• If we are not living near the Lord Jesus and are not where we should be, we neither have an appetite for spiritual things, nor can we feed upon Him who is the living Bread.

• Spiritual growth is from stage to stage.
• There are great days, days of decisive battles, days of crisis in spiritual history, days of triumph in Christian service, days of the right hand of the Father upon us.
• Yes, for any experience which makes us more aware of our need of the Father must contribute to spiritual progress, unless we deny the Lord who bought us. -W.G.S.

• Spiritual Peace His peace is a spiritual peace – and one that is intended to be enjoyed now. His peace is a peace that is given for us in this age of turmoil and uncertainty.

• Most prophets of the Lord have been through times of spiritual drought, when the Lord withheld His presence or stilled His voice.
• Spiritual Parable I once heard a beautiful story of three women in prayer..

• Spiritual Inheritance How little we really know of these great spiritual truths and of eternity with Him. How impossible to conceive or understand the inheritance that awaits His own.

• Conditions that He uses for our spiritual improvement!!

• His Soon Appearing Christ is offering rewards to the man or woman that will overcome in this world, and the 1 warning this spiritual church is given is that of their potential loss is to hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown.

• There is no sin in such everyday tasks and necessary activities, but they can be weights, distractions, and stumbling blocks in our spiritual life.
• Discouraging Distractions We live a life of busyness and chores and things to do and activities to be completed. We live in an anxious and instant society, with it’s ‘must have it now,’ mentality, and sometimes we lose sight of the fact that our spiritual development takes a lifetime – God is in no hurry to pander to our desires for instant answers.

• Spiritual Fruit Faith is the spiritual fruit of patient endurance: as seeing Him who is invisible.

• Spiritual Growth Spiritual growth is simply growing in the Christian faith.
• But there is no ‘standing-still’ in spiritual growth.

• You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ.1 Peter 2:5
• Spiritual House As a child of God (because we believed), we were made part of His household.
• The foundation of God’s new spiritual house are the prophets and apostles, and Christ Himself is the divine Cornerstone Who purposed to build His church.
• Christ is the divine Cornerstone – Who is building us into His own, spiritual house.
• Day by day, God is constructing His temple of living stones, into a holy habitation: you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:5

• When we act independently of God, our disobedience affects our Christian life, and disobedience affects fellowship with the Father and halts our spiritual growth.

• Spiritual Temperature A man’s character is displayed in his words and in his attitudes.
• A man’s spiritual temperature is not displayed in public prayers or preaching, but at the supermarket checkout, the restaurant table, behind a steering wheel!
• Christian Living A man’s profound, solitary spiritual life is between himself and God alone, but life’s superficial activities may replace a Christ-centred life with a self-centred one, Am I willing to permit God to dominate both my profound and shallow activity? Am I prepared to allow Him to influence both spiritual and superficial things?
• Spiritual Life It was once written… No one ever becomes spiritual without being fanatical for a season.

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies … IN CHRIST.Ephesians 1:3
• Hebrews 5:8-10  We are all living stones, being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:5  We have been made a kingdom of priests to the glory and power of God His Father, forever and ever!

• Grace is founded on the sovereignty of God and shows forth His unconditional love. Grace is God’s over-abounding provision, not only in the physical but in the spiritual. Grace not only restores what was lost in Eden but adds to it an unknown expanse.

• We have the Spirit of fullness, making all our life spiritual:- don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless actions, but be filled by the Spirit.

• We have seen Christ as the true spiritual fulfillment of Jacob's ladder, which was set up on the earth, and the top of which reached into heaven.

• The very principle of spiritual growth and maturity demands that He keep the objective and the subjective balanced; that is, that something is done in us as well as for us. -T.

• That one thought centers in His Son, Jesus Christ, and therefore the very essence of revelation, and the very heart of spiritual enlightenment is that you see Christ in all those thoughts and ways of God as they are expressed in His Word and in His activities.
• If you ask: What is revelation, what is it to have spiritual enlightenment?
• So that revelation, spiritual illumination, is to see Christ in all the Word of God; not truths, not doctrines, but Christ.... The question then, that we ever need to ask, is: In what way does this or that lead us to Christ?

• Like Noah and Daniel, Job was trusted in a spiritual battle, betwixt God and Satan..
• Why does the Spirit of Comfort admonish us and warn us to be like Job..?  Why does He counsel us to put no spiritual stumbling block in our friend’s way?  So that, like Job, our ministering service will not be blamed.

• all The riches of spiritual knowledge and enlightenment – all are stored up and lie hidden… IN HIM.

• It is possible to wear yourself right out, and kill yourself in a spiritual quest, and the Lord at last says to our hearts: If you only know Me, things will happen; it will all come to pass without any of your strain, struggle and agony.

• Personal, inward, spiritual intelligence is a very rare thing.
• Waves of error; the swing of the pendulum to some fresh popular acceptance; a great war with its horrors and many-sided tests of faith; all these have swept away multitudes and left them in spiritual ruin.

• Time of Tribulation Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul never experienced physical childbirth..  but painted a beautiful picture in the spiritual realm from its physical counterpart.

• Spiritual Development Does this affect the eternal security of the true believer?  No!
• But ignoring a vital truth can affect an individual’s spiritual development.

• He feels instinctively that the law is spiritual, but that he himself, for some unexplained reason, is fleshly, carnal, and in bondage to sin.

• So that we render a service which, instead of being old and formal, is new and spiritual (Rom. 7:6b, Wey.).

• What Stephen saw, and what is stated, intimated, and implicit in the New Testament (a monumental document on the matter is the Letter to the Hebrews), was that Solomon was at most but a figure of a greater Son, and his temple, with all its glory, wealth, and beauty, was only a pointer onward to A house not made with hands; what Peter after a difficult and painful transition called, God's spiritual house.
• Stephen concludes with a comprehensive gathering of all this history into the Prophets, and virtually says that the spirit of prophecy was related to this ever-future, onward, and ultimate spiritual goal of God.
• On the one side, it is a mighty exposure and denunciation of the incorrigible habit and disposition of God's people to bring what is essentially heavenly down to earth and fasten it there; to make of the spiritual something temporal; to make of the eternal something which will not and cannot abide; to make form, means, orders, and technique all-important.
• On the other side, all this is a revelation of how fierce and terrible will be the opposition of such systems to a purely and definitely spiritual testimony.

• Spiritual Armour We have further been commanded to buckle on every piece of our spiritual armour, for the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, diligently searching out anyone he can devour..
• faithful and diligent to keep on and on praying for all God’s people and His many ministers, for prayer is a most powerful weapon to demolish spiritual strongholds.
• Spiritual Maturity God also desires that we are faithful and diligent in our prayer-life for He knows that prayer is a beautiful channel of heavenly grace and spiritual maturity that is poured out in abundance upon those that sit at His feet, listen to His voice and trust in His word.
• A prayerful man or woman will develop that spiritual boldness to plead for the lost; protect the vulnerable; petition God’s grace on behalf of all his children and to plead, Thy will not mine be done.
• Spiritual Example There is no better example of a spiritual Man of prayer than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
• Spiritual Choice We are the children of God and we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, and one of the most precious gifts that we have received is the privilege of prayer.

• They exchanged a spiritual life for a carnal walk.

• When it comes to spiritual growth and walk, any help from ourselves is a hindrance to us.
• Believers are seated in the heavenlies in Christ, and are spiritual people with a sanctuary in Heaven.

• What a caution for each of us to take note of our spiritual journey with Him.

• When one begins to realize the complexity of simple spiritual growth, he learns to keep his hands off, and his faith on.
• Even where in the new convert there is great singleness of heart and faith, with true love and devotion to the Saviour, time is needed for a deeper knowledge of the old man and sin, for a spiritual insight into what the Father's will and grace are. -A.M.
• The spiritual man never stops growing, because he is always reaching upward to that still higher height that is just beyond. -R.P.

• The entire history of the Lord's people, and of the spiritual life, is one of light and darkness, of truth and falsehood, of purity and adulteration or mixture, of clearness and cloudiness, of openness and secretiveness.... Truth may be in word, in doctrine, but there has to be a corresponding truth in heart, truth in life.

• Looking to JESUS, the Author and Finisher of our faith…” Hebrews 12: 2 Safe Journey Any mariner knows that a fraction of a degree off-course and he misses his port. He may be 99% correct but that 1° is crucial to his safe arrival at his destination. If he sets his course towards a movable marker his journey will end in disaster. If he anchors his vessel to drifting wood, he will meander across a sea of confusion. If this is physical reality – how much more must this be true in the spiritual realm?
• It is a book that councils the Christian to maintain their trust in God and look to Jesus – and it gives four interrelated and progressive steps towards spiritual maturity.
• 4 Progressive Steps FIRST:- We are to strip aside every part of life that hinders our growth in our Christian life,  for a surfeit of earthly things, whether good or evil, will hinder our spiritual walk.
• SECOND:- We are to renounce the besetting sin of unbelief, which has caused so many to stumble..  for what God requires of us all is that we have faith Him and trust His Word – for without faith in Him we are unable to grow in our spiritual life.
• Life Journey The wise mariner takes every precaution to steer a straight course towards his port. He must be 100% correct in his navigation if he is to arrive safely at his destination. He must not plot his course on a movable marker not anchor his ship to shifting sands, and believers in the spiritual realm must be equally vigilant in our own life journey.
• Spiritual Growth We need to willingly strip away everything that hinders our own spiritual growth.

• This deep conviction of truth is an astonishment, and yet it lies at the foundation of a strong and spiritual life. Thus my impotence becomes my strength in Him, and my nothingness becomes my highest blessing..

• Oh, God only knows how much of spiritual increase and building is needed!

• Anxiety reduces spiritual energy.

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3).

• at the expense of securing His promise in their hearts – instead of His anticipated arrival – and our wise spiritual preparation. 'Hope deferred makes the heart sick…..' we read in Proverbs 13:12.

•  Growing In Grace - STUDY Spiritual Communion The Apostle John delights to remind us that as children of God, who have entered into eternal union with Christ Jesus, we also have the right to enjoy intimate fellowship with the Father on a daily basis.

• Spiritual Journey How could Philip have been with the Lord so long and yet not KNOW Him? How was this possible?
• What a caution of us to take note of our spiritual journey with Jesus.

• He begins by showing His desire for your spiritual advancement, and not by advancing you in earthly position.

• If you come to feel, through ever-recurring misery and defeat, that unless Another shall lead you into the land of fruitful obedience your whole Christian career will be a spiritual and moral chaos, then perhaps you are ready to venture your all upon your union with the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection.

• A Fruit of the Spirit Where spiritual fruit is lacking in us..
• Meekness of soul will be the outworking of such spiritual fruit.

• for ye died and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:2, 3) The spiritual recession that occurs after the early joys of the new birth is not necessarily backsliding at all.
• Nothing can be more distasteful to a spiritual mind than to hear people professedly giving a Christian testimony which begins and ends with themselves.

• For in Christian experience the spiritual things of God are less and less outward, that is, of gift, and more and more inward, of life.

• through the spiritual conflicts that encircle us every hour..

• Spiritual Fruit This is the man that brings for the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit; Love in times of Hostility; Joy in times of Pain; Peace in times of Trouble; Long-suffering in times of Frustration; Gentleness in times of Oppression; Goodness in times of Evil; Faith in times of Testing; Meekness in times of Irritations; Temperance in times of Temptation.

• You see, it is so possible to swing over your natural ambitions to spiritual aims.
• It may not seem here on earth to mean very big things; wide open doors and all that, but somehow you may take it that there is Life there, spiritual influence there, something that is counting there.

• often building a perception of God based upon his culture and upbringing. But the heart of man has been deeply flawed by our sin-heritage, for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked Jer.17:9 We all unconsciously conceive God in our own imagery and thought. This is not only true of the natural man, who is dead in trespasses and sins – this is also true of each of us who are blood-bought sons of God. This is equally true of the spiritual believer as it is of the carnal Christian.
• Knowledge of God I believe, we would like Job, abhor ourselves and repent in dust and ashes, crying: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee..” (with spiritual understanding)  and we’d discover that our hearts had been ‘reprogrammed’ to know Him ..  to know Him as He is…. and be able to say….

• We grow into sons through spiritual maturity.  These are those with whom God will share His plans and purposes.
• Spiritual Maturity Suffering is not a question of sin, for Christ was made perfect through suffering. Christ, the innocent, sinless man was made perfect through suffering.
• Spiritual maturity and suffering appear to be opposite sides of the same coin. Spiritual maturity and suffering are often the badge of the intercessor, and the intercessor needs to be one that is spiritually maturing.

• as perfect in God’s sight as His only begotten Son. The saved saint similarly has ‘need’, without which spiritual growth will fail. He is accepted in the Beloved fully and perfectly, for time and through eternity..

• The Spiritual Sphere How often we see the physical conflicts of Israel translate into our spiritual battles.
• Like Nehemiah, Christians should be building our own spiritual wall of protection.
• In the physical realm Nehemiah built-up Jerusalem’s broken walls with stones.  In the spiritual sphere, Christians should build a rampart with our intercessions.
• Spiritual Weapons Nehemiah’s literal wall-building mirrors our own fortification of “All-Prayer”.
• Israel’s literal weapons of warfare parallel our own spiritual weapons of Ephesians 6.
• Nehemiah was distressed by the shocking state of disrepair of God’s beloved city and we should be pained by disunity in the Church in these increasingly dark days. Nehemiah built a material wall to safeguard the city – chosen and beloved of God, and we should build a spiritual wall of protection – around Christ’s beloved bride. The physical weapons of Israel were metal swords and spears and helmets. The spiritual armour for the Church is Christ – all we need is found in Him.
• Spiritual Battle The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, for we are in a spiritual battle.
• The spiritual weapons for the Church are against satanic, heavenly principalities.
• For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers - against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

• He was equally heartbroken over the poor spiritual condition of the people of God.

• If we are seeking to go on with God to any degree beyond that which is commonly accepted as a true Christian life; if we are called to pioneer the way for any further advance in spiritual life or Divine service; if we are given a vision of God's will and purpose not seen by the general mass of God's people or even the larger number of the servants of God ours will be a lonely way.

• Insufficient Law The Law may be perfect and man may desire to obey the perfect Law of God, but it is insufficient to save a guilty sinner – and we discover it to be a ministration of death – for it tells us God’s standard for man, but then shows us that we can only fail. The Law may be good and spiritual and the born-again life in Christ may desire to keep God’s commandments – but the old sin nature is carnal and in bondage to sin. This is why Paul failed when he tried to keep the Law in the strength of his old fallen nature, which caused him to cry out:- Oh wretched man that I am!

• We now have a new life in Christ and we are to dress ourselves in the spiritual man.

• The Body is meant to manifest the Head, and that necessitates spiritual members.

• that belongs to spiritual maturity (Heb. 6:1, Amp.).
• The birth truths of Romans 1:5 are not meant for our spiritual growth.
• The growth truths of Romans 6:8 are presented for our spiritual development and maturity.

• Early in the Christian life we naturally feel that it is our obligation to overcome self and become spiritual.

• Not by a stringent cutting off' of exterior things, nor by seeking a mental apprehension of death with Christ' in the conscious life, but by a simple reckoning upon His death as yours - shall you experience in the inner depths of your life, servant of God, the divine spiritual reality that Christ in you' is in truth your very life, displacing the old life of nature and continually making to die' its inclinations and habits

• We may sometimes feel inclined to be impatient with ourselves because we do not make more rapid progress, but we have to learn to trust the Lord with our spiritual matriculation.

• It is a part of our spiritual education to discover the fallibility of those in whom we trust.

• The need of the hour is not only for a higher spiritual level of ministry in general, it is for men with a specific revelation which will meet the situation as it is now.

• You and I may have an enormous amount of what we think to be spiritual knowledge; we have all the doctrines, all the truths.
• It is not seeing, beloved, in a true spiritual sense, if we are not changed.
• We must ask the Lord to save us from advancing beyond spiritual Life, advancing, I mean, with knowledge, a kind of knowledge, presuming to know.
• It is never too late to get spiritual sight, however blind we may have been, and for however long, if we really mean business with the Lord.

• As we contemplate the state of things in the world today, we are very deeply impressed and oppressed with the prevailing malady of spiritual blindness.
• Spiritual Life is not only a miracle in its inception; it is a continuous miracle in this matter right on to the last.... We do not seek for new revelation, and we do not say or suggest or hint that you may have anything extra to the Word of God, but we do claim that there is a vast amount in the Word of God that we have never seen, which we may see.

• The very fact that you are jealous for the Lord will bring you into conflict with that trend that there is in this world, in man.... When there is the purest testimony, the fullest expression of what is of God, the heavenly over against the earthly, the spiritual over against the carnal or the natural, the enemy gives a turn to things, a twist to things, and lays the responsibility at the door of a spiritual and a heavenly ministry.
• It is a costly thing to be a spiritual man or a spiritual woman in this universe.
• It is a costly thing, yes, very costly, to hold to a heavenly and spiritual position.

• On the other hand,it shows us that His being there, and our being in spiritualunion with Him, means that for all spiritual purposes andresources, we also are in the heavenlies in Christ.... Let us ask the Lord to give us a real, spiritual, quick, living apprehension of this great truth concerning our Lord Jesus, the great realm of the new creation into which we are brought, and let us apply it, practice it, put it into operation from day today.
• You may have to go into a placewhere there is not much spiritual wealth on the outside, not muchupon which to feed.
• You may have to go into scenes where there isanything but rest, spiritual rest; where all is fret, care,drive, strain.

• with every spiritual blessing – in Christ Jesus Ephesians 1:3
• Our Father Blessed be the God and Father of OUR Lord Jesus Christ Who has blessed US in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing – in Christ Jesus OUR Lord, our Lord.

• Christ in heaven is our spiritual Rest,heart rest.

• His intercessions for us are that we maintain intimate communion, sweet fellowship, and perfect harmony with our Father in heaven, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.

• What matters is not our spiritual knowledge or official ministry, but our secret relationship with God.

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies … IN CHRIST.Ephesians 1:3
• Hebrews 5:8-10  For we are all living stones, being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:5  We have been made a kingdom of priests to the glory and power of God His Father forever and ever!
• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies … IN CHRIST.

• STUDY - Character and Attributes of GOD  Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places – in ChristEphesians 1:3
• Spiritual Blessings We are blessed with all spiritual blessings. We are seated with Him – now, in heavenly places. We are chosen- before the world began, to overthrow the world.
• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places – in Christ.
• Desist from the lie of Satan that seeks to drag you into spiritual defeat.

• He said to me, My spiritual strength is sufficient, for it is only by means of conscious weakness that power is developed (2 Cor. 12:9, Wms.).

• Let us..  strip of every hindrance in our life that inhibits our spiritual growth.

• Spiritual  Discernment And it is through Christ that we have been so endowed. It is by Christ that we have been brought into God’s family. It is in Christ that we stand and in Him that we are accepted by the Father.  It is Christ and Christ alone that is the means that has brought about our eternal bliss.  All Scripture is given by God to teach, train, and encourage the whole church of God, but the wealth of knowledge within its pages are only for those that trust in Christ.  The unsaved man is incapable of trawling the depths of the wealth of Scriptures..
• Spiritual Guidance We can look back into the corridors of past history and see God’s plan unfolding.  We can peer into the pages of the future and see His purposes reaching fulfilment.  We can live in a Christ-rejecting sinful world and confidently trust our lives to Him..

• Spiritual  Discernment And it is through Christ that we have been so endowed. It is by Christ that we have been brought into God’s family. It is in Christ that we stand and in Him that we are accepted by the Father.
• Spiritual Guidance We can look back into the corridors of past history and see God’s plan unfolding.

• Spiritual Freedom Paul prayed that the church would be given spiritual wisdom and godly insight. He wanted all believers to be able to remain confident in the hope of their calling. He did not want them to be tossed hither and thither by every wind of doctrine –  but to know the truth of their union with Christ – for that truth will set us free.
• Spiritual Insight How he prayed for an increase in their knowledge and understanding of Jesus – an understanding of the incredible greatness of God’s power to us who believe.
• How he prayed for our spiritual insight – godly growth and developing discernment.
• Spiritual Understanding Paul not only prayed for revelation and insight but enlightenment and illumination. Paul not only prayed that we understand our position in Christ but our future hope.
• Spiritual Inheritance Paul also prayed that we would know who are in Christ – know our position in Him..  permanent position that is as secure as the eternal Lord Jesus Who placed us there..  union with Him that guarantees our adoption as sons and our an eternal heritage – a union so intimate that we are part of His body – and He indwells our mortal frame.
• Spiritual Communion A position so precious that we are bonded so closely to Him as a bride with her groom – a position so staggering that we’re afforded the right to enter heavens holy of holies..

• Spiritual Revelation How we love Paul’s prayer for God’s revelation to the church – in Ephesians chapter one. He prays that we understand our favoured position in Christ – and His fullness in us.
• Spiritual Application He desires that we not only know them but also spiritually apply them to our lives.
• Spiritual Strength Sometimes we misunderstand the reason that Paul prays for our spiritual strength. Often we pray for strength so that we may be successful in our work or ministry. Sometimes we pray for special strength in one particular aspect of our physical lives, but Paul prays for strength for us so that we may be rightly related to the Lord Jesus – for when we are rightly related to Him, everything falls into place.
• Spiritual Fullness It is so that Christ may dwell deeply in our hearts through faith. It is that we may be rooted and grounded in the extensive love of Christ. It is so that we may be able to comprehend the vast dimensions of God’s love.

• Seeing one's identification in the Lord Jesus' death, burial, resurrection and ascension is the necessary foundation for spiritual growth to maturity.
• How often do we find believers plunged into the very depths of distress and darkness as to their spiritual condition and prospects!

• Conviction and Confession Do you know why this is so important…in spiritual warfare and intercession?

• Privileged People What privileged people we truly are, that we should be called God’s children. He has showered His love over us and bestowed on us every spiritual blessing.
• What grace, that we should be picked up from the dirt and seated in heavenly places, and together all believers are being built-up into a spiritual Temple.
• Spiritual Temple What a privileged group of people we are – that we should be called God’s children. What showers of love has been bestowed on us, for we are united forever with Christ. What grace..
• that we should be picked up from the dirt and seated in heavenly places – and together we are being built-up into a spiritual Temple – the people of God.

• I believe we need a new understanding of the spiritual pilgrimage of the Lord Jesus.
• We do not understand this mystery, but He had a spiritual pilgrimage, with far deeper testings and tryings than ever you or I need, have, or will have.

• It can very seriously affect his fellowship, his worship, his testimony, his usefulness, his spiritual enjoyment, the glory of the Lord Jesus as involved in his practical career.

• Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3b).

• Fellowship with the written Word is the foundation, and fellowship with the living Word is the superstructure, for spiritual growth.

• One of the true tests of one's spiritual growth is in one's influence: affecting others that they not only begin the Christian life but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).
• We may be separated and yet not Christ-like; we may be orthodox and yet not spiritual; we may be dead unto sin' and yet not alive unto God.' We may have cut ourselves loose from every form of worldliness but in so doing we have become critical and self-righteous.
• We may be made the means of conversion, but we will never help people on to a higher standard of spiritual life, and when we pass away a great deal of our work will pass away too. -A.M.

• Without a bitter realisation of their own inadequacy and poverty they are quite unfitted to bear the burdens of spiritual ministry.

• It is sad to see the Lord's people, even many who pass for spiritual, who have very little concern about the Lord Jesus Himself.

• To share what we have may minister temporarily to the physical; but to minister to the spiritual in an eternal way we must share what we are, and that calls for growth in the Lord Jesus Christ.
• Information, by itself, however correct and orthodox, however strongly held in conviction and passed on in passion, will lack an essential and indispensable quality or value for spiritual constitution.
• So the Lord has to take much time to make our spiritual history.

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Ephesians 1:3
• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Ephesians 1:3

• One of the greatest needs in the Church today is for authoritative, spiritual, and sacrificial leadership.
• Spiritual, because a leadership which is carnal and explainable in terms of the natural, be it ever so competent, can result in sterility and spiritual bankruptcy.
• The standard and measure of spiritual leaders has to be ahead of others, and as human nature generally likes not to be disturbed, but would seek the easy way, the pioneer is often a bit too much for people.

• The Reformation took away one set of bindings, but bound the believers with another - and this has atrophied the spiritual life of multitudes. -D.G.B.

• This is a spiritual position that has a greater reality than the world in which we live.
• A new believer is a work-in-progress who needs to grow into spiritual maturity.

• But the course of spiritual experience, of spiritual life, is to discover, to appropriate, and to grow in all that the life represents and means. -T.

• Lifelong Onslaught The battle in which Christian’s are engaged is a lifelong – 24/7 onslaught. The strategies and wiles of the enemy seek to unnerve and unseat the believer, but our spiritual amour, combined with one final weapon, is a winning combination.

• Spiritual Armoury Praying aright causes the breath of man’s soul to touch the Father-heart of God.
• Prayer is also a vital and potent weapon in our complete spiritual armoury.

• in our continuing and unceasing prayers: we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

• All-Prayer Now think about it… where do we read in scripture of All-Prayer? Well, Paul instructs the church that All-Prayer is a vital weapon in spiritual warfare: for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 2 Corinthians 10:4
• Paul makes us aware that all aspects of our weaponry are encompassed in one Person. Every piece of spiritual armour is fixed and founded on Christ Jesus our Lord.

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3, ASV).
• If you can run over in your mind and find one single blessing with which God might bless us today, with which He has not already blessed us, then what He told Paul is not true at all, because He said, God hath....' It is all done, It is finished.' God hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies!
• and it is all done; He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenlies.

• For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
• Spiritual War For 6000 years Satan’s battle of the ages against the saints of God has been raging, but far more serious consequences rest on this war – against the God of universes.
• This is a conflict that is raging in the spiritual realm – in heavenly places.
• Areas of Hostility There is not one area of life where spiritual fighting does not permeate. Hostilities rage in the home; the street; the workplace; the shop and the church. Conflicts percolate the media; entertainment and the corridors of government.
• Word of God We must adhere to the strategies in God’s “field manual” on spiritual warfare. We need to abide by the instructions from the Captain of the Lord of Hosts.
• Raging Battle-plan Few Christians are aware of this raging battle in which they are engaged. Not many believers know how to repel the enemy’s unrelenting assault – and biblical strategies of spiritual conflict go unheeded or are simply ignored.
• But in the spiritual realm, believers often neglect one important area...
• Spiritual Strategies What King David or Israel did in the physical..
• we are to do in the spiritual. The military strategies in days of old, give us a clue to God’s battle-plan for today.
• Spiritual Stronghold We are to destroy every stronghold and tear down the enemy’s fortress. We are to apply God’s instructions even if they conflict with human logic. We are to buckle on every piece of armour that is outlined in Ephesians 6. We are to adopt a spiritual, heavenly war-strategy and not a physical, worldly one.
• Spiritual Armour The battle of France and battle of Britain were fought in the physical realm, but the battle of the ages has not only begun but is being heated 7-times hotter, and two great pieces of spiritual armoury are intercession and spiritual warfare – intercession combined with spiritual warfare against the fierce roaring lion.
• Spiritual Understanding How urgent to take note of these things in these days prior to our Lord’s return; that we know Him more intimately and more fully than ever before; that we understand the wiles and strategies of the evil destroyer – that we know ourselves and confess of our failings and disobedience.
• Scriptural Principles That we recognise our position of victory and apply the word of God;  that we only adopt scriptural principles of spiritual warfare; that we put on the full armour of God described in Ephesians 6 – for each piece of armoury points to Christ.

• If spiritual thirst is the language of your heart, there is great blessing in store for you.
• Hence the long, dreary, and painful years of self-occupation' through which most believers drag their slow steps of spiritual progress. -C.A.C.

• She received the same privileges as spiritual giants like Peter, Paul, John and James, for along with every born-again child of God, there is no partiality or favouritism with Him – we are all one in Christ, and yet we all have to mature in the faith.
• Believer’s Journey Rebirth into the family of God is the first step on the journey of a lifetime that requires us to grow in grace and spiritual maturity.
• Though there is no partiality in our positional status and union with Christ, we are responsible for our spiritual growth, for we can submit to, or resist the Holy Spirit’s leading, guiding, correcting and chastening work.
• Rightly Divided True scriptural interpretation is not a consensus or opinion, a feeling, or imagining, but unless rightly divided will contribute to stunted growth, spiritual immaturity or regression back to babyhood.
• There are no ‘holidays’ in spiritual growth.
• maturing or slipping back into spiritual immaturity.

• Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual (1 Cor. 2:13).

• Anything that makes us unnaturally big is evil, whether it be the individual life, or whether it be what is called the work of God, trying to make it bigger than its real spiritual measure, inflating it beyond its genuine spiritual degree; that is something evil, that is leaven....

• Remember, the battles and bruises of Israel were in the terrestrial, (the earthly realm) but the battles and bruises of the Christian are in the spiritual plain, (the heavenly realm).
• We are told, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal and earthly, but mighty through God to the pulling down of spiritual strongholds. 2 Corinthians 10:4
• The Sword of Scripture will demolish the spiritual accusations of the Evil One.
• Spiritual Purity Purity of heart and meekness of spirit runs counter to human pride.

• There are three vital factors that will keep us on the path, and in the power, of spiritual growth: (1) study to know that God's purpose in saving us is to conform us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:28, 29); (2) learn to reckon upon the finished work of the Cross as His provision for that purpose (Rom. 6:11); (3) yield to the Holy Spirit as He carries out the daily process of that purpose (2 Cor. 4:11).

• He provides us with every spiritual blessing and renews our youth like the eagle.
• Saved by Grace Even when we were dead in trespasses and sins God quickened us; He made us alive; He gave us spiritual life together with Christ, and raised us up to heavenly places and gave us every spiritual blessing.

• A sense of spiritual poverty is necessary to spiritual growth.

• the freedom which the Gospel brings may be used to take things easy, and, more or less, retain or gain in the world; but where this is the case, it is seldom a soul possesses any large measure of spiritual enjoyment, and it is never accompanied by solid peace.

• Spiritual Race So now in this spiritual race..

• There may be sublime language and glowing ideas, chiefly borrowed from the Old Testament; but in substance they are utterly beneath spiritual or even intelligent Christian use. -W.K.

• The beginning of spiritual growth is faith in that fact.

• He gave us spiritual discernment.

• Yes, this is a spiritual deposit, that is often left unopened and unaccessed..
• Spiritual Joy These promises are for you too, beloved, for God is no respecter of persons/ But remember that spiritual joy accumulates no interest, in the spiritual deposit box..
• while spiritual joy multiplies and increases. Spiritual joy multiplies and increases as it is exercised and utilised. Spiritual joy enlarges and expands as spiritual joy is shared with another. For the one that rejoices in the Lord has a joy that sings in the field of battle. The one that delights in God has a joyful rest through the dark hours of the night. Oh yes indeed – troubles will surely come, oft-times thick and fast and furious, but these need not rob the Christian of his joy.

• The key to this is spiritual; tested by every other line, every other means, it is a spiritual matter ultimately.

• There is no use in forcing any spiritual issue in our lives, nor in anyone else's.

• The death of our Lord on the Cross has depths of meaning that can only be plumbed by way of discovered need, but then reveals unsearchable riches.' To the believer who still has hopes of attaining' in the Christian life, a verse such as Romans 6:11 is a rather meaningless jargon used by those who give messages on the deepening of the spiritual life.'

• The believer will not be ready to enter into his spiritual rest until he is utterly worn out by his unsuccessful efforts to conquer sin and the old man.

• God cannot work whilst we are anxious, even about our spiritual advance.

• Hard as it is for the believer to finally come to rest concerning his spiritual birth, it seems to be even more difficult for him to simply rest in the Lord Jesus for his life and service.

• Death, spiritual death (not cessation of being) of which the physical is only one small aspect is Satan's horizon.
• Having said that, let us proceed to note that the next thing revealed in the New Testament is that this supreme truth in Jesus Christ is the birthright of every one born into God's spiritual family; the heritage of every truly born-again child of God.

• Its strength does not mean effectiveness in spiritual things, whether that strength be intellectual, moral, social or physical.

• If you and I, dear friends, are going to make anything like the progress that Paul made as a young convert and as a growing Christian, and if we are going to have anything of the weight that he has had in spiritual impress and impact, and if we are going to count in any degree as he counted in the work of the Lord; one thing is absolutely essential and do get hold of this.

• Death may touch things here, but the spiritual Family is no more separated in the spiritual reality and in the eternal oneness of the Father house, than they would be if they were still here.

• a submissive mind – wherein lowliness of heart we esteem the other better..  a spiritual mind – where we look away from earthly things to things above..
• Spiritual Peace His is a spiritual peace and a joy that is intended to be received now. His is a peace of mind that can be received even in this world of trial and pain.
• Spiritual Mind We think that we have to sort out our own problems and the problems of others.
• a submissive mind – regardless of the way that people behave towards us.. a spiritual mind – where we set our hearts on the right-thinking..

• And the law of life and liberty and the new creation becomes an unveiled mystery.  Christ’s body becomes bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh – a spiritual body.

• Vital Lesson Adam surrendered his earthy dominion to Satan, a spiritual entity – a rebellious angel. From the fall, Satan..
• Satanic Kingdom Daniel gives insight into the way that this satanic, spiritual kingdom functions. Know the enemy’s strategies and his ways and you have the means to resist him – and Paul’s epistles outline the weapons and battle plan for a believer today: for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
• How important to understand the spiritual sphere and physical realm.
• Israel - Chosen Nation The first man, Adam, surrendered his earthy dominion to Satan’s spiritual forces.
• John 16:33 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution in this world. 2 Timothy 3:12 Satan has blinded the hearts of those that are perishing and lost in their sins, but the venom of Satan’s spiritual realm is specifically targeting two creations – Israel – the old creation in Jacob; and the Church – the New Creation in Christ.
• Spiritual Battle Oh yes..
• We must rightly divide the gospel of truth and rightly divide the creations of God, but we must also rightly understand the spiritual battle currently raging.
• How important to rightly divide the spiritual sphere and earthly realms.

• To truly minister to others is always to accept new happiness and new distress, both of them forever deepening and entering into closer and more inseparable union with each other, the more profound and spiritual the ministry becomes.

• Often this is called growing in grace, maturing in our spiritual life – discipleship. Christian discipleship is misunderstood today but is closely linked to sanctification.
• God may use an unbeliever to forward His sovereign plans and purposes, as He did with Pharaoh – but they can never be conformed into the image of the Lord Jesus. They can never gain spiritual understanding and maturity for that is the unique right and privilege of the body of Christ.
• Spiritual Maturity Spiritual understanding is spiritually discerned.
• It is a beautiful, free gift of grace, which is extended to all who trust on Christ Jesus. It is only the believer in Christ that can be sanctified and set apart unto the Lord – BUT not all Christians are prepared to progress along the path to spiritual maturity – not all Christians grow in grace, and many simply remain in spiritual infancy all their lives. Only believers can be set apart to God – but not all will identify with the cross of Christ. Only believers can grow in grace – but not all will take up their cross and follow Him. Only believers can become TRUE disciples of Jesus – but not all believers will become disciples.
• Often this is called growing in grace – maturing in our spiritual life – discipleship. Let us be those that come after Christ and love not the things of this world. Let us be those who carry our own cross and come after Him. Let us be those that forsake all that we have – to become His disciple..

• To make Jesus your Lord is part of spiritual growth but must never be added to the simple gospel of salvation, which is a free gift of God – to all who believe on Jesus.
• Some people add works of the flesh, works of the Law – self-imposed rules or Church regulations and a variety of ‘add-ons’ to the basic gospel of salvation by grace – through faith in Christ Jesus, while others insist on actions relating to eating or drinking – places of worship or times and seasons – spiritual fruit or gifts of the Holy Spirit.

• Immersed in Christ So how do you achieve the spiritual command to remain in Christ and He in you?

• His main focus is to rob the spiritual believer of his or her true fighting power, He is not bothered by the strength of Christian ‘talking’ or Christian ‘working’.
• Christ’s Cross And he trembles at the power of the victory of the Christ of Calvary, on His Cross. This is the area of spiritual work most feared by the principalities and power of evil. This is what the world’s dark rulers and wicked spirits in the heavenlies dread most.
• Satan’s Goal His final downfall is prerecorded but his present activity is viciously cruel. The god of this world system has one main objective, one goal, one aim – it is to prevent the Lord Christ Jesus, the anointed of God return as King of kings. His main focus is to rob the spiritual believer of his or her true fighting power.

• At this critical time in our spiritual walk, when the Lord is at the very door. We would do well examine ourselves as never before. We need to see if secret sins have crept deep into our hearts. SEARCH ME OH GOD.

• They could only consider Christ’s claim from a human perspective and failed to comprehend the wonderful spiritual truth and astonishing fact that the eternal Son of God, in Whom dwelt all the riches of the Godhead bodily, was standing in their very midst.

• Spiritual Pride ‘Self’ must remain forever cross-bound if the new nature in Christ is to grow and mature, for spiritual pride is only 'Self,' pretending to be the “new man” in Christ.
• Spiritual pride is the illusion that you are competent to run your own life.
• Spiritual pride is only 'Self attempting to achieve your own sense of Self-worth.
• Spiritual pride finds a purpose big enough to give you meaning in life without God.
• Spiritual pride sets God aside and places 'Self' on the throne of your life.
• Spiritual pride is an idol in your life and the idol you worship is your own Self.
• Spiritual or Carnal Placing 'Self' on the throne of our lives is not a new concept – it was born in Eden.

• that is a principle for both spiritual birth and spiritual growth.

• It is spiritual, not technical, not organized, and you may be as much a priest of the Lord in going round to some home tomorrow where the enemy is pressing in, and giving a practical hand in helping with the washing, as you may be a priest in standing on the platform....

• Physical, mental, and spiritual suffering are all involved to some degree in our matriculation.

• Free-will Choice All sanctification and spiritual growth in our lives is by God’s grace alone, and all we have to do is to submit to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But not all believers are being sanctified in a practical, progressive manner – for being “set apart unto God,” is a free-will choice – a decision of the will, we all have to make.

• Some erroneously think that being sealed is an emotional feeling, some physical event or spiritual 'experience', without which they remain second class Christians and which is often 'experienced' through unscriptural, self-induced, auto-suggestion.
• But this is a man-made deception, and spiritual abuse, which places believers under bondage.

• We cannot become spiritual all at once; we must be content to begin as babes.
• Spiritual maturity and strength do not come by effort but by growth; and growth is the result of being nourished by proper food.

• All of us are going to have sorrow, and none of us should miss its spiritual benefits.

• It is well to remember that the deepest and truest spiritual qualities are not learnt or established in us by our happy or enjoyable times, but in the difficult ones!
• There is nothing wrong in times of great joy and spiritual blessing; in fact we long for more of them, and look back perhaps to some days of much blessing in our lives or in the work of the Lord; but in the securing of Christ in greater measure in our lives, we find that it is by the things which we suffer that we learn most.

• I believe we have very little idea how natural feelings may be mixed up with what we think is our spiritual joy.

• He desires that you go on into spiritual maturity and not that you retreat, for His soul has no pleasure in the believer that draws back.
• Spiritual Eyes He desires that your faith does not get phased by the circumstances of life.
• He wills that you look with spiritual eyes beyond the boundaries of this world.
• God will bring you to the point of extreme desperation and utter hopelessness, where in dust and ashes you reach the point of spiritual poverty.

• When it comes to spiritual growth, sooner or later the thought arises, Surely the work of the Cross produced more than this!
• With this growth comes the greater fullness of the Lord Jesus and the abundant spiritual wealth unto which we were saved.

• This goes to the root of the everpresent weakness and poverty of spiritual life.
• There is much prayer for revival,' and much effort for the deepening of the spiritual life.' The only answer to this is a new knowing of the Cross, not only as to sins and a life of victory over them, but as to Christ as supplanting the natural man. -T.

• It must come bythe revelation of Christ in our hearts, in the inward parts.This is something spiritual.
• Only what is spiritual, what isof God, is truth - only that!

• Spiritual power is not the miraculous or the spectacular, but rather the consistent manifestation of the characteristics of the Lord Jesus in the believer's life.

• If a believer surrenders or lays aside anything without an adequate divine motive, he will either secretly hanker after it, and probably long to return to it, or he will take credit to himself for having given it up, and will thus reveal self-righteousness and spiritual pride.
• A certain school of religious teachers make much of surrender' as the way to attain blessing, but it ends in self-sufficiency, because the only motive that is presented for it is the acquisition of a better spiritual state, or power for service, or something of that kind.
• A divine motive and attraction is needed if souls are to be drawn into the race and prepared to surrender in a truly spiritual way, and this divine motive and attraction is our risen Lord in Glory. -C.A.C.

• The Spiritual Walk Our Christian walk is similarly not meant to be a life of defeat, but spiritual growth, (though of-times painful and fraught with difficulty) and He gives us spiritual food through the Word of God..
• and He provides spiritual air as we commune with Him in the dew of the morning – and as we take spiritual exercise by obediently submitting to His leading.
• Communion  Through Prayer This blessed communication through prayer is the vital breath of life. Just as the body must breathe in and out, so the soul of the Christian must pray: men ought always to pray and not to faint, is a key to spiritual well-being, for He is our Source and our Sustainer.

• The very principle of spiritual growth and maturity demands that He keeps the objective and the subjective balanced; that is, that something is done in us as well as for us.
• Here are two sides in spiritual experience.

• Any abiding spiritual progress must be based upon our taking sides with God against the old life.

• Spiritual discernment, perception, understanding and intelligence are all too rare.
• Perhaps we have forgotten that the Bible is not only a revelation, but also contains a revelation, and that that deeper spiritual content is only possible of recognition and realization by such as have had their eyes and ears opened; in other words who have been awakened.

• All are of the soul.... Spiritual death marks that realm, and while there may be intense emotions which make for resolves, high thoughts and desires, there is no genuine change in the nature of those concerned, and repeated doses of this must be taken to maintain any measure of soul-self-satisfaction which makes them feel good.
• It is the confusing of religion with what the Bible means by being spiritual.
• Asceticism is no more truly spiritual than aestheticism.
• Simplicity may give God a chance, but it is not necessarily spiritual.
• There are multitudes of such Christians in the world today, but their spiritual effectiveness is nil.

• The members of the new heavenly Israel are people who have been delivered from self-interest into God's interest, who have been put on their spiritual feet by Jesus Christ and are walking in strength in the way of the Lord.

• You have been shut up and you came to know the Lord inwardly and you have come to a state of spiritual efficiency which is so much greater that you can now meet the external situation.

• The spiritual and the heavenly is pressing for a larger place and becoming absolutely imperative to the very life of the instrumentality and those concerned.
• This demands spiritual mindedness, capacity for grasping heavenlythings.
• If we really had His vision, that which looks like trimming and reduction is His way of enlargement, but spiritual and heavenly enlargement.... God in sovereignty will run the risk of shattering, or allow the shattering, of so much that He has used of scaffolding or framework in order to realize the fuller purpose.

• You are never going to find spiritual enlargement just as an isolated, separate individual, but in relation with other believers.
• God setteth the solitary in families (Ps. 68:6), and there is no doubt about it, whether or not you understand or accept the doctrine of it, you can prove very quickly in experience that our spiritual enlargement does come by way of true spiritual and heavenly relatedness with other believers.
• There are the rub and friction and all the cross currents that try to divide Christians but which do not try to divide other people, because there is so much bound up with true spiritual oneness amongst the Lord's people so much for the Lord, and so much against Satan.
• Satan is going to break up that spiritual oneness if he can.
• When these difficulties arise we must say, It is evidently necessary for me to get a new spiritual position, to get on top of this.
• If I am not going to give it up and leave, I must come to some spiritual enlargement; I have to know the Lord in a new way, to have more grace, love and patience.
• That is spiritual enlargement, and it comes by relatedness. (Of course, that is only one way; there are many others by which spiritual enlargement comes by relatedness.)
• If only we can keep together in prayer, there is spiritual enlargement.

• A Study:- Man’s Nature and Destiny Spiritual Maturity The need for maturity in the body of Christ is the focus of most of Paul’s messages. It is the mature Christian who is an overcomer; a faithful steward – a wise virgin.
• Our Spiritual Need There is a threefold need in the life of a spiritual man.
• Our Spiritual Exercise All believers require food to grow..
• And time and circumstances affect their spiritual walk.
• and Paul warned and instructed of the need for maturity in the Christian life. Obedience is the most important exercise in the Christian life: obedience to His Word; listening to His Voice – compliance His Commands. And instruction on spiritual maturity in the body of Christ, is the focus of most of Paul’s messages to the Church of God. Paul tells us that: he that is spiritual judges all things..
• Christian Obedience Paul warns us to sift through our attitudes and search our motives – so examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. These instructions are not to the unbelievers, but to Christians. This examination does not mean check out to see if you are born again – this is an instruction to see if you are on the road to spiritual maturity.
• Spiritual introspection is one of the most vital tools in applying obedience.
• Christian Spirituality And nearly a hundred years ago, Norman Harrison put it this way:- “It remains for the spiritual man to prove the reality and worth of his spirituality, by laying hold of all his resources in Christ.. by giving them practical expression in day-by-day living. And in a day when the Christian life claims but slight attention.. or even respect, from the world – what a call for spiritual stalwarts, fully-developed, determined by His grace, to demonstrate the beauty, power, and practicality of the Spirit-life – to an unbelieving, even scoffing social order.”

• A Study:- Man’s Nature and Destiny Desire God’s Word Just as newborn babes require milk from the breast, so too spiritual babes must be fed. Paul instructs us: as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the Word, that you may grow. 1Pet.2:2. A new-born believer will grow by reading and delighting in the Word of God, and faith in that young believer with grow – for faith comes by hearing God’s Word.
• Psalm 19:10. Oh, but how Paul laments the arrested, stunted growth of the carnal Corinthian Christians. He couldn’t speak to them as spiritual, but carnal.
• ot ‘meat’, for spiritual growth must be desired – we are told to desire the milk so that you will grow.
• Obey God’s Word It was the Lord Jesus Himself Who set this president for desiring spiritual food. He tells us: My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work.
• demonstrating the only way that man can live a spiritual life.
• Walk by God’s Word Spiritual growth comes only by abiding in Him and He in us. This type of life is not easy..
• a carnal nonspiritual life or a spiritual life in the Spirit – and throughout the Word of God, we are told exactly how to live: Man shall live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
• Failure to feed on the Word of Life means a stunted unnatural spiritual growth for failure to feed on the Word of life means carnality and not spirituality – and the Corinthian Christians exemplified carnality.
• A Christian life that does not take on board spiritual growth, lives in the flesh.
• It means a dying to self..daily, for there is only one spiritual walk – and that is not by self,  but in Christ.

• How it comes does not matter very much, the fact is the importance of this thing spiritual illumination.

• A Study:- Man’s Nature and Destiny But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
• What is Spiritual Is there any more important lesson for the Christian to learn than to be spiritual?
• Spiritual believers say: Thy will be done not mine..
• Well Scripture tells us: but he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
• So what does it mean: he who is spiritual judges all things?
• Putting Off and On The context is putting off the carnal man and putting on the spiritual man, and the result is that the mind of Christ is being developed in you.
• In the context of becoming an overcomer..becoming a spiritual man… He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches.
• If there were ever a time for the believer to seek to be a spiritual man – it is now.
• Character of God May we be one with the writer to the Hebrews, who writes; but we are not of them (carnal believers) we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul, (spiritual believers) Heb.10:39.
• Though we are perfect in spirit and loved with an everlasting love forever, we will also be judged for the way we lived – whether carnal or spiritual – works of the flesh or works of the Spirit – but the choice is yours, alone.

• But the apostle remonstrated with them: But we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), so urging them to allow the Cross to be planted between the natural mind and the spiritual.
• This is the way of spiritual progress.
• This is most important if we are concerned about spiritual progress.
• And spiritual progress is the increase of Christ there is no other.

• That you may be filled with a clear knowledge of His will accompanied by thorough wisdom and discernment in spiritual things (Col. 1:9, Wey.).
• This is a serious loss to the soul and many are thereby hindered from making spiritual progress.

• No pressure, pushing, punishment or rewards can speed “reading readiness” So often principles in the natural world, spill over into the life of the spiritual.
• Unless a child of God is “ready to grow” he’ll never reach “spiritual maturity.”
• Even one that’s started to make spiritual progress can regress back to babyhood.
• the completeness and perfection that belong to spiritual maturity. Let us not again be laying the foundation of repentance and abandonment of dead works (dead formalism) and of the faith [by which you turned] to God, Let us not repeat the teachings about purifying, the laying on of hands, the resurrection from the dead, and eternal judgment and punishment. [These are all matters of which you should have been fully aware long, long ago.]  Hebrews 6:1-2
• Spiritual Growth You see this passage (like most of Hebrews) is about spiritual maturity.
• or passages on spiritual maturity will get confused with passages on getting saved.
• Stunted Growth Growing in the faith and maturing spiritually has a number of associated terms, Sanctification - Salvation of the soul - spiritual maturity - growing in the faith - growing in grace.
• Spiritual and Carnal A spiritual Christian is the one that is growing in the faith – maturing. A carnal Christian is the one that is not growing in the faith – not maturing. A carnal Christian can also be called a fleshly believer... born again but not growing – born again, but not growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.
• A carnal Christian is one that is exhorted in Hebrews 6 – to grow spiritually, and many principles in the natural world spill over into the life of the spiritual.
• Growing in Grace Unless a child of God is “ready to grow” – he’ll never reach “spiritual maturity.” Growing in grace – maturing in Christ, is sometimes called “consecration”.
• Spiritual Immaturity Many churches of the 20 century gave very limited teaching about Christian growth, and the result is a church that substitutes man’s teachings before the Word of God.  The result is that many believers remain spiritually immature and do not grow.

• The Body of Christ The body of Christ is being fitted together perfectly and being built up by Him. Each part has its own special work to do, so that the whole body is fit and healthy. Each one is to help the other grow and mature and be built up together full of love. Each is Christ’s representative who needs to be spiritually renewed to express His love – a spiritual renewal of our thought, our heart our attitudes, and our mind, for we are told be renewed in the spirit of your mind in Ephesians 4:23
• There must be a spiritual renewal in our thoughts and our attitudes.
• Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, and teaching, and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
• Filled with the Spirit We are to be filled and day by day go on being filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always, for all things.

• The issue of spiritual sight is the recognition of the Lord Jesus, and it is going to be that all the way through from start to finish. /p>

• There is a faculty of spiritual sight, of spiritual hearing, of spiritual smelling or sensing, of spiritual taste and spiritual touch, and these senses are very important to the life of the inward man yes, more important even than the senses of the physical man.
• To be without spiritual sight is a tragic loss and a terrible limitation; or without spiritual hearing, that capacity for answering to the Spirit he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith: if there is no capacity for hearing, that is a desperate situation.
• I know how wrongly that has been used, in an everlasting attempt to scent heresy and fault and wrong, but there is a right faculty of spiritual scent which is very important.
• This is a very real inward man, and these are the senses which form the basis of spiritual capacity: these are the things to be exercised, to be put through it for increase and development.

• It is probably true that the more spiritual we are, the more sensitive we become to what we are by nature and to what others are by nature.
• If we become spiritually sensitive the flesh is sensed very much more quickly; what is not spiritual registers itself upon spiritual sensitiveness.

• Spiritual Eye But as aged Simeon gazed at the face of that eight-day-old baby boy...  as he held the precious, helpless, newborn babe, bundled in simple wraps, his physical eye was eclipsed by his spiritual eye of understanding.
• Spiritual Sight And Simeon “SAW”  the Consolation of Israel.
• But like Job who heard by the ear, and yet finally saw with spiritual understanding… we also cry, I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see You. Job 42:5 ...now my spiritual eyes understand.
• But we too must “SEE” the salvation of God – through the spiritual eye of faith, and we must “KNOW” the promise of His Word, with the understanding of the heart.

• It is no small thing to have true spiritual sight.
• You are right up against the full force of the god of this age when you are really out for spiritual understanding.
• God is seeking to broaden our spiritual horizon, and the enemy is out against that, and he is not going to have it if he can help it.

• All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. (Ephesians 1:3 NLT)

• Inner Purification Should we not ache for the body’s restoration, spiritual purity, and faithfulness, when we see so many wandering from the Lord Who loves them – when we see ourselves so often out of fellowship or living complacently.

• Let us go on and get past the elementary stage in the teachings and doctrine of Christ, advancing steadily toward the completeness and perfection that belong to spiritual maturity. (Hebrews 6:1 AMP)
• Well, of course, for us it is a going on in a spiritual way.
• We are in a new dispensation, and this is a spiritual dispensation.
• It is true of Israel in the wilderness, although it was an earthly thing with them, the same thing is true with us in a spiritual way.

• It is an everlasting ticket into the presence of God in the power of the Spirit – the first step on a lifetime journey of spiritual growth.
• Spiritual growth is either a forward or a backwards growth, but there is no standing still.

• Don’t let anyone capture you or rob you of the truth, with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that comes from human thinking and from spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. Colossians 2:8
• Deceptive Teaching He also warns of an increase of false teachers and an inflow of demonic doctrines. Paul does not want believers to be deceived by false teachings or spiritual powers – for God has given us the truth in his epistles and desires that we remain firm in the faith.
• Undermining Faith This mindset of the world is rooted in the traditions of man and human viewpoint, and such a perspective robs the believer of all that it means to be IN CHRIST. We must be alert to the many ways that the enemy seeks to undermine our faith.. not allowing ourselves to be swept into the ungodly philosophies of this world – and not permitting false teachings or spiritual powers to rob us of our joy in the Lord.
• We must have confidence in the heavenly position to which we have been elevated. We must understand the eternal plan and purpose that God has for each of His own. We must rejoice in our spiritual blessings and glorious identity in Christ Jesus. We must renounce all the lies that the enemy uses to undermine our faith in God.
• BUT… BUT... don’t let anyone capture you – or rob you of the truth, with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.

• Spiritual Progress The believer is exhorted to lay aside all that makes us anxious or bothered, for Scripture indicates that the faithful servant must lay aside every weight. Cast all your weights – all your burdens upon Me.
• We all need to lay aside everything that hinders our spiritual progress.

• He subjugated His entire being to the will of the Father… completely – total temporal subjection, utter spiritual and sensual subordination: “I do nothing of myself, but as my Father has taught me I speak these things.” John 8:28.
• – or are we entangled in the tentacled web of spiritual insubordination?
• Spiritual Struggle Sometimes we struggle throughout our entire Christian life to utter the words… Thy will – not mine be done…” Luke 22:42 Thy will be done, in every sphere of my sovereign being.

• A healthy spiritual birth results in the falling away of many of the more obvious works of the flesh, often causing the new believer to claim 2 Corinthians 5:17 or Galatians 2:20 as his testimony.

• God’s Grace Like each and every gift of grace, His strength is ministered to each of us according to our need. We have no need of a bank deposit of $upply, No spiritual battery from which to draw our spiritual £trength. His supply is a continuous flow, received by faith as need requires. Life is divided into days – and day after day after day, He provides and supplies the strength. Down through the weeks which flow into months and years, He continues to provide ‘Strength for the day and bright hope for the morrow!’

• We know of our inexhaustible spiritual supply– yet often we run spiritually dry.

• All such “All-Prayer” as outlined in Ephesians 6 – is part of our spiritual weaponry.

• and touches all temporal as well as spiritual things.

• We do not want to always live up on the top flat, so heavenly, so spiritual, so abstract, so high up in truth that the practical things of the kitchen are left unattended to.
• You say, here is something wrong here, this does not tally.There is the kitchen aspect of the spiritual life: all those practical, everyday, humdrum things where the beauty of the Lord must be seen, just as much as up there in the heavenlies in Christ.

• a little faithful flock. Many are called to be sons of obedience but few choose to answer the call. Many Christians prefer a legalistic life to a life of spiritual faithfulness and grace. Many believers prefer a carnal life to a life of surrendered obedience and faith.

• Why must Christians who have the knowledge of the Scriptures in the letter, run about here and there to seek advice from others on matters which vitally affect their own spiritual knowledge?

• Indeed, a life governed by the Holy Spirit will be the more meticulously careful about spiritual principles.

• The Church is languishing for want of a voice of spiritual authority, for want of that prophetic note Thus saith the Lord!

• Spiritual Health Normal physical growth implies normal physical health, and normal spiritual growth implies normal spiritual health.
• The apostle John informs us in that fellowship with God is the healthy Christian life, while Peter reminds us that God’s Word is the food we need for healthy spiritual growth – and God desires that we mature in the faith.
• We are to put off all sin, which hinders spiritual growth, and remain in fellowship with the Lord, by keeping a short reign on our sins – i.e.
• It displays a frustration with believers who regress in their spiritual growth.
• Hebrews 5 warns us against spiritual sluggishness and backsliding in our Christian life.
• Listen and Apply How sad to consider the consequences of regressing from spiritual maturity to spiritual immaturity.

• Such false assumptions about God, can only lead to spiritual bigotry and religiosity. If like Job’s friends we believe that God sends evil on the good and bad alike as – we are still on a shaky foundation, for God’s name is charged with evil.
• Spiritual or Carnal The book of Job takes us on a journey – from the New Creation in Christ, through a spirit-dominated or self-dominated life. The book of Job takes us – from rebirth to the day when our eyes are opened, and we shall see Him as He is. The book of Job takes us….
• It exemplifies Job’s days, years, and probably decades of a spiritual walk with God and it also exemplifies his friends' days, years, and probably decades of fleshly religiosity.
• days, years, and probably decades of a spiritual walk with God – and it exemplifies in his friends' lives years and probably decades of fleshly religiosity.
• Job and His friends represent the spiritual man and the carnal man.

• Spiritual Lessons Remember... His way is the best way for His way is the way of the cross.

• All sorts of people all over the place are having the same kind of experience a terrific sense of pressure, upset, annoyance, anything to frustrate it is happening all round, testifying that in the spiritual realm, in the realm of the Spirit, there is a fine, sensitive oneness which matters to the Lord, and therefore matters to the enemy.

• Spiritual Principles Every spiritual principle of growth, God has set out in His Word.

• The passion of the Cross is the way of our release, and if you consider your own spiritual experience, those of you who have any experience of a walk with God, you know quite well that it has been through times of deep and acute suffering that you have found fresh releases; fresh releases in your spiritual life.
• Yes, we pass into a time of excruciating spiritual and soul suffering.

• A Study:- Man’s Nature and Destiny Spiritual Discernment The natural man has no spiritual discernment, which is given by God’s Spirit.
• The spiritual man does have spiritual discernment.
• The spiritual man walks in spirit and in truth – he has the mind of Christ.
• But what of the carnal believer – born again but not spiritual?
• What of the Christian whose spiritual growth is stunted due to carnality?
• Carnal Christians Paul says this to the carnal Corinthian Christians: “and I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ.
• Once the natural man is born from above, he should live as a spiritual man.
• A babe in Christ must grow into spiritual maturity.
• Fleshly Life One evidence of carnality is stunted spiritual growth..

• What is spiritual growth?
• What is spiritual maturity?
• Many think that spiritual maturity is a more comprehensive knowledge of Christian doctrine, a larger grasp of scriptural truth, a wider expanse of the knowledge of the things of God; and many such features are recorded as marks of growth, development, and spiritual maturity.
• The hallmark of true spiritual development and maturity is this: that we have grown so much less and the Lord Jesus has grown so much more.
• Real spiritual growth is just this: I decrease, He increases.
• You can test spiritual growth by that.

• It is the spontaneous outworking of spiritual forces released, in the acceptance by faith of tremendous facts concerning Christ; which facts are proclaimed out of experience in the power of the Holy Ghost.

• Be filled, or go on being filled with the Holy Spirit, as we read in Ephesians 5:8.  But even this is a choice for the believer.  Paul tells the Colossians the great desire of his heart toward all the believers. Paul longs that all believers are filled to overflowing, be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.
• Some believers consciously, and deliberately, walk away from the spiritual path.
• Carnal Way Some believers unconsciously and unknowingly do not take the spiritual way. Their dear desire IS to walk in the spirit, in light and truth, and to abide in Christ,  but there is a blockage that has barred their way – a resister, blocking their path,  and most if not all great men and women of faith have faced this exact difficulty.
• Spiritual Way Yes, we are commanded to abide in Christ..

• What the nerve system is in the physical realm, the Holy Spirit is in the spiritual.

• Spiritual death hovers over it.
• His battle is with the whole spiritual system into which Israel is entangled.

• People seem to think that spiritual work and ordinary work, household work for example, are two different things.
• They talk about the spiritual work and the other work.
• For the most part their work is of some regular, daily kind, and very often they feel utterly unable for it, and they are tempted to think that if they had some spiritual ministry to fulfill, if they had to go and take a meeting, or speak to some souls about spiritual matters, they could make a claim upon the Lord for help and He would carry them through.
• Now, exactly the same resources have to come into the ordinary work as into what we call spiritual work.
• It has all to be done on a spiritual basis, and therefore to be a testimony.
• Let us be careful how we draw a line, lest we make a distinction between the spiritual and he rest./p>

• What does God require of us - so that He can produce in us real spiritual fruitfulness?

• There are plenty of people whom you could get interested in a cause; whom you could get to take up a piece of work requiring help, but it is another thing to have that spiritual fellowship with God which results in God putting His travail into your own soul.

• We proudly seek to rely on self-effort for spiritual growth and soul-sanctification.

• This is spiritual understanding, the mind of the Spirit.

• I am your Father – I will not overwhelm your spiritual strength, I will come to you – walking on the stormy waters of life’s confusion, as you paddle on your helpless raft, 'mid oceans tempestuous turbulence. I am your Saviour – I will uphold you with My righteous right hand, lest you sink beneath the squally waves of life’s uncertainties. Look,  One comes to hold you up.  One, like as unto the Son of Man. Oh, wait child of God.

• The one new man is a corporate, spiritual entity, who are entrusted with Christ’s work. Jesus said of those that make up this one new man, “and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father” John 14:12
• Guiding Principle God often uses the natural life as a guiding principle for the spiritual life, He takes foundational truths from the physical and applies them to the spiritual,. The first creation in Adam contains principles that apply to the new-creation in Christ. The first man became a living being but Christ became a life-giving Spirit. 1Corinthians 15:45
• Guiding Principle The natural life is always a guiding principle for the spiritual life. The physical often forms a foundational truth that relates to the spiritual.
• Spiritual Entity The Church is the worldwide body of believers in Christ and He is the Head.
• The one new man is a corporate, spiritual entity who are entrusted with Christ’s work.  Jesus said of those that make up this one new man, and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father” John 14:12

• There is vitality given to the spiritual life even in prayer that tires us physically, and we go in the strength of it.
• We feed upon the Lord, and He becomes our Life when we recognize the Divine order of spiritual fellowship.
• And wherever spiritual fellowship is possible, you and I ought to seek it, look after it, and cherish it.
• There are all too many of the Lord's children today, who have no chance of spiritual fellowship, and who would give anything to have it.

• Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3 NIV)
• Any fresh contemplationof our Lord in this way should ravish our hearts: Christ, thefullness of spiritual blessing now, the Sphere of ourexperience, our exploring, our enjoyment, our satisfaction.
• Spiritual geography is understood by those who walkup and down in Him and enjoy His fullness.
• Here is aneed, a spiritual need.

• They seem totally incapable of getting a spiritual conception.

• He is to provide spiritual food and nourishment to those entrusted into his care:- “Feed my lambs…” John 21:15 He is to feed the little flock, given into His charge with the whole council of God:- “Feed my sheep…” John 21:16.

• All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.
• That which has been chosen before the foundation of the world and which has been foreordained unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, has been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.

• I am always coming up against problems about Him, and they are not intellectual problems at all, but spiritual ones: problems of the heart.

• If really we have come to any kind of spiritual appreciation of the greatness of the thing the Lord has done for us in the Cross brought us into His own fullness and subdued all our enemies we cannot be a mean people, we cannot be small and petty, we must be generous because of the greatness of our position in Christ.
• There has to be a very great deal of overlooking, a great deal of generosity, grace has got to triumph by reason of the exalted spiritual place: the elevation of our position in the heavenlies.

• Spiritual Eyes When God conquers us and takes all the flint out of our nature... when we get deep visions into the Spirit of Jesus, then we see, as never before. We see the great rarity of gentleness of spirit in this dark and un-heavenly world. The graces of the Spirit do not settle themselves down upon us by chance.

• Spiritual Food He was despised and accused by the very people he was sent to help.
• He gave them spiritual food and heavenly water, yet they murmured against him.

• Death in Scripture Death in scripture means separation – and spiritual death means separation from God. When we die physically our physical body is separated from our soul and our spirit. When our body ceases to function we are separated from all the people on earth. When our body dies we are separated from all the loved ones that we leave behind.
• Spiritual Death Paul knew that physical death meant separation – for he told the Corinthians: to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord.
• He also knew that spiritual death which is caused by sin, means separation from God: They are excluded from the life of God because of ignorance and hardness of heart. Men are separated from God and life, because of pride and the blindness of their heart. He who has the Son has life.
• He was separated from God. His body lived and breathed for many centuries, but spiritual death had occurred. Indeed, if this state of spiritual death continues to the point of physical death..  man is separated from God forever, in the lake of fire – a sombre thought indeed.
• But every man, from Adam on, can choose spiritual life rather than spiritual death.

• When these cannot stand up to conditions of intense spiritual antagonism, opposition or perplexity, there is that more inward thing, right in the inward man, which is of God the Holy Spirit: i>Strengthened with might by His Spirit into the inward man./p>

• What a tremendous thing this breaking in of Light upon us is, how it lifts us out, how it fills us with glory, how it changes the outlook when there breaks in spiritual Light, Light which never was on land or sea, Light from above.

• Why the loneliness in spiritual life?

• See, to the natural, the spiritual is unreal.
• To the natural man, the man of soul, what is essentially and intrinsically spiritual is unreal.
• Their reaction is h, let us be practical, let us come down to earth, let us get out of the clouds and get our feet solidly on the terra firma, let us get down to things that are more real.That is the reaction of the natural man to the spiritual.
• But to the spiritual man, spiritual things are far more real than the tangible.

• However spiritual we may think we are, the fact remains that we are tremendously influenced by temporal standards.

• What is the spiritual life in the matter of worship?
• Now note that when there is a failure to recognize the spiritual meaning of all this and to enter into it... and a maintaining of the old thing... you are still on a soul level, and you are open to deception; the whole thing may be a ghastly deception.
• It is their traditional system which is simply barring the way to spiritual revelation, whereas the Cross of the Lord Jesus represents the liberty in the spirit for God to lead into the fullness of His Life and Light.
• The price to be paid for what is truly spiritual and heavenly was... and is... great, and they were dangerously in peril of going back to the old thing.

• The spiritual people of God are more and more feeling separated from the old system of Christianity and churches and ecclesiastical systems.
• People are recognizing a deep dissatisfaction with what has held the ground so long, and there is a cry for spiritual reality.
• There is all the activity, but it is not spiritual Life, and I believe the Lord is going to show us the nature of the thing that is in the heavens.
• The church is essentially a spiritual thing according to the mind of God.

• To the ecclesiastically great scribe, He said, “follow Me, but you will have nowhere to lay your head”. (John 8:20). To the financially rich and great ruler, He said: “your riches hinder your spiritual growth – give them away to the poor”. (Luke 12:33). To the socially great pharisee, Simon He said: “you love only a little, because you only seek Me a little”. (Luke 7:47).

• A Study:- Man’s Nature and Destiny The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, but he who is spiritual judges all things, but I speak to you as carnal. 1 Cor.2:14-3:1
• In four short verses Paul outlines the truth of these three men:- 1) the Natural Man ……..unsaved 2) the Spiritual Man…….saved 3) the Carnal Man……….saved.
• Spiritual & Carnal The spiritual man is a believer in the Lord Jesus..(a new creation in Christ) but he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
• But we have the mind of Christ. 1Cor.2:13. But so also the carnal man is a believer in the Lord Jesus: and I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 1Cor.3:1
• New Creation Both spiritual and carnal have been born from above and are accepted in the Beloved.
• Both spiritual and carnal have been transferred into the kingdom of light.
• Both spiritual and carnal have been born into the new creation in Christ.
• Both spiritual and carnal are baptised by the Spirit of God into Christ.
• Both spiritual and carnal are designated children of God.
• Both spiritual and carnal are in-dwelt permanently by the Spirit of God.
• Both spiritual and carnal are coheirs with Christ Jesus.
• No Condemnation And for both spiritual and carnal there is now no condemnation: for He who believes in Him is not condemned.
• but we see two categories of Christians. It is to carnal Christians today that Paul’s correcting monologue is addressed:  And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. (read thru the whole of  1 Corinthians 2 and 3 for Paul’s condemnatory comments). I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there is envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere (natural) men?
• Spiritual Judging As we wait in daily anticipation for the Lord’s any moment return, as we see the world spiral out of control towards the coming judgment..
• How important to take heed to the scorching words of Paul. That we do not remain in or revert back to babyhood, but launch out into the deep: now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
• But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, but he who is spiritual judges all things.
• But I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual..

• We can only know Christ after the Spirit, so that Christ for us in this dispensation is spiritual in the sense that all that we know of Him or can have to do with Him can only be in the Spirit.
• Our resources are spiritual.
• The weapons of our warfare are spiritual.
• And yet by that very means and for that very reason, the most potent force that this universe knows: the spiritual, hidden, secret people of God in this earth.
• To take hold of Christianity and mold it, and shape it, and systematize it, and crystallize it, and make it some mighty movement here; with its roots here, with all its associations such as man can see, appreciate and approve; to register itself upon the ordinary consciousness of this world as being something; all of that is contrary to the Word of God and is contrary to spiritual life and spiritual power.

• The thing that God is doing in this dispensation is the formation of a spiritual and heavenly Israel.
• In doing that He is repeating the laws of the old Israel in a spiritual way.
• He has moved from the temporal to the spiritual, and the spiritual is far greater than the temporal...

• Spiritual increase is not by knowing all these things, the way of growth is not by faith's power externally manifested, but more by inward endurance.
• The measure of our spiritual life is no greater than our heart; the knowledge that is in the head is not the measure of spirituality, the way for your release, emancipation, increase, abundance is the way of the heart.

• It’s suitable for all occasions no matter what the time – and for all persons whether bond or free. God’s unutterable gift of His Son multiplies into a plethora of additional gifts, which explode into an astonishing display of God’s amazing grace and unconditional love. Spiritual death is removed and the new life of Christ is breathed into our dead spirit – we were dead in our sins, but made alive in Christ.
• Our spiritual blindness has gone and God’s wrath is removed for there is now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus – for we are accepted in the Beloved. We were once spiritually alienated from God and without hope in the world, but all enmity with God is washed away and we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Thanks be to God for His indefinable gift!
• God’s Unspeakable Gift God’s unspeakable gift transferred us from spiritual darkness to spiritual light – for the imputed sin of Adam and the many sins we commit are removed far away. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us – for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him.
• We are the temple of God with the permanently indwelling Spirit of God as God’s deposit of grace. We were foreknown of God and chosen by Him – sealed and adopted forever, Amen. We were showered with the riches of eternal life – endowed with God’s spiritual gifts. We were baptised into Christ – made peace with God and given the peace of God. He started a good work in us and prepared good works for us to do in His strength – and then in His grace rewards us for the work He carried out in our lives – what grace. Thanks be to God for His unimaginable gift!

• You and I, dear friends, individually, and if we belong to a company of the Lord's people, that company, will only make progress toward that full, ultimate end of God in Christ if we have a spiritual vision of Jesus Christ.
• It is something that has happened inside of you, and your inner spiritual eyes have been opened.

• I may be going through a very great deal of suffering without you knowing anything about it so far as the natural life is concerned, you are not affected by it, but beloved, there is a realm where if one member spiritually suffers the whole Body is involved in that suffering, which shows this Body is a heavenly thing and its relationships are not natural, they are spiritual, and that the unifying factor of the Holy Spirit operates apart from the natural consciousness.... You see what is involved, you see what a motive we have in our relationships for keeping them on a high level.
• If there comes between those in these relationships, these strains, these cross-purposes, these cross-currents, this being offended and upset, this breach of true love, our attitude must be, not just that this is a miserable unhappy thing, and the sooner we make it up the better; our attitude must be, this thing out in the realm of spiritual intelligences is working against the glory of Christ, this is working against Him as the Head because all these relationships are joined so vitally to the Head; this is working against the Holy Spirit as the unifying power of the whole Body, this is doing damage, and therefore, inasmuch as we are so minutely related to all the members by the Holy Spirit, what one does must somehow, all beyond our realization or consciousness, touch Christ, touch the Holy Spirit, and therefore, all other members.

• I praise You that I have already full victory in this matter” Remember... His teaching principle is based on an essential truth – the ‘SOURCE’ rule:- everything after its own kind – – flesh after flesh – – spiritual after spiritual.
• Spiritual Weapons The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they are not of the flesh – they are spiritual weapons designed for a spiritual battle. The weapons of our warfare are not weapons of the flesh – but weapons of the spirit – but they are mighty through God to the pulling down of spiritual strong holds. 2 Corinthians 10:4
• Obedience of Christ The enemy we fight are the spiritual principalities and powers in high places, and we are instructed to “cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.
• Our Weapons And Remember:- The enemy we fight are the spiritual principalities and powers in high places. Satan may be dressed in the garb of a neighbour or a government official.
• So many of our spiritual weapons are defensive, when we are clothed with Christ, but we must also grasp the great weapon of attack – the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.
• Spiritual Swords David and his mighty warriors slew the enemy with the edge of a metal sword.
• David fought in the physical to show us how to fight in the spiritual.

• In the long run He does get spiritual maturity among His people, where they know Him.

• We are to be His candle-holders for we are His spiritual light-bearers.

• Was there not a spiritual interpretation?

• Dear friends, if any truth has the effect of turning you in upon yourself, making you introspective, self-occupied in a spiritual way, that truth has been wrongly apprehended.
• You may assume the position of the most spiritual, but you are all wrong in your apprehension.
• Some people seem to think that to become more spiritual we must become more intense and tied-up and occupied with this whole matter of the spiritual life, and really they are the most unbearable people, the joy has gone out of them.
• There is something wrong if a Christian is miserable on spiritual matters, and it is either failure to apprehend the one great, absolute reality that the victory was God and that He won it in Christ, fully and finally, and we are not called to share at all in that battle; or the truth which has come subsequently has been misapprehended and has become something that is a burden grievous to be borne.

• It is a spiritual thing, the impact of Christ; not tradition, not history, not theology, but the spiritual power of His presence in terms of Life through faith and righteousness.

• We have to put back all our schemes, and all our plans, and all our arrangements, and all our programs for the Lord, and in the secret place with the Lord get into the value of true, living, spiritual union with Him, that the purpose may not commence with us in our thought, in our desire, in our will but may begin with God and find a registration in us from God.
• He would have us see with spiritual perception what He is doing, and do it, and in like manner; for God is as particular about His method as He is about His purpose.

• Spiritual Mind In Galatians, we see the fruit of the Spirit flowing from the mind of Christ..

• You have to live your life and do your work in a sphere of spiritual death where everything is against spiritual Life, and there is nothing to support you at all, and yet you go on there in the Lord, and are not swallowed up, engulfed and destroyed by that atmosphere and by those conditions.
• Yours, then, is a life as is the life of everyone set in the presence of the great stone of death, spiritual death.
• Well, I appeal to those of you who have any spiritual life and history at all.
• If the Lord has not given that back to you, have you not come into some spiritual wealth, some spiritual good, something more in a spiritual way that makes you say, 'Well, it was worth it!'?

• That to which the Lord really does commit Himself wholly is the spiritual side of things, not the temporal side of things, even in relation to His work.

• John 17:7 God may indeed conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search it out – not through dreams, visions, and experiences of man – but via God’s Word: through searching the scriptures daily; through comparing scripture with scripture – through the illumination of the Holy Spirit - The Holy Spirit teaches: comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 1Corinthians 2:13
• God reveals that faith and spiritual fruit is perfected through sufferings… but He also reveals that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

• He is a different species so to speak from the spiritual man.
• True, spiritual forces can and do register themselves upon psychical apparatus, but the psychical apparatus does not know them (hence the delusion and deception of spiritism), and this is true to the absolute in the matter of the things of God.
• Not only the delusion of spiritism has its ground in the psychical as a registering apparatus, but the entire counterfeit of the truly spiritual or divinely spiritual is in this realm.

• Wisdom of Man We live in a world where God is despised and yet man seeks after spiritual wisdom!
• The unsaved man today, whether Jew or Greek lacks spiritual understanding.
• The one dead in trespasses and sins has no capacity to know the things of God: for the wisdom of God is from God and can only come from spiritual discernment, and yet …out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, God has ordained praise.
• Spiritual Discernment Sin in its raw state has robbed the natural man of a vital sphere of knowledge – a sphere of knowledge that is the most important of all: the spiritual sphere.
• The natural, unsaved man is excluded by birth from spiritual understanding.
• You must be saved to be endowed with spiritual understanding and discernment.
• It is only the new creation in Christ who is able to apprehend spiritual things, for true wisdom is spiritually discerned, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit – given at rebirth..
• Spiritual discernment is only given to those that are born of the Spirit..
• Acts 17:11 – and remember the context in which spiritual wisdom is given to the believer.
• Spiritual understanding comes in the wrappings of tested faith and many trials!
• Spiritual Understand Do you see that – 1) spiritual understanding is connected with patient endurance of trials, but if any of you lacks wisdom, (spiritual understanding), let him ask of God, Who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him, (but not necessarily immediately). Do you see that?
• – 2) spiritual understanding is connected with steadfast faith in the Word of God – but let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
• – 3) spiritual understanding can only be given to believers, but not all believers gain spiritual discernment and Godly wisdom.
• The Spiritual Christian?
• – well, he is the believer who is spiritual, and he judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one..

• So the Lord has to take much time to make spiritual history.

• Many phases are passed through, all in the permissive will of God, or in His directive will, inasmuch as they are intended to educate and give experience, but the course is never that of the established and settled kind, and so big changes may be called for, each of which comes by a new spiritual crisis.

• He shows how He has been at work, and how that in time there will be manifested a work of God, a work that shall have such a large percentage of spiritual value and meaning in it that you are very glad, after all, that you walked with God and not with men in the work of God.

• The Lord says that if you really have a heart, that is going to mean spiritual understanding.... There are people whose good hearts are not rebellious to the Lord.
• I have much more to say to you about spiritual understanding.
• Ask the Lord to give you spiritual understanding.

• Is that the nature of your spiritual life?
• The anointing means that, and if that is not the nature of your spiritual life, there is something wrong in your case in relation to the anointing.

• Whatever Satan says, as he does in our deep hours of spiritual experience, about the Lord having given us up, departed from us all that sort of thing; whatever he says, it is not true.

• You may be busy, you may be occupied, you may be rushing hither and thither in the Lord name, but you know that deep down there is a lack, an uncertainty, an unsettled state; your spiritual life is limited and paralyzed.

• There is a personal, individual, shall I say, private application of the Cross to every one of us, and our spiritual growth depends entirely upon the Cross doing its work in us, and our response to it personally.

• Many Christians today apply the things Christ’s taught to their own spiritual lives, yet much of what the gospels teach are teachings directed towards the nation of Israel.

• The nature of this relationship is essentially spiritual; that is, it is a union of spirit.
• God cannot realize spiritual, eternal, universal intentions on the basis of natural life.

• But this is God's way of securing for Himself a spiritual seed plot....

• Contented Captive Living in spirit and truth does not limit, but multiples spiritual effectiveness, and Paul was able to say in all situations: “I am content..” even in incarceration. I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

• Spiritual Cul-de-Sac There are no shortcuts to sanctification, which is a lifetime growth in trusting God.
• Seeking a shortcut thru spiritual experience will lead to a spiritual cul-de-sac.
• Searching for blessings in the wrong cisterns will lead to spiritual dryness.
• Spiritual Lesson Jacob was ninety-seven years old when he finally recognised this truth..
• Spiritual Maturity What Scripture clearly tells us is that spiritual maturity is not an instant state.
• Former mountain-tops or experiences of spiritual blessing may be a joyfully recall – and euphoric works of the past may be recognised as performed in the flesh,
• one are sufficient to rest upon in the spiritual journey upon which we’ve all embarked, but all will be used in the eternal plan, for a life who truly cries: Thy Will Be Done.
• Fruitful Life There are no shortcuts to spiritual growth.
• Lifelong Journey One writer puts it this way: The Husbandman’s method for true spiritual growth involves: pain as well as joy; suffering as well as happines;  failure as well as success; inactivity as well as service; death as well as life.
• There are no shortcuts to spiritual maturity, which takes a lifetime of growth in learning to trust God.

• Something had broken in and interrupted their running in the spiritual race.
• There is all the difference between the natural and the spiritual in this matter of the energy of love.

• I found a false creed, peppered with comforting platitudes, but antithetical to the Word of truth, and yet this teaching has become a more popular source of “spiritual growth” than the Word it proclaims – and it is in error.

• The fact is this, that we may advance a long way in spiritual knowledge (I mean in information, the knowledge of the truth) beyond our own real measure, and then have the shock, under terrible conditions, of discovering that all that we have accumulated through the years does not help us.

• Thus, a rich knowledge of the Scriptures, an accurate technical grasp of Christian doctrine, a doing of Christian work by all the resources of men's natural wisdom or ability, a clever manipulation and interesting presentation of Bible content and themes, may get not one whit beyond the natural life of men, and still remain within the realm of spiritual death.
• Men cannot be argued, reasoned, fascinated, interested, emotioned, willed, enthused, impassioned, into the kingdom of the heavens; they can only be born; and that is by spiritual quickening.

• The days of the Church's greatest spiritual power and impact were days when ecclesiastical forms, architecture and ritual were nil, and the Lord Himself was everything.... To get away from the lesser things we need a mighty visitation of the Spirit of God; this, and this only, will do it.
• So, on the other hand, if we seriously faced the things which the Spirit of God has again and again ruled out when He has had His way, would not the way be opened for a morepermanent high level of spiritual life, fullness, and effectiveness?

• There are those Levites whose ministry is, shall I say, more essentially spiritual; it may belong to the vessels of the sanctuary.
• Mine it may be to mainly minister in the Word of the Lord, what a lot of people would call the spiritual ministry, (I repudiate that suggestion that spiritual ministry is bound up with people who preach that is not spiritual ministry only).

• Spiritual House We are this habitation of God; this spiritual house; this temple of God, wherein His Holy Spirit dwells.

• Yes, Many can’t comprehend that sanctifying faith comes by hearing not sight – thinking that spiritual maturity comes through experiences, signs, wonders, miracles or feelings!

• God has set one singular requirement for spiritual growth, which is by grace through faith..
• God has set His instruction on dealings with spiritual attacks, which is resist the evil one.

• And if we knew it, a very large degree of our education, our spiritual education and our discipline in the Christian life under the hand of the HOLY Spirit, has to do with those things in us which are mixed up....
• If our lives are powerless it may be due to this lack somewhere, somehow, of this utterness for God, this separation unto God, of some kind of compromise somehow, somewhere, with the prince of this world who robbing us of our spiritual power and vitality on his own ground.

• What should be the true spiritual value of those that are called and chosen ones?
• Spiritual Reality But consider real spiritual realities, which require an unmixed, undivided heart..  a heart that has set its face like a flint to serve in His way and in His strength – a heart, not seeking acclaim through hot air, vivid pictures, romantic conceptions.
• Spiritual Effectiveness The cost of accountability in each life is very high. The greater the degree of spiritual effectiveness given to an individual or ministry..  the more spiritually accountable that one becomes. For to him that has been given much, much will be required Luke 12:48
• Spiritual Accountability The Lord Jesus Himself is the guide-stone of effective spiritual ministry. The Lord Jesus Himself shows the way to examine spiritual accountability: “The Son can do nothing of Himself…” John 5:19 “The Father doeth the works…” John 14:10 “The Father speaketh the words…” John 12:49 “My Father worketh until now…” John 5:17 And when Jesus sent his disciples out to preach the gospel, He told them:-.

• Man’s soul is born in the image and likeness of sinful Adam’s old-sin nature, and for the believer, there is a choice – either a spiritual walk or carnal concerns.

• Flesh and Spiritual Remember..
• His teaching principle is based on an essential truth: the ‘source’ rule – that is everything after its own kind; flesh after flesh – spiritual after spiritual.
• They are spiritual weapons designed for a spiritual battle.
• The weapons are are not of the flesh, but mighty through God to the pulling down of spiritual strongholds. 2Cor.10:4  The enemy we fight are the spiritual principalities and powers in high places, and we are instructed to cast down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.
• Weapon of Attack Remember, the enemy we fight are the spiritual principalities and powers in high places.
• He may speak through the voice of a friend or act through a relative, but most of our spiritual weapons are defensive – and we are clothed with Christ.
• David fought in the physical to show us how to fight in the spiritual.

• Spiritual growth is the Holy Spirit engraving the Lord Jesus on a man's heart, putting Him into his thoughts, his words, and his ways, just as the Law was engraved upon stones.

• It is a spiritual state.And only on that can the Lord associate Himself, ally Himself, to Zion....
• We are not come to some thing, some religious thing, some tradition, we are not come to historic Christianity if I may put it that way we are come to a spiritual situation which is calculated to startle us.
• But I am pointing this out, that this letter is written in the day of Grace; and it is a day which brings into view not some new Christian system, not the formation of a new Christian tradition, but a spiritual condition, without which everything else is as nothing.
• You have come, we have come, to the great battle of Zion; and it is a spiritual battle.

• Sanctifying faith is the tool the Spirit of life uses to develop spiritual maturity.
• Through the eye of faith we see spiritual things – we gain spiritual understanding: for things of the Spirit of God are spiritually discerned. 1Cor.2:14.
• simply by believing that: things which are seen (that is seen with the spiritual eye of faith), were not made,  (that is: are separate and distinct, and not the same as), of things which do appear. (that is: the disorder in the world, that we see around us).
• 5 Points of Faith Through the spiritual eye of faith that we see that His plan for us is perfect and ordered.
• By the spiritual eye of faith a believer is to understand that:- 1) God ordered the ages through Christ. 2) The spiritual eye of faith sees the order in God’s wider plans and purposes. 3) The eye of faith sees God’s design as separate and distinct from today’s disorder. 4)  The eye of faith looks beyond the chaos of today to the order of God’s future. 5)  The eye of faith looks with Abraham to: a city….whose builder and maker is God.

• A Study:- Man’s Nature and Destiny But he who is spiritual judges all things.1Cor.2:15
• Sift, Search, Study Note in the Greek this word is the same as that in Act chapter 17 means to sift / to search/ to study the Word of God: But he who is spiritual sifts, searches out and studies all things – all things pertaining to God for the things of this world are foolishness.
• But he who is spiritual sifts, and searches out and studies all things of God, yet he himself is rightly searched out by no one – for, who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?
• Spiritual Man The spiritual man is identified as one that has the mind of Christ Paul exhorted us: let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, and by implication this is not a past state but one to which we should strive.
• Spiritual Development The babe in Christ likewise has a new life: the new life in Christ.
• The immature Christian likewise has access to a new mind – the new-mind of Christ, but the new life and this new mind must grow and mature into Christlikeness, and there is only one way, laid out in Scripture to spiritual growth and maturity.
• The spiritual man likewise needs these same three essential elements, and without these 3 essential ingredients, growth in Christ is blocked.
• Bread of Life This precious combination is the key to unlock the only path to spiritual growth, but many neglect the Hidden Manna, the Living Bread and Water of Life.

• A Study:- Man’s Nature and Destiny He who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
• The Mind of Christ The spiritual man is the one who has the mind of Christ, and Phil 2:5 exhorts us to: let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
• Another way of putting it is you can live a spiritual life or a carnal life.
• EITHER→ permit the Holy Spirit to work in you and train you → a spiritual saint.
• Spiritual Mind Why – when each one failed?
• And a believer who has lived the most carnal life can still become spiritual.
• A spiritual mind is a matter of choice for a believer – live in spirit and in truth.

• The context here sets forth that our relationship with Christ in the new creation is purely a spiritual thing, and therefore our relationships with one another as being in Christ are spiritual relationships.
• The whole new creation is a spiritual matter, because it is Christ.
• Christ fills this whole realm; Christ dominates this whole realm in a spiritual way; from this realm of the new creation everything which is not Christ is excluded: all things are out from God.

• hatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever.What God does is done in a spiritual way; it is spiritual, it is heavenly, it is eternal.

• For those who, like the New Testament writers, have a real burden and sense of responsibility for the spiritual life of God's people, one of the most heart-breaking things is the way in which so many who gave promise of going right on with the Lord are caught in some side-track and turn to something other or less than He meant for them.
• Not necessarily to sin or to the world, but to something which, while it brings them a great deal of gratification for a time, eventually proves to be a diversion resulting in arrested spiritual growth, and they are found in a backwater, a cul-de-sac, occupied with an alternative to the whole counsel of God.
• The most spiritual will be presented with what appears to be most spiritual.

• We have learned this, yet, much as we know about the truth, we are still so much governed by our own natural life, even in our spiritual activities.

• Every day will provide some opportunity for you to learn spiritual ascendancy; some occasion for you to bring in the value of your relationship with the Lord; to put to the test the resources which you have in Christ; to grow in grace; to know victories.

• Increasing Urgency This should also be a time when we examine our own relationship with Jesus. We can scarcely exhort others to be spiritual ready if we are ill-prepared ourselves. We can hardly encourage others towards preparedness if we have become careless. We cannot draw alongside others aright, unless we are in fellowship with the Lord – and the urgency increases as we see the day of His return approaching.

• In other words, that which is of supreme importance is not Christian doctrine, mentally appraised and apprehended, but a living and clear spiritual apprehension of Christ.
• Are you, through a living, clear, inward, experimental relationship with the Lord Jesus, building a structure which comes out of that inward spiritual knowledge?
• The heart of the whole matter is the difference between the philosophy of Christianity, of Christian doctrine and the spiritual knowledge of Christ.

• This is a day for travail: whether it be a travail for the unsaved or for the Lord's people; every true spiritual activity is born out of travail, and those who have been most used of God in every time have been men and women who had this travail in their soul, in their secret life with God.

• Before we were saved, worldly objects and affairs usurped the place of Christ; but after being saved, spiritual objects and affairs now tend to occupy His place.
• Earlier God took from us the things of this world; presently He is taking away our spiritual thing or things.

• The Cross, as the instrument of spiritual circumcision, has to be applied to this self-life deeper and ever more deeply, because there seems to be no end to it.

• The whole Letter to the Hebrews has to do with this change from the earthly and temporal to the heavenly and spiritual.
• With His foreknowledge of the passing of the earthly, temporal and material things; places, systems, fixed locations, and outward forms, the Lord Jesus put the whole matter of survival upon Himself as the constituent of a spiritual structure against which the very powers of hell would not prevail.

• The change from the Old Testament to the New is simply and only the change from the indirect to the direct; from the symbolic to that which is symbolized; from the temporal representation to the spiritual reality.

• God was no longer wanting the framework and earthly system, which had taken so much room, and energy, and expenditure, before the really spiritual was reached.
• The percentage of spiritual value was so small after all, and spiritual interests lay so far along the labyrinthine ways of religious machinery and tradition, that it was not worthwhile.
• What remained after the shaking was just that, and that only, which was Christ in a spiritual and heavenly way: Christ in heaven, and here by His Spirit, the gathering point, or occasion of assembling; Christ in heaven the High Priest and Sacrifice; the order of God's house here a purely spiritual and heavenly one not formal, arranged, imposed, imitated, or material.

• He knows quite well that all the work for the Lord which is not founded upon triumphant spiritual prayer will count for little or nothing in the long run and will break down.
• Immediately you begin to contemplate or purpose a fuller prayer-life, the enemy launches a new scheme for keeping you more busy and occupied, heaping up the work and crowding in demands so that you will have no time or opportunity for prayer.... But we must recognize this: that the enemy will construct his best arguments about responsibility, duty and conscience to stop us praying, and there is a place where, if we see prayer is utterly ruled out, or brought down to such a limited place that it is completely inadequate for a life of spiritual ascendancy and victory, we have to say: Lord, I am going to trust the responsibility with You while I pray, that You will not allow my breaking away for this time to have detrimental results, and that You will protect this prayer-time which I seek for Your glory from the inroads of the enemy.

• Watch – Prepare Live the life of a spiritual man – put off the carnal lust of the flesh. Look at your position in Christ – not the condition of your circumstances. Prepare your heart for the Lord’s return is near – at the very door. Keep your lamps trimmed, and be filled with the Spirit. Understand what scripture says about these end times in which we live.

• Mean Routine How quickly we try to stumble over and endure the mean routine. How quickly we hurry through the mundane to get that ‘spiritual time’ alone that is indeed important..

• The mode of acquiring a new, redeemed nature from the 2nd man is a spiritual birth. As Jesus told Nicodemus: marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again.

• Unto me, who am less than the least.' In spiritual learning we take degrees downward, not upward, as in ordinary universities.

• Spiritual “Waterloo” Sometimes the sting of pain comes early in the Christian walk.
• Whether single or married, parent or child, pastor or layman, young or old – each, through the busyness of service and striving, arrive at their own spiritual ‘Waterloo’.
• Spiritual Need You see it is related to need - deep, deep spiritual need.
• a spiritual pauper until you can say: not I but Christ lives in me.
• Many flounder and give up the fight and consequently, their spiritual growth is stunted.
• Spiritual Growth This agonising downward process brings us from spiritual infancy to maturity..
• The Spirit prepares us through spiritual poverty to rely upon Him and not on self: blessed are the poor in spirit.
• When we get to the point when our spiritual life-breath is all but exhausted..

• Heart acquaintance with Christ is the secret of spiritual growth.

• The saved soul is celestial and spiritual.

• I need never hunger, I am down there in the country, isolated, getting no fellowship, no food; I am away in some place where there is no spiritual bread, and He says, e that eats Me shall never hunger./em> Is that dependent upon where I am, what my situation and circumstances are as to available spiritual meat?

• advancing steadily toward the completeness and perfection that belong to spiritual maturity (Heb. 6:1b, Amp.).

• From start to finish, it typifies the spiritual man and the carnal believer.
• It contrasts the spiritual walk with a religious life.
• There are some in the Body of Christ, in the front lines of intense spiritual conflict - a spiritual conflict that is intensifying in these last days..
• a spiritual conflict that is directed against those committed to intercessory prayer.
• It is an intense and bloody spiritual warfare, which is exemplified throughout Job; a fierce offensive, that has raged for 2000 years.
• These three men were seen battling in the spiritual realms.
• Consummation of All And what is the end and final reason for that intense spiritual warfare…?  Well, it is the ongoing battle that will one day consummate all things in Christ.

• Ideal Versus Reality Christ is indeed our Consolation, Strengthener, Support, and Comfort – but in dealing in the spiritual, we must differentiate between the ideal and the actual!
• Are such doubts the norm of the believer – and is it necessary to our spiritual walk?

• All spiritual gifts, however, have been given with infinite care by the Spirit of God. All talents have been carefully chosen by Him to match each servant’s personal potential. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.

• Spiritual maturity embraces pain and joy, suffering and happiness.
• It Takes Faith There are no shortcuts to spiritual growth.
• One dear saint encourages all who desire to live godly, by telling us that: “Spiritual renewal is a gradual process.
• It Takes Patience There are great days, days of decisive battles, days of crises in spiritual history, days of triumph in Christian service, days of the right hand of God upon us.
• for any experience which makes us more aware of our need of God must contribute to spiritual progress, unless we deny the Lord Who bought us.
• This is not to discourage us in any way but to help us to settle down with our spiritual sights on eternity, by faith..

• In our spiritual experience we often find that not least of our trials is the fact that God seems so slow to respond; sometimes it would appear that He is careless or indifferent - and that just when our needs are most acute.
• Two of the major elements in the spiritual life and experience of His own are the seemingly slow and hidden ways of God, and the demand for persistent faith in His servants. -T.

• 3 Types of Perfection Spiritual perfection: perfection of the spirit was reached the second we believed.

• He is only one Language and that is a spiritual one.

• As a result, many Christians live a life of spiritual defeat or spiritual depression, and as a result, many Christians settle for less than God’s will for their life – because the believer so often lives a life, relying on the flesh and not on the Spirit.
• Biblical Principles It is a lack of awareness of the vital, biblical principles of spiritual growth..
• Maturing in the faith requires that you apply PRINCIPLES of spiritual growth – principles that are clearly and concisely outlined in the Epistles.

• Being 'born again' is not the ultimate goal of the gospel, but the first. New birth is a prelude to the lifelong process of sanctification – spiritual growth. Sanctification develops into the intimate relationship God desires with each of us.
• Growing in Grace He desires all His children to grow in grace and to walk in spirit and truth. God wants us to develop a spiritual walk, which grows into a closer walk with Him.  But after the first flush of Christian joy, we can leave our first love and fall from grace.
• We can't lose our salvation but we stray from a spiritual walk into a carnal walk.  We can leave our first love of Christ and be enticed back to the ways of the world – or we can fall from grace, trying to please God through our own good works.

• Anxieties about our spiritual walk..

• We must not expect to win healthy souls or lead them on into spiritual maturity without long travail.

• Well, then, the supreme thing the New Testament shows is that the Church on its true, spiritual basis corresponds to Christ risen.

• One of the most damaging things in the realm of God's work, a thing which eventually leads to shame and confusion and much sorrow, is Natural Soul Force projected by strong-willed, determined, aggressive Christians who have not come to a spiritual state where they are able to discriminate between stubborn indomitableness, personal determination and resolution, and which is altogether another thing: spiritual grace in endurance, perseverance, and Divine in-strengthening.
• While spiritual strength is always marked by love, warmth, life, fellowship, openness, confidence, and trust in the Lord.... At the end, in the Revelation, the dragon, the whole power of Satan is overthrown by the Lamb.

• Maybe in the physical, but predominantly and principally in the spiritual… “Ye are My witnesses .” the Lord Jesus tells us. Being His witnesses does not necessarily mean going out and talking. Being a consecrated man or woman – being a sign, may not mean what you think. It may not mean becoming a missionary or starting a ministry… though such may certainly be a part of the sanctified life.

• Our Father may cripple our earthly standing in order to strengthen our spiritual state, but He will never detract from our spiritual state in order to enhance our worldly standing.
• He begins by showing His desire for your spiritual advancement, and not by advancing you in earthly position.

• When the spiritual stands to confront the merely formal, traditional, nominal and natural, then there is going to be trouble.
• There is a very great difference between formal, traditional, nominal, natural Christianity, on the one side, and spiritual Christianity, on the other; a great deal of difference.
• But seek to bring in a truly spiritual order of things, and trouble arises at once.
• And so spiritual men and women, and spiritual ministry, are called trouble makers, because the two things cannot go on together.
• The spiritual reality is not found in the formal.
• You may have it all but then bring in the truly spiritual meaning of things, and trouble begins in that very realm.
• It is the trouble which arises when what is external and traditional comes into conflict with something which is truly spiritual.

• In the course of our spiritual history God deals with us in ever-deepening ways.

• The Christian who relies mainly upon experiences for growth will manifest little spiritual discernment, dependability or maturity, whereas the believer who relies upon doctrinal truth will be found to manifest these aspects of a healthy walk.
• If we bypass truth, we fall short of spiritual reality.
• When a person begins to apprehend what it means to be united to the Son of God and what he has through this union, he will at once realize that his spiritual growth depends upon a clear understanding of truth rather than upon an experience.

• The grace-promise-faith way is the ‘spiritual’ route.
• Spiritual or Carnal In reality, carnality and legalism often describe believers who deeply desire to be spiritual, but are trying to please God the ‘works-merit -law’ way.

• How it comes does not matter very much, the fact is the importance of this thing spiritual illumination.

• It is not by any painful reproducing of another's spiritual history that he is to acquire the true comfort of spirit which he longs for.
• Outward imitation, though it be of the perfect Example Himself, has little place in the order of spiritual growth - little place because little possibility.

• The spiritual babe has faith for the wondrous fact that he will go to heaven when he dies.
• The spiritual father has faith for the inexpressible fact that he has died in Christ, and that he is now hid with Him in God.

• This biblical truth is a mystery that defines the measure of spiritual effectiveness.

• Men may be saved through hearing the Word of God that it contains but, unless they get purer light later, their dependence for life and service will be primarily upon human strength, and not upon the power and demonstration of the Spirit.' Paul (in spite of the Corinthians' demand for it) refused to permit any human wisdom to enter into his ministry for that reason - because he wanted purely spiritual fruit: converts who have seen the power of the Spirit and expect to know it in their lives and service.

• God used these life-shattering experiences to mature his spiritual understanding.
• Self-Righteousness The 'spiritual' witness of these three, was no more than religious, self-righteousness..

• A great mystery surrounds the spiritual growth of the hungry-hearted believer.
• The forwardness of nature is the failure of our youth - our spiritual youth, as well as our natural youth; eagerness to run in God's path, but not apprehending what the path is, or what it requires to walk in it.
• God means suffering to result in increased spiritual capacity, which is the basis of added responsibility, trust, and fruitful sharing.

• You may take it that you are in an immature spiritual stage if you have not come to that realization that in the realm into which you have been introduced in your relationship with God, you have no resource.

• This is something very searching for us as to our being children of God, being the spiritual children of the travail of Christ.
• Right from our new birth, you and I, every one of us, ought to have a faculty of spiritual understanding and perception and knowledge that is possessed by no other person outside this Kingdom!
• I would go so far as to say that the largest proportion of all the trouble between Christians is due to either a lack of, or a failure to live on, the basis of spiritual understanding, spiritual discernment, spiritual perception, spiritual knowledge.
• But spiritual knowledge is a rare commodity; and yet it is supposed to be a constituent of our new birth from above, a faculty that we ought to have.
• It is not some extra thing to which you attain by struggle and effort, or by years of laborious Christian living, or by some specific act, some terrific upheaval in your spiritual life.
• You have a new sense, a new faculty, a new omethingin you, that causes you to know in some measure at least what is of the Lord and what is not, what is spiritual and what is not.

• If you run into a spiritual fog, turn aside and rest awhile and wait, just wait.

• teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs..

• Spiritual Readiness Being unprepared does NOT mean that a believer loses eternal life – that’s finished. The work on the cross was a ‘done deal’ forever, when you were washed in His blood.
• No, the problem of unpreparedness in a believer is a lack of spiritual reserves.
• Danger of Unpreparedness Lack of spiritual readiness can hit doctrinally sound saints and godliest of men alike.
• Lack of spiritual preparedness can creep up on the most ardent believer.

• New Testament Truth Very often we find that Old Testament stories often typify New Testament truths. Happenings in the physical realm often pictures the spiritual walk of believers today. The ministry of the Aaronic priesthood is one such beautiful example:

• Spiritual Enemy  This is as true today as it was in those distant days – when the enemy was physical, except that today, the enemy is invisible and more subtle – and in the spiritual realm: for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, physical weapons, but mighty through God to the pulling down of spiritual strongholds. 2Cor.10:4
• Spiritual Armour So we have been been equipped with every necessity if we would but access it: put on the whole armour of God, we are told, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil Eph.6:11 ..

• That which is called Christianity is essentially a spiritual thing, and not an earthly order or system, and every fragment of it has to be entered into in a spiritual way, by way of Life and Revelation.
• If we become spiritual in this sense, if the Holy Spirit is the commanding reality in our life, and we are walking by the Spirit, we are bound inevitably to come into all God's thought.

• It’s related to Christian growth, our spiritual maturity and the events in our lives that God uses to conform us into the image and likeness of His dear Son.
• A New-Life in Christ As His children we were given a new LIFE in Christ – a baby life that needs to grow into a mature spiritual believer -– a life that will be fruitful – a victorious life – a life that will be conformed into the image of Jesus during the time we live on earth. But we also have a sin nature that seeks to gain supremacy over the new Christ-life. Oh!
• Spiritual Life We may choose to live a spiritual life and abide in Him or walk the carnal route. We may choose to submit to the Spirit’s leading or we may quench Him in our life. But neither the spiritual nor the unspiritual believer is condemned – for God will never go back on His word.

• Growing Pains Growing pains inevitable occur in all believers when our faith in Christ is tried. Sometimes stunted growth is the result of a lack of good teaching. Sometimes spiritual growth is resisted because of carnal desires.

• Spiritual Growth Once a man is saved, faith must grow and develop through child-training.

• You can keep Him hidden; you can bury him in the safety of your current understanding – or you can gaze at Him through the spiritual eyes of heart, counting all things loss,  for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

• Our words are to be wholesome; sensitive; truthful; thoughtful; wise – spiritual... 'let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear'.

• Examples of such ‘words’ could be carnal; flesh; spiritual; salvation; repent; confess; world; condemnation.
• Right Choices Remember, there are two paths a born-again believer can follow in their Christian walk: either the grace-promise-faith way or the works-merit-law way;  either by grace or works of the law; either by promise or the works of the flesh; either by faith or by merit; either by living a spiritual life or living a carnal life; either by walking in the spirit or walking in the flesh; either by walking in newness of life in Christ or by walking by means of the old sin nature in Adam.

• Col.3:12 Be filled with the knowledge of his will… in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
• Teach, and correct one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and sing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

• Ever since that first spiritual death, all humanity have been born dead in their sin.
• Spiritual Realm Only our new nature can fellowship with the Lord. Only our new nature is alive. Only the new life can function in the spiritual realm and commune with the Holy Spirit. Only our new life in Christ is spiritually alive and can worship in spirit and truth, for God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.

• Spiritual privileges do not exempt us from any fiery trials.

• There is nothing in the earthly or spiritual realm that can divorce us from His care.

• Perhaps, because of his spiritual maturity, Paul had been able to recognise the deep, spiritual poverty that had hindered his own life journey.
• Paul wanted to stress the importance of righteousness and warn of the dangers of regressing into spiritual infancy.
• It is only by grace through faith that we are being conformed into the likeness of God's beloved Son... and by His grace, we have been promised an immortal body and innumerable, additional spiritual blessings by simply trusting Him for our salvation - by believing in the sacrificial death, burial, and Resurrection of Christ.

• It is hard to understand why a nation that was so blessed would turn aside from the God of their fathers and fall into such gross apostasy, and yet how reflective this is of the Church today, for despite the incredible spiritual benefits and blessings that have been showered on the Body of Christ, so many are following after another gospel, rejecting the inerrant Word of God, and worshipping a Christ made in their own image.
• And the Church as members of Christ's Body are His spiritual seed, for He is the eternal Author and Finisher of our faith.

• In some of his writings, Paul had to stress his divinely appointed calling and apostleship because there were those that challenged his authority, but the Ephesian Christians were spiritual men and women whom Paul identified as, faithful in Christ Jesus.
• We are chosen in Christ, fellow heirs with Him, blessed with every spiritual blessing, and predestined to be conformed into the image and likeness of Christ.

• We are also prompted to look for the reason that we are to advance to spiritual adulthood, instead of remaining in spiritual childhood or adolescence, and we are cautioned against being stunted in our spiritual development, in the preceding verses.
• And so we are urged to move on from the initial salvation message, where we are justified by faith, and are urged to grow in a knowledge of our Lord and Saviour - as we press on to spiritual maturity.
• The spiritual growth of a believer should be the outcome of our new life in Christ.
• The privileges we have in Christ will ensure that we develop from infancy into spiritual maturity.
• How essential that we do not remain in spiritual infancy or become deaf to the great biblical truths that are ours in Christ.

• whether it be from the demonic spiritual realm or their human agents..
• The Corinthians Christians, to whom this verse was written, had been quite strongly criticised by Paul for division in the fellowship, their lack of spiritual growth and their carnal way of living.
• Paul pointed out that not one of the many spiritual principalities, power or demonic rulers of this age would have empowered and emboldened the religious leaders of the Jews or the civic channels of the Roman government to crucify the Lord of glory, if they had known the great and eternal victory that His death would have over the spiritual and natural realms.
• for if those in the spiritual realm had understood the glorious significance of the cross of Christ..
• Paul wanted to discourage the Corinthian believers and all who are God's children from foolishly following after the 'wisdom of this age,' for it only produces spiritual bankruptcy.

• They would not see Him physically but they would see Him with their spiritual eye of understanding, and He promised to one day return to take all who love and trust in Him, to be with Himself in heaven.

• At the moment of salvation, a person immediately undergoes a baptism - a DRY, SPIRITUAL Baptism - the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, which places them into the Body of Christ. 
• Jesus taught His disciples about this same, spiritual baptism, the night He was betrayed. He told them, The Holy Spirit resides WITH you and He will be IN you.
• John baptised with water (a water baptism - of repentance) but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit, (a spiritual baptism - of the heart) not many days from now. 

• They were more interested in Jesus feeding their bodies with bread and fish than having their souls nourished with the spiritual food from above.
• They were more concerned about their physical and temporal needs than their spiritual health and eternal salvation.
• In the same way, the physical washing of one's hands with water can never cleanse the heart spiritually. Purity of heart is only possible through a spiritual cleansing.

• However, through spiritual rebirth, we are immutably connected to Christ and imputed with His perfect righteousness.

• Paul's spiritual ambition, earnest expectation, and eager hope was to enhance and elevate Christ in the heart and mind of others.

• For just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you produce spiritual fruit unless you abide in Me.Day by day, we are to remain in Him and He in us; we are to abide in Him and He in us; we are to rest in Him and He in us.

• Timothy was sent to find out how the believers there were getting along, to establish them in the faith, and give them spiritual support and godly encouragement.Paul rejoiced when Timothy returned with the joyful tidings that they were being established in the faith and well-grounded in the Word, despite the many difficulties and distresses they were facing: May the Lord cause you to increase in your faith and abound in your love for one another and for all people, was Paul's heartfelt prayer for them all, just as we also do for you.Paul continued in prayers and loving intercessions for the saints at Thessalonica, beseeching God the Father Himself and Jesus our Lord to direct and govern their ways.May we be like Paul, and remember to lift up our fellow Christian brothers and sisters in continuous and loving prayer and heartfelt intercessions.

• Centuries of spiritual decline was to be replaced by a post-exile, spiritual revival.

• Many ministries in Christendom today are encouraging their followers to have their best life now, with little interest in spiritual enrichment or heavenly investments.

• His abundance of worldly wisdom is a stark contrast with his lack of Godly wisdom and the spiritual understanding seen in Daniel and his three companions.

• We, as the Body of Christ, are the spiritual Temple of God and in many ways, both individually and corporately, we have allowed the world to be assimilated into our hearts and minds..

• Love for his brothers and sisters in Christ was clearly seen in all of Paul's writings and in this letter to the Colossians, his heart's desire was that these beloved believers would gain great spiritual strength.

• Despite the Corinthian Christians being saved by grace through faith in Christ, Paul had some serious concerns about their ungodly conduct, their spiritual immaturity, their argumentative behaviour, and their abuse of spiritual gifts.
• These misguided Christians bought into the satanic lie that there is no physical resurrection from the dead, and though some may have believed in some type of spiritual afterlife - Paul found it necessary to cover this unbiblical error in great detail in 1st Corinthians 15 - which is often called the Resurrection Chapter.

• They might hear the sound, the syntax, and the sentence with their ears, but fail to understand the spiritual truth within their heart.

• Everyone who trusts in Jesus as Saviour is considered by God to be His spiritual seed.

• How much more we who have an old sin nature need to keep ourselves ever covered by His protecting power and yielded to the guidance of His Holy Spirit, as we remain in Him and He in us.The little power-packed book of Jude opens by encouraging maturing Christians to contend earnestly for the sanctifying faith that works in and through the lives of born-again believers, and which will bring them to spiritual maturity.

• And it helps to identify the wicked characters in the ongoing angelic conflict - a spiritual war between God and Satan, that has been raging in heavenly places for millennia.

• Sometimes we misunderstand what it means, 'to succeed' or 'to prosper' which has given rise to a prosperity teaching which places the emphasis on temporal, worldly prosperity rather than eternal spiritual wealth.

• Let us remember that there are no short-cuts to spiritual growth. Strong, secure, spiritual maturity is a gradual process which progresses from day to day, month to month, and year to year.

• And although there were a few dissenters who tried to undermine Paul's authority and others who had regressed in their spiritual growth, their enthusiastic response to the gospel of Christ was a great joy and encouragement to Paul, and his fellow-labourers in Christ.
• Paul and his companions were obviously pleased with the spiritual development of these believers, and referred to them as 'OUR hope; OUR joy; and OUR crown of rejoicing.' For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? was his rhetorical question.
• Paul not only taught these new believers about the return of the Lord in the clouds for His Church, at the Rapture, but also mentioned the spiritual rewards that will be given to believers at His coming.

• ALL believers, whether circumcised Jew or uncircumcised Gentiles, are one in Christ and lay claim to the same spiritual circumcision, a true circumcision of the heart because we are ALL saved by grace through faith in Christ.

• Paul's epistle to Titus outlines the conduct, integrity, and maturity that should be the hallmark of spiritual leadership, both in the body of Christ and in the home environment.

• Paul had been called as Christ's apostle to the Gentiles and appointed by the Father to be entrusted with the hidden mysteries of the Church and much Church-age doctrine, which is so vital for our spiritual growth today.

• Let us, like David, fill our hearts with the joy of the Lord and sing spiritual songs with our lips and in our lives, to the praise of His wonderful name.

• But first, He had to topple all the spiritual forces in high, heavenly places before He could bring in the kingdom of heaven on earth.
• Throughout the Word of God, we are warned of false prophets, apostate teachers and hired-hands that are not true shepherds, but manipulative hirelings who lead the people of God astray, place them in spiritual danger and use them for their own personal interests.

• We have already received all spiritual blessing in abundance, simply because we are in Christ, and in Him we have all that we need to live godly lives, but nowhere in Scripture are we told that we will have the trouble free life that much of Christendom teaches today, rather we are informed of the opposite.

• It is then that the spiritual battery is regenerated and renewed by Christ's limitless power, enabling us to run the straight race, and in His strength, to run in such as way as to win the prize for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

• Jacob persevered in his spiritual battle until daybreak.
• We may not partake in a physical wrestling match with a heavenly Being, but the spiritual battles we encounter require the same response - a dying to self and a living for Christ.
• We are engaged in a spiritual battle against worldly enticements, fleshly lusts, and the spiritual forces of darkness and wickedness in heavenly places.

• which are only given to those that have spiritual discernment through the indwelling Christ - for the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned, but he who is spiritual, discerns all things - by His goodness and grace.

• Both these apostles know that Christians can be drawn away from a spiritual walk, where Christ reigns at the centre of our life, to a fleshly existence where king 'Self' is reinstated on the throne of our heart.
• Although our position in Christ can never be lost for those that are born-again, nevertheless our communion with Christ can be interrupted, our fellowship with the Father can be broken, and our spiritual channel of communication can be choked so that His love ceases to flow out from Him, through us, to others - and we grieve the indwelling Holy Spirit of God.

• We are called to be holy, called to be spiritual, called to be set apart unto God, and called to live a godly life that is well-pleasing to Him.

• The gospel was spreading rapidly and the material needs of all converts, as well as their spiritual needs, were being furnished quickly and appropriately. 

• It is our spiritual worship and our reasonable service to yield our-lives, our-selves, and our-bodies to the Lord - to consecrate ourselves to Him each day.

• and Jesus Christ, Whom He had sent - BY FATIH - and it is God's will that having trusted in Christ for salvation that we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord - which is our spiritual worship.

• We should not be ignorant of the spiritual gifts relating to the Church age nor the cunning devices of Satan who seeks to entrap us in worldly pursuits, fleshly activities and cunning lies.

• Every piece of armour that the Christian is given in the spiritual battle of the ages in which we are engaged, points to the Lord Jesus Christ.
• For He holds all things together and in Him, we have all that is needed to face the forces of evil and spiritual wickedness in high places.

• And so, Jeremiah continued to speak of the impending doom of the nation and predicted the fall of the city of Jerusalem whilst warning the people of approaching oppression, violence, and the ravaging of their land, due to their unholy ways and spiritual decline.

• He illuminates our minds with truth, inspires our heart with spiritual understanding and gives godly discernment to all who have been saved by trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

• However, these Pharisees needed to know that the spiritual part of the kingdom does not come with observable signs but through faith in Christ, in Whom are the words of eternal life.
• Believers in this Church dispensation have already entered the spiritual kingdom through faith in Christ.
• What about those of us who are already part of the spiritual kingdom?

• In the penultimate verse of Ephesians, Paul is offering a familiar and well-loved salutation to his brothers and sisters in Christ: Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.Peace, love, and faith are three spiritual qualities that are sprinkled in unfettered abundance throughout Paul's writings, and yet they retain a freshness each time they are bestowed on God's children of faith.Only once in the New Testament, is this phrase peace be to the brethren, used.
• It empowers us to carry out the work that God has prepared for us to do and it emboldens us to engage in the spiritual warfare of this age, effectively: For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and satanic powers, who prowl around, seeking to destroy our ministry and taint our testimony.Peace and love with faith, comes directly from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
• The divine equality of Father and Son is meted out in clear view in this verse; we are blessed with every spiritual blessing by the Father, through the Son, for both are equivalent in honour, glory, might, majesty, dominion, and power, forever and ever, amen.

• Sarah symbolises the New Covenant and the spiritual seed of Abraham.
• However, Paul clearly uses Hagar to represent that Old Covenant of Sinai, the earthly seed of Israel, and the earthly Jerusalem below, while Sarah symbolises the New Covenant, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the spiritual seed of God, through Christ Jesus our Lord - for we are all members of His Body, and ministers of a New and better Covenant.

• He was sent to bind up and heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to those that were in both physical and spiritual captivity - and to open the blinded eyes of those who are bound by the god of this world.

• False doctrine infects and contaminates the spiritual Body of Christ in the same way that germs and viruses seriously infect or injure our physical bodies, and Paul describes these false teachers as: Idle talkers and deceivers who distort the Word of truth and subvert whole households for dishonest gain.
• For the Word of God is living and powerful, and it is the only plumb-line for sound doctrine, Biblical truth, and spiritual growth.

• We are given wise advice on how to function spiritually as members of the Body of Christ, and reminded that we all have spiritual gifts which are to be used for the encouragement of the saints and the edification of the Body of Christ.
• We are counselled against spiritual immaturity, emotional instability, and foolish gullibility while being warned against lying, anger, deceitfulness, unconfessed sin, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talking, and coarse jesting.

• And as Paul tells us in Ephesians: And having done all to stand, as the spiritual battle between our righteous God and Satan's wicked forces continues to rage throughout the godless nations of the world.

• He has prepared a table before us, in the presence of those that hate and despise us, and He has covered it with all we need and every spiritual blessing - which He purchased for us through His own blood, on Calvary's Cross.

• This historic happening not only helped to fuel an ongoing feud between the descendants of Ishmael and the Jewish nation - but represents a deep spiritual truth regarding those that are under LAW and those that are under GRACE.
• However, the bias of BOTH groups has blinded them to the real, important, spiritual truth that is in plain view for those with eyes to see.
• May we be those that understand the spiritual truth that is being taught in this beautiful analogy.

• It is Christians individually and collectively who are living stones that are being built up into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood and the dwelling-place of our God.

• Jesus is our spiritual food and we who partake of His body and blood by faith, will LIVE.
• Just as the blood on the doorposts of the Israelites in Egypt was a physical sign of their faith in God's Word, so a heart that has been sprinkled with the shed blood of Christ by faith in His sacrificial death on the Cross, is the spiritual sign that we have passed from death to life - from slavery to the freedom that is in Christ Jesus.

• And we are to do the same.They were to be responsible for the well-being of their Christian friends, supporting one another in their lack, rejoicing in their increase, and making sure that those endowed with the gift of pastor-teacher, were similarly provided for, through individual, voluntary, but cheerful offerings.As believers, we have all been blessed with every spiritual blessing from above and are instructed by the Word of God and through Church elders and Christian ministers, to share our blessings, both material and spiritual, with others so that they in turn are enabled to rejoice in the Lord for His provision and go further afield themselves, to bless others who cross their path.Sowing and reaping blessings in this way, is a biblical principle that benefits both the giver and the one that receives, as well as honouring the Lord our God from Whom all blessings flow.
• May our offerings be carried out in ways that honour the Lord, by ministering to others as God desires so that we may lay up for ourselves spiritual treasure in heaven, knowing that the things of this world will all pass away while the things of value are permanently laid up in heavenly places, for those that love the Lord and walk in spirit and in truth.

• Man cannot begin to imagine the physical torture that Christ had to undergo on behalf of the sin of the whole world, but the emotional and spiritual anguish that He must have endured when His Heavenly Father turned away from Him and poured out the full force of His godly wrath upon Him in payment for the accumulated sin of the world, which He carried on our behalf, is beyond our finite imagination and staggers our limited understanding.

• But the 'new life in Christ' is imparted to all God's children, making us part of a new 'spiritual' creation, through Christ Jesus our Lord.

• It is not the baptism that saves (neither water baptism nor spiritual baptism). We are saved from the peril of God's judgement by being in Christ.
• It is because we are positioned in Christ and members of His spiritual Body, that HIS death became our death; death to the old self.

• It brings us, step by step, into spiritual maturity and holy living.
• We are not to judge the spiritual temperature of other believers, nor cause a weaker brother to stumble in their faith because we have found a greater freedom in Christ.

• We will, one day, be judged by our words, our works, our spiritual fruit, and our behaviour towards our fellow man.

• The curse of the Law has been lifted, the sting of death has been removed, and we have been born into the family of God and become part of a totally new creation in Christ, with our sins forgiven and our eternal life secure.As born again citizens of heaven, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

• Spiritual death has been removed and we have all been clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

• This glorious verse of comfort sparkles with reassuring radiance, that the future plan God has for all of His people, both for Israel and the Church, are for our eternal good and spiritual welfare, as well as our temporal and physical needs.

• But Scripture also taught that God requires moral and spiritual purity of the inner man.

• Ezekiel was told that the valley of dry bones referred to the restoration of the whole house of Israel; their physical restoration to the land, and their spiritual restoration to their God.
• The physical preceded the spiritual.
• Spiritual restoration had yet to take place in 'that valley of dry bones'.
• Spiritual restoration has yet to take place in Israel today.
• Although a form of physical restoration has occurred, there will be no spiritual renewal until they finally acknowledge their sin, recognise their Messiah, and they cry out to Him: Hosanna!!

• His light not only shines into our lives to guide our steps through the darkest pit-falls and the heavy gloom of this rebellious world-system, but His resplendent rays of holy light, cascade into our hearts and stream into our minds, like a cleansing flood, for He alone is the Well-spring of godly wisdom and the Fountain-head of all spiritual understanding.
• He alone is the perfect Illuminator of spiritual discernment.
• And the Light of the glorious gospel of grace shone into the hearts of many of His followers and the eyes of their hearts were illuminated eternally - and what joy must have flooded their souls when they received their spiritual sight.  
• But light is not only given at the time of rebirth, its cleansing power and refining rays continue to shine into the deep recesses and secret corners of our minds, to expose those things that discredit His name, hinder our spiritual progress and disconnect us from our communion with our Heavenly Father.

• Old age and a grey head, together with any other badge of advancing years, is a beautiful crown of glory when it is found in the way of righteousness.When giving instruction to physically strong young men in his first epistle, the apostle John encourages them in their spiritual development.
• His desire is that they grow in grace and mature in the faith, explaining that when the Word of God abides within their heart, they will overcome the evil one and mature in their faith as they advance in age.Paul reminds us that although physical fitness is good, we should not only strive after bodily discipline and physical health, but rather engage in our spiritual development by fixing our hope on the living God and trusting in His Word, by faith.May we all recognise the benefits of a grey head or sagging muscles, knowing that it is a crown of glory when found in the way of righteousness.

• Our confidence rests upon the sure promises of our all-powerful God Who reminds us throughout His Word, that He is the Almighty, Sovereign Ruler of the universe, and has given us His assurance that no weapon, whether physical or spiritual, will prosper against His blood-bought children.

• Both in those fledgling days of the Church and in his later years when he penned his two epistles, Peter frequently quoted from the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, to endorse the truth of the glorious gospel he taught so passionately. His desire was to teach and encourage the saints in their spiritual growth and to glorify his risen, ascended, wonderful Saviour Whom he called Master, and Who loved him with an everlasting love.

• Had he kept God as the third strand of every relationship and allowed Him to direct the decisions he made and guide the activities he undertook, I suspect his memoirs may have reached a very different conclusion and his spiritual understanding of the God, in Whom he trusted, may have been broadened, like that of Job - who heard of God by the hearing of the ear - but finally received a depth of spiritual understanding he had never experienced before.

• However, Paul is giving spiritual advice, rather than issuing a firm command.Christians are not to be united with unbelievers in marriage, but are to be married in the Lord.

• Wise counsel and spiritual encouragement is the calling-card of the friend that loves at all times, and loyalty, sensitivity, and a genuine interest in the other are the qualities of the brother that travels through adversity with us.

• No surprise that Paul had to open his letter to the Ephesians by acknowledging Him to be the Father of all mercies and proclaiming: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
• We are blessed to receive our great salvation, our position in Christ, the indwelling Spirit, and spiritual gifts and graces.
• We are blessed; indeed, we are doubly blessed with all spiritual blessings by: My Father and your Father, My God and your God.
• While we, who are in Christ, are blessed with every spiritual blessing, God is His grace provides many temporal blessings to all humanity, for God causes His sun to rise on both the evil and on the good, sending rain on the just and on the unjust.
• But we are charged to set our hearts on things above, for the spiritual blessings that are already ours, have been given in superlative-abundance and unconditional-grace to all who have trusted Christ for salvation.
• We are His spiritual children and the many blessings we have received from the Father, are contained in God the Son; the Lord Christ Jesus.
• The spiritual blessings of which Paul talks in this passage are already ours, for we have already been given all that we need for life and godliness.
• In Christ, we have been given every spiritual blessing and His spiritual enrichment has already been poured out upon us in superlative-abundance by our Heavenly Father.
• All we have to do is to access it: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in Christ.

• The angelic Person in his path with the drawn sword in His hand was probably the pre-incarnate Son of God, but the blind prophet had less discernment of spiritual things than this dumb donkey.
• It can lead to spiritual poverty and lure one into ungodly actions and a destroyed life.
• A man who could have been greatly used by God to preach truth to a pagan nation, allowed his love of money to destroy his life and tarnish his reputation, and yet the spiritual sensitivity of a little dumb donkey was greater than his master.
• Indeed, the little animal was not only used by God to show Balaam the destructive nature of covetousness and greed, but is remembered - to this day - as the one in this passage with the greater spiritual awareness. 

• In sending His seven letters to the churches early in the book of Revelation, the Lord Jesus gives great insight into the spiritual temperature of the Christian Church... as the day for His return to earth draws ever nearer.

• It would be a spiritual purging which would purify the people and priests of Israel.
• How easy it is for us in this Church age to look back to this time in Israel's history with critical contempt for their failure to walk in the ways of God and to so openly deny the Lord Who bought them - and yet as we look at our own lives and the sorry state of the Church as a whole - we can only bemoan the spiritual condition in which we find ourselves today, and cry out to the Lord to search the inner recesses of our very being and to purify our hearts in the refining fires of His holy righteousness.

• No-one in the earthly realm or spiritual sphere can steal our eternal joy, and nothing in the created universe has the power to remove the child of God from the hand of His Lord and Saviour.

• Every physical, mental, ethnic, and spiritual barrier that ever separated Jew from Gentile was forever torn down in the Body of Christ.
• Christ tore down legalistic walls and ethnic walls, and He even rent asunder the entrenched spiritual wall by making peace between the two.

• Throughout the Church age, many enemies, both physical and spiritual, have sought to steal, kill, and destroy the sheep in Christ's little flock, but we are not to fear for none can pluck us out of His hands.

• He discussed the importance of the Lord's Supper, the varieties of spiritual gifts and the supremacy of love.

• Jeremiah is known as the 'weeping prophet', for he mourned over Judah's shocking spiritual condition and the gross apostasy, into which they had fallen.

• But their hope in the earthly kingdom had blinded their understanding that Calvary's Cross must precede Christ's kingdom, and that it was necessary to first establish the heavenly (spiritual) kingdom (currently under the dominion of Satan), before those earthly promises to Israel could finally be fulfilled.

• There is nothing we can do to repay God, but surely in the light of its eternal glories and benefits we can offer ourselves to Him in love and gratitude, by presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, for this is our spiritual worship.
• This is not a command, for God wants our love and service to be rendered freely and willingly, but in light of the inestimable riches of God's free grace which He has poured out in great measure on fallen sinners simply because we trusted in Christ as our Saviour, surely it should be our joy and delight to present our bodies, day by day, in spiritual worship as a living sacrifice - holy and pleasing to the Lord.

• But the apostle Peter also makes it clear that our spiritual growth and our progress in the Christian life must be a continuous maturing in grace and an ever-increasing knowledge and understanding of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
• Spiritual growth is an ongoing process of becoming more like the lovely Lord Jesus.
• Just as we need physical exercise and nourishing food for our bodies to grow and develop, so also we need spiritual exercise to mature in the faith.

• He recognised the spiritual need of this religious separatist.
• He did not understand the spirit of the Law and the need for fallen man to have a spiritual birth; the need for sinful man to be cleansed of his sin by the washing of the water with the Word of God.
• The first is our physical birth into this world and the second is a spiritual birth into the new creation.
• One is a physical birth into the family of man, while the second is a spiritual birth into the family of God: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
• Until a man's spiritual birth, he will not see heaven nor be able to enter the heavenly portal.
• Once we have been saved by grace through faith and born again of the Spirit, we become a spiritual being.
• That which is born of the physical flesh is fallen and fleshly and needs to be reborn into the spiritual realm, while that which is born of the Holy Spirit is spirit.
• How long it took for this truth to blossom in the heart of Nicodemus we will never know, but as one of the men who laid Christ's dead body in the stone-cold tomb, we know that this dear man did not only SEE heaven with his spiritual eye of faith, but will enter the kingdom of heaven as a forgiven child of God and a member of the Body of Christ.

• The life of Gaius appears to be that of a mature man of God, who reflected the character of Christ.The world 'soul' and 'life' are used interchangeably in the Word of God, and we discover that this man's spiritual life was fruitful – his soul was flourishing.
• John's prayer was that the physical health of this beloved saint might 'prosper' in the same way that his spiritual health was prospering.The word, 'prosperity' today nearly always refers to material wealth… but in context, we see that it is this dear man's physical health and bodily condition that John is praying will prosper.
• John's prayer is that Gaius' physical health will reflect his obvious spiritual strength and Christian maturity.This verse clearly contradicts the distorted teaching of certain 'prosperity teachers' and 'faith-healers' who insist that if sick people do not recover, it is due to a lack of faith, or that if you are materially poor, you are not a spiritual believer because God wants all Christians to be materially wealthy!

• Only those that are born from above can produce the spiritual fruit of righteousness..

• Not only is Paul's epistle a personal letter to a spiritual son, encouraging Timothy to be faithful, to stand firm in the faith, to communicate the truth of the gospel, and give advice on the selection of church elders, but he warns against apostasy and false teaching within the congregation.

• And Paul's passion was to establish the Church in sound doctrine, and to bring to spiritual maturity those that were saved by grace through faith in Him.
• He worked unceasingly to bring to spiritual maturity, as many as would hear and receive the astonishing mysteries that were given to him on our account; the unsearchable riches in Christ and the surpassing treasures of God's grace and kindness toward us, in Jesus our Saviour.

• But those who allow their ears to be tickled without ever coming to the knowledge of the truth, by faith, are in serious spiritual danger: And their last state becomes worse that at the beginning.
• They are never born again into newness of life which sadly results their spiritual state becoming far worse than at first.

• Jesus was that promised Seed of Abraham, and while Israel are his physical seed, all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, both Jew and Gentile, are his spiritual seed.

• Paul was surrounded by a host of enemies, both physical and spiritual, and experienced the most acute hardships and persecutions during his God-appointed ministry.

• As he brings his first epistle to a close, the aging Peter gives wise instruction both to church elders as well as to those that are younger in age or spiritual infants.
• But though he instructs young men to be subject to those that are older in years and spiritual maturity, he calls ALL believers to clothe themselves with humility towards one another, explaining that God resists those that are proud but gives grace to those that are humble in action and attitude.

• But now they were trying to achieve spiritual maturity by their own standard of righteousness - through carrying out their own works.
• The Galatian Christians who should have been growing spiritually and maturing in the faith, had adopted legalistic practices which prevented them from growing in grace and reaching spiritual maturity.
• Paul used the simile of a woman in labour to describe the pain that he was going through in order to bring these Christians into spiritual maturity.
• But now he was having to go through more excruciating birth-pains as he sought to bring them into spiritual maturity - until Christ was formed in them, until they were starting to be transformed into the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
• It is sad when spiritual development is halted, reversed, or twisted through legalistic practices as demonstrated by these Galatian Christians, or by using God's free gift of grace as a license to sin as exhibited by the Corinthian Christians. May we take our own spiritual growth and that of our brothers and sisters in Christ seriously so that Christ may be formed in us, to His praise and glory.

• Job is unaware that a serious spiritual challenge concerning his faith in God, was taking place in heavenly realms.
• He often uses our pain to strengthen our faith and develop spiritual maturity.
• May we never forget that we are in the midst of an ongoing spiritual battle which can impact our life at any time.

• The lasting beauty and attractiveness that radiates from a spiritual woman of God, comes from an inner purity of heart which honours the Lord and is submissive to her husband.There were many such holy women mentioned in the Bible, both from the Old and New Testaments, and from each emanated a loveliness from deep within.

• Paul found it necessary to chastise these carnal Christians, for they were abusing their God-given spiritual gifts and discrediting the Christian Church.
• He exhorted them (and us) to allow God remould our minds from within so that we may demonstrate, by our practice, that we are progressing towards the goal of true, spiritual maturity - in the bond of peace and love.
• Too often, ungodly actions are accepted or ignored, while spiritual gifts are abused when certain groups or individuals use their God-given gifts and talents for self-glorification or self-centred motives.
• Too frequently we see the character or attitude of many Church leaders and their congregants becoming self-indulgent, while at other times we observe Christians being EITHER 1) overly critical of their fellow believers for insignificant things OR 2) prepared to compromise their Christian faith by refusing to address issues of spiritual importance which should not be ignored!

• Paul recognised that the divided loyalties of these believers was negatively impacting their close Christian communion, causing a serious spiritual disconnection between them.
• And so Paul warned of the dangers this behaviour had on their spiritual growth.
• Paul knew that the inevitable outcome is an increasing disassociation from the Lord, a distancing of oneself from Christian brethren, and even a quenching of the Holy Spirit in their lives; all of which inhibit spiritual development and result in a backslidden life.
• Paul was not implying that the Christian must be completely isolated from unbelievers, nor was he condemning casual interactions, involvement in a working relationship, or even social contact, but the general principle that Paul was teaching is that Christians should never initiate, maintain, or desire close, intimate association with unbelievers, as this inevitably prevents or inhibits close communing with the Lord, has a serious impact on spiritual growth, adversely affects relationships with other believers, and grieves the Spirit of God.
• But we all need to look at our own lives... and reflect on the friendship choices that we have made or are considering, and to base our choice on wisdom from the Word of God and the godly counsel of spiritual Christians.

• Too often today, men and women are seeking to gratify their short-term physical desires at the expense of their eternal, spiritual needs.
• Too many believers today are seeking to gratify their carnal lusts and excite their flesh, their feelings, and their emotions with sights and signs, miracles, wonders, and worldly 'hip' and 'hype' at the expense of true, spiritual satisfaction, which alone comes from knowing the Lord Jesus Christ and trusting Him as Saviour and Lord.
• Today as in times past, men and women hunger for satisfaction now, rather than thirsting after the pure milk of the Word of God and yearning for the spiritual meat that is packed to overflowing within the pages of holy Scripture.
• Christ alone is the life-giving spiritual manna from heaven that lasts through time and into eternity, and it is given as a free gift of His grace by faith to ALL who will trust in Him.

• Many had adopted the prevailing behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes of the world, indulging in fleshly actions, becoming carnal believers, and not spiritual men and women that were maturing in the faith.

• The Body of believers is the Temple of God in this Dispensation of Grace - a spiritual Temple in whom dwells the Holy Spirit of the living God. 

• The head-knowledge of these Jewish leaders was of no value to their spiritual well-being, nor was it significant to them because they did not mix their knowledge with a trusting heart of faith in the Word of God and the prophetic writings of holy men of God.

• In like manner, the faith of a Christian needs to be pure, unblemished, and perfect, and the trials of life are designed to purify our hearts, increase our dependence upon the Lord Jesus, deepen our love for our Saviour, enrich our spiritual lives, strengthen our hope in His many precious promises, and increase our faith in the Word of God.

• Not only are we called at the beginning of Jude to: Earnestly contend for the faith, but as he brings it to a close, we are further instructed: Build yourselves up in our most holy faith, through spiritual development as we yield to the Lord.
• How vital to maintain ongoing communion with the Father, by acknowledging our sins, confessing our spiritual poverty, and admitting our need of His guidance and grace.

• Many believers in Corinth had reverted to spiritual infancy, legalism, or a fear of foolish pagan myths, and much of Paul's first letter bore witness to the spiritual poverty of these carnally minded Christians.

• Timothy had been faithfully taught the Scriptures from childhood and had been born again through the ministry of the apostle Paul, rendering him Paul's 'spiritual son in the Lord'.
• Not only is Timothy exhorted to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, but also to provide spiritual strength for those in His care – for in the following verse we read: And the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

• James reminds us that if we do not ask aright then we will not receive, and even the godly prayer of the righteous man or woman may be used by God to teach some deeper spiritual truth.

• Man does not live by bread alone, but by the whole truth of God's Word, and the reach of God's rule stretches far beyond the question of temporal needs such as eating, drinking, and the necessities of this world, for the substance of God's kingdom does not consist of external things which are passing away but of spiritual matters which are eternal.

• They wanted physical healing, not spiritual healing.

• The Corinthians lacked no spiritual gift.
• They were endowed with all-speech, enriched in all-knowledge, and equipped with great spiritual giftings as a testimony that Christ was confirmed among them, and yet we discover they were argumentative, sexually impure, and had retrogressed into unprecedented carnality, immorality, and spiritual infancy.
• There was a proliferation of spiritual gifts in those early days of Christianity.
• Paul explained in Romans that an important reason for the dramatic numbers of spiritual gifts and grace given to Gentile believers in the early Church, was to provoke Israel to jealousy.
• When used correctly, especially in those early, pre-canonic days, the gift of tongues, the interpretation of tongues, prophetic utterances, and teachings, was the main way that the Holy Spirit gave spiritual knowledge and guided early believers into truth.
• However, the carnal Corinthians were exploiting their God-given spiritual gifts in an ungodly manner.
• Their conduct was more akin to the pagan masses than born-again children of God, and so Paul chastised them for exploiting their spiritual gifts in this ungodly way.
• He explained that unless they used their spiritual gifts correctly, they would be sending an indistinct message to both fellow-believers and the unsaved.
• Unless their spiritual gifts were used to convey the true message of God, they would convey a fuzzy and indistinct message.
• Paul likened the use of spiritual gifts to a trumpet-call in the midst of a battle.
• Just as spiritual gifts were exploited by some in those early days of the Church, there are those today who continue to use their spiritual gifts for their own purposes; for self-gratification, self-exaltation, ungodly manipulation, or to control others.

• The returnees attempted to return to their spiritual foundation, and although the Temple was eventually rebuilt, the city walls and gates remained burnt and in ruins for nearly a hundred years.
• Let us never forget that although we are many parts of one spiritual body, all the parts have a unique function to play.

• Unless we are vigilant in our spiritual life, we can find ourselves walking in the counsel of the ungodly, standing in the way of sinners, and drinking from the broken cisterns of the world.
• Without due care, we can lapse in our spiritual walk and thus neglect our spiritual growth.

• When Christians behave like the unsaved, it mars their testimony, stunts their spiritual growth, and causes the Holy Spirit to be quenched in their lives or grieved by their conduct.
• These Corinthians should have been growing in grace, maturing in the faith, receiving the strong meat of God's Word, and equipped to support one another, but their fleshly behaviour and prideful attitudes caused them to regress into spiritual infancy.
• By drifting into such prideful carnality, these Christians had become fleshly, regressed in their spiritual walk, and adopted worldly reasoning rather than godly thinking. 
• May we recognise that the shocking division and petty squabbles of the Corinthian congregation marred their Christian testimony, stunted their spiritual growth, quenched the work of the Spirit in their lives, and exposed their 'wisdom' as foolishness in the sight of the Lord.

• We should have pity for those that hate us because earlier in the passage, we are reminded that those that continue to be entrapped by Satan in this fallen world system do not have the spiritual capacity to know God and the love of God Who sent His Son to die to pay the price for their sin.

• Instead of interpreting the Word of God literally and in context (exegesis), they would read into the text (eisegesis) what they wanted it to say, to fit in with their worldview or individual biases.Just as a proud person who denies the existence of God is labelled 'a fool' by the Psalmist, so Paul designates a proud person in the Church who distorts the gospel of Christ, as 'knowing nothing' – even though they may consider themselves to be so important and clever!Here in this passage, Paul is showing the vast difference between true 'spiritual' wealth and a false 'worldly' wealth.

• Christ could satisfy their spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst because He is the Living Water and the Bread of Life from heaven, and these people missed it.

• He had been divinely called to denounce Israel's spiritual apostasy and proclaim severe judgement upon them.

• Paul constantly kept this little community of maturing Christians in his heart, and it was with deep affection that he remembered the three spiritual gifts and graces that were manifested in their lives.
• The apostle knew these spiritual qualities can only be exhibited in a life that is persevering in the faith, walking in spirit and truth, and working the works of God through the sufficient grace and supernatural power which He supplies.
• The faith demonstrated by these justified believers is the spiritual foundation upon which all spiritual work is anchored.
• It is the faith that translates into spiritual works that honour the Lord.

• Paul was a pattern of the 'perfection' to which we must strive - for although we will not be totally conformed to Christ until the resurrection/ rapture, nonetheless, spiritual maturity is attainable and those that are spiritually mature should be willing to suffer and die for Christ, as exemplified by Paul.
• All Christians do not have this attitude, for everyone's spiritual development towards full maturity depends on their walk and their progress in the sanctification process.

• Having been born from above, we are part of a spiritual Body.
• But every one of the hundreds of privileges that have become ours by faith in Christ contain a supernatural element, for we have been 'blessed with all spiritual blessings' because we are His workmanship and are one with Christ, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them.

• The dear pleasure of Paul's heart and his deep spiritual burden was for Israel's salvation. His personal longing and pleading prayer was that God's chosen nation would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and place their collective trust in His sacrificial work for the forgiveness of their sins.
• Paul's greatest joy would be the spiritual awakening of his people, and yet he knew blindness in part was happening to Israel and would continue until the fulness of the Gentiles had come in.

• The dangers of neglecting our salvation, drifting away from the truth, being warned against unbelief and disobedience, the problems of spiritual infancy rather than spiritual maturity, and indifference to the truth of God's Word, are dangers that are addressed in the other warning passages.

• In this Church dispensation, it is those who believe by faith who are reckoned by God as the spiritual descendants of Abraham.
• Believing Jews and believing Gentiles alike are the spiritual offspring of Abraham; we are justified by faith.
• In this dispensation of the age of grace, those that do not trust in the only begotten Son of God, whether Jew or Gentile, are not considered by God as the spiritual seed of Abraham.

• The blessed hope we have in Christ is that this natural, physical body, will be raised a supernatural, spiritual body.

• While the carnal Christians of Corinth who reverted to spiritual infancy received words of encouragement, no such praise was awarded the Galatian believers.

• He took the spiritual leadership of his family seriously, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings to the Lord for himself and his ten children.

• Christ also removed the spiritual barrier between Jew and Gentile so that by grace through faith in Him, those that were afar off were brought near.

• However, as the spiritual seed of Christ we died with Him on the Cross at Calvary.
• How important to remember that the old 'me' is dead and that I have been 'born from above' into spiritual union with Christ, and my new life is hidden with Christ in God.

• In the final three verses of his second letter, Peter is explaining that unbelievers, who for a time are enticed by false teachers into believing a fake gospel with a counterfeit Christ, end up in a worse spiritual state than at the beginning.

• The spiritual unity that prevailed between the Lord Jesus and His Father was so magnificent and pure that He could legitimately claim, I and My Father are one, and, He who has seen Me has seen the Father.
• Although He was fully God, the Lord Jesus lived His life demonstrating to humanity how God wants every spiritual man to live - indwelt, led, and guided by the Holy Spirit of God while at the same time abiding in unbroken fellowship with our Father in heaven - every moment of the day.

• Through death, Christ triumphed over the powers of darkness, the forces of wickedness, and all demonic rulers in the spiritual realm.

• This is a truth that should rejoice our heart every moment of the day. By virtue of our new birth and spiritual resurrection, we have been placed into an eternal, spiritual union with Christ and been made part of His spiritual Body, which is the Church.
• As members of that spiritual Body, we are positioned in Him and spiritually seated with Him in heavenly places.

• The travesty of such a scenario is that having come to a superficial knowledge of Jesus, they have no foundational truth and become discouraged with a teaching that cannot fulfil any spiritual needs and entangles them back into the world.

• The challenge for this group was the spiritual renewal of the people of God.

• As God directs, they follow after peace without any spiritual compromise, while binding up the broken peace of others, which is caused by depression, disease, divorce, and distress.

• Paul demonstrated a deep desire for their spiritual growth and maturity, praying for opportunities for them to serve the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

• The struggling Psalmist may be shrouded in spiritual darkness or be facing a black night of deep despair or despondency, and yet he does not shrink from rejoicing in the God of his salvation with an explosion of praise, for he is confident that God is his light in Whom there is no darkness at all, and the Lord is his Saviour so he has nothing to fear.

• Peace and holiness are to be our spiritual condition as well as our spiritual position.

• Spiritual fruit can never be produced through man's effort.
• Although indivisible, LOVE has been listed as the firstfruit - not from importance but as the foundational requirement from which the other spiritual characteristics flow.
• Spiritual JOY is from the Lord, and gives strength and rejoicing, even in the midst of problematic and painful circumstances, while spiritual PEACE is inner tranquillity and godly composure, that is free from anxiety through faith in God's Word.
• While some people are adept at perfecting certain of these spiritual characteristics in their own strength, the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, can only be genuinely manifested in a spirit-filled man or woman.
• It is only as we grow in grace, become mature in the faith, and keep a short rein of sin in our lives, that we will produce the spiritual fruit that exemplifies the spirit-filled believer.

• Together we make up one New Man, where Christ is the Head... and we are all part of a new, perfected, and spiritual creation.

• For although Paul was absent from them in body, his spirit was with them and he was delighted to witness their spiritual discipline and the solid front they presented by their unshakable faith in Christ Jesus our Lord.

• One of the biggest dangers in our spiritual walk is to render service to Him without receiving from Him the sufficient strength to carry out the task.

• We face a spiritual enemy, but His protection and help is equally sure and steadfast for all who are called by His name.

• With this in mind, after cataloging a fearsome list of the most traumatic circumstances that may impact our lives or afflict us in the physical, emotional, and spiritual realms, and having proclaimed that nothing can separate us from Christ's love (including tribulation and distress, famine and nakedness, peril, persecution, and death), Paul emphatically declares that we are conquerors in every single situation that crosses our path, in time and into eternity.

• He was an inspired teacher with great spiritual awareness.

• We are to seek spiritual values and not seek after worldly trifles.

• He knows the way we take, and as we submit to the trials that inflict our soul and the inevitable 'child-training' we will face in life, He has purposed to draw us ever closer to Himself, until we can say with Job: I have heard of You with my ears but now I see You with a deeper spiritual understanding.

• Here in James, we discover that the spiritual meaning of first-fruit is to give Christ first place in our lives.

• But this is the amazing thing; we are not to do this by our self and through our own strength, but God Himself is going to carry out all the work that is needed to bring us into spiritual maturity.

• Titus was Paul's spiritual son in the common faith.

• He preached Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ ascended, and Christ glorified... and his mission was to bring the lost to faith and the saved to spiritual maturity.

• Every believer is endowed with one or more spiritual gifts, graciously bestowed by the Holy Spirit according to His desire and as He wills.
• How blessed we are to know that the same Spirit Who brought all things into existence according to His mighty power, is the same Holy Spirit Who endows each of God's children with spiritual gifts - apportioning to each of us the gifts and grace of His choosing.
• He rejoiced that they were not lacking in any spiritual gift.
• However, Paul knew that spiritual gifts can be abused and used incorrectly and did not want the believers there to be ignorant concerning the giving of spiritual gifts and their correct usage.
• Although there is a wide variety of spiritual gifts It is one and the same Spirit Who works all these things, distributing (gifts) to each one individually just as He wills. Christians do not choose their preferred gift or gifts. They are distributed to believers as the Spirit chooses. Spiritual gifts are not awarded for good behaviour, earned by a man's meritorious works, achieved through academic excellence, or purchased for a handsome sum of money.
• There are no spiritual gifts that elevate one Christian above another in importance.
• And although there is a huge diversity of spiritual gifts, there is only one Giver of spiritual gifts - the Holy Spirit of God.
• The Spirit, in His sovereign power, gives His favours freely and bestows His various gifts and graces upon each of His children in accordance with His own will, and it is often through these spiritual gifts, spiritual ministries, spiritual activities, and spiritual offices that the Lord carries out His plans and purposes through His people for His praise and glory.
• We should not become puffed up because of our spiritual gift or exploit it for our own purposes. Rather, we should rejoice that our names are written in heaven, praising Him that He has regarded us with His loving-kindness and tender mercies.

• Human hearts are hard and cold to the things of God and devoid of spiritual understanding.

• He is the One who points us to Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith, Who died and rose again so that we might live and be raised into life immortal, and He is the one that bestows on us gifts of the spirit and spiritual graces. 

• The marks of a maturing Christian is a love for God, obedience to His Word, and a desire to honour Him in all things, and John gives some clear instructions on practical Christian living and some obvious indications of spiritual growth and Christian responsibility.

• Unlike the spiritual gifts of prophecy, tongues, and knowledge which will pass away and cease forever, the spiritual fruit of love is eternal - for love never fails. 
• The argument rages on whether or not certain spiritual gifts ceased in apostolic times, after the Holy Spirit of God had moved His appointed apostles and prophets to complete the God-breathed, New Testament canon of Scripture.

• In the New Testament, we are encouraged to give freely, generously, and cheerfully to the Lord, not for material wealth or financial gain as so many teach, but for the spiritual blessing that abound when God is given His rightful place in each our lives.

• At the start of Chapter 10, Paul gave some specific examples of Israel's wonderful spiritual benefits.
• Every one of them 'ate of spiritual food' when manna fell from heaven and they ALL 'drank spiritual drink' as refreshing water gushed from the side of the Rock, which was identified as Jesus, the Rock of their salvation and Sustainer of their soul.
• We have the same spiritual benefits.
• But because of Israel's ungodly behaviour, wrong attitudes, rebellious ways, and spiritual apostasy, the nation failed to carry out God's plans and purposes.

• He expresses the need for spiritual wisdom and godly discernment and warns of the dangers of doubting the gospel.

• On the contrary, they are spiritual weapons which will defeat ALL our spiritual enemies, and they are ALL found in Christ.
• An example of one of these 'spiritual enemies' is given by the writer of Hebrews.

• While 'overseers' or 'bishops' generally attend to the pastoral and spiritual needs of the saints and provide encouragement and edification to believers in their Christian walk, deacons are those entrusted with other material needs or financial issues that might impact the Christian church.
• The simple structure of the early Church is clearly defined in the opening verse of this letter to the Philippians, where saints, spiritual leaders, and temporal stewards of the Church, are all greeted by Paul and Timothy whose humble status as bond-servants of Jesus Christ, is also in view.

• How we glorify God for the supernatural love of the Father of our Lord Jesus, Who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.

• The focus of the previous chapter is to be filled with the Spirit of God, and one result of this spiritual 'filling' is the manifestation of a submissive spirit, godly love, and a true respect for one another.Not only are wives to be submissive to their husbands and men are to love their spouses as Christ loved the Church, but these godly characteristics should be displayed in their children's behaviour, and so we read: Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.To obey their parents 'in the Lord' means that children should carry out instructions they receive from their parents, as if it were God Himself Who was directing them.

• Many like to focus on social changes in the community while denigrating the gospel of Christ, the salvation of the lost, and spiritual maturity, while others continue to teach an equally concerning works-based religion, rather that a grace-based faith which too often promotes the unbiblical teaching called 'replacement theology' - which incorrectly teaches that the Church has replaced Israel.

• Having been saved by grace through faith, he wanted them to grow in grace and reach spiritual maturity so that they may finally reach the fullest knowledge of the open secret, which is Jesus Christ Himself.

• The spiritual life to which we are all called is not an easy path to tread, and Christ Himself warned us that in this world we will have tribulation, while Paul reminds us that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

• And as we abide in Him and live godly in Christ Jesus, the indwelling Holy Spirit abides in us and produces in us an abundance of spiritual fruit.

• He is the light and life of God and when we trusted Him as Saviour, He filled our human spirit with His Own pure light, and God desires that all His children will grow into spiritual maturity.

• And John outlines in His epistle the identifying marks of a true Christian, and details the hallmark of the spiritual believer who enjoys close intimacy with the Father and sweet fellowship with the saints.

• They were addressed as saints and were rich in every spiritual gift, but they were behaving carnally!

• He wanted to be confident that his joy in seeing them would be reflected in the delight they felt towards him.Paul made up his mind that he would not make another painful visit to these believers without repairing any damage first – and so he wrote his letter to make sure that any ongoing feelings of resentment, offence, or pain towards him, were gone:I wrote as I did, he explained, so that when I came I would not be distressed by those who should have made me rejoice, - because of bickering, ungodly behaviour, or worldly carnality.Paul's earlier letter of correction was to halt their carnality and their fall from grace, and re-establish their spiritual development in the Lord.
• He wrote it so that his next visit would not cause him continuing sorrow over their stunted, spiritual growth, but that their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ would be a cause of great rejoicing for Paul and great joy for these saints of God.
• And may we also be ready and willing to accept any corrective advice from other believers without allowing it to destroy our fellowship, but use it as a means to re-establish our spiritual growth in grace.

• Although all Christians are given one or more spiritual gifts, not all believers receive the gift of tongues, as is too often taught in certain churches today, but on that special day of Pentecost, every single one of the disciples that were present were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

• We are to hunger after God's righteousness and to thirst for spiritual discernment.

• We also greatly rejoice in the Lord our God and how our soul delights in the God of our salvation Who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight.

• Circumcision was to be a physical reminder to Israel of the important spiritual circumcision of the heart, which God desired of His people.
• Circumcision of the flesh illustrated a spiritual cutting away of sin from the life of a believer, which spoke of a life dedicated to God.

• It covers the Spirit's enabling power to overcome the world, the flesh and spiritual wickedness in high places, which are the wiles of the enemy against the Lord most High.

• Water baptism is a beautiful outward sign of the spiritual baptism that takes place at the moment of salvation.
• The Church is the Body of Christ and by faith we are all baptised into that spiritual Body by the Spirit of God... the moment we are redeemed.

• When God declared Abraham justified by faith, He swore by Himself because He could swear by no one greater, and that same oath stands firm for ALL who are the spiritual seed of Abraham.

• Living a victorious life that honours God is only accomplished when the world, the flesh, and the devil, are kept nailed to the Cross, and the Lord is given supreme authority over a life. Just as a victorious life is produced when the first five spiritual directives are addressed, so too the final five things James mandates in verse 9: Lament and mourn and weep.
• At first glance, the instruction to be miserable and weep appears to be a curious command for a Christian until we realise that we are dealing with victorious living in the spiritual sphere rather than the physical realm.

• Unlike the rest of Christ's apostles who walked with Jesus throughout His earthly ministry, Paul was called to be God's apostle to the Gentiles following the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Ascension into heaven.Because of Paul's unusual calling and unique ministry, there were many who criticised his teaching and challenged his authority, which is why he so vigorously defended his calling and frequently made reference to the direct revelation he received from the Lord.Here in first Corinthians, Paul found it necessary to severely admonish the believers in Corinth for their disgraceful conduct which discredited the Lord, tarnished their witness, and rendered them carnal Christians and spiritual infants.The unruly disunity, riotous behaviour, greedy indulgence, and disregard for the needs of their brothers and sisters in Christ, was even displayed during the celebration of the Lord's Supper – which Paul had already taught was a time to reflect on the reality of Christ's sacrificial death, until His coming again.And so in this passage, Paul is preparing to criticise and correct the shocking behaviour of these carnally minded believers, by reminding them of his own unique calling and the direct revelation he received from the Lord, which had already been taught to them on an earlier occasion.He reminded them that he had been called personally by God, and delivered a specific message regarding the importance and seriousness of the Lord's Supper, which they were currently disregarding:For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, Paul reminded them, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and gave thanks, and broke it and said, 'This is My body, which is given for you – do this in remembrance of Me.'May we never forget the enormous price that was paid for our redemption, at the Cross.

• Saul made a seemingly valid excuse for his disobedience which even sounded quite spiritual: My troops were abandoning me and the Philistines were advancing, he pleaded, so I forced myself to offer the burnt offering!

• Spiritual renewal is to be exercised in practical ways; by putting off the old and putting on the new, and the incredible position, promises, and privileges we have in Christ, should be sufficient motivation to live godly lives.

• But as we approach the end of the epistle, he does not want us to forget that despite our heavenly privileges, we are living on earth and engaged in an ongoing spiritual battle.
• We are not in a conflict fought with fleshly weapons, sophisticated technology, cleverly devised battle strategies, or procedures of war, but a conflict that is fought in the spiritual realm.

• The generations of idol worship and spiritual apostasy that followed, was considered as the time of Israel's spiritual adultery, likening them to an unfaithful wife.

• They had fallen into a narcotic sleep and were presenting no spiritual challenge to the enemy.
• The congregation at Sardis practiced grand religiosity but did not live a spiritual life.
• The shocking truth was that faithfulness, godliness, and brotherly love had almost been eliminated from their lives, and Christ's strong criticism was a warning to these spiritually slumbering Christians, to wake up and to reverse the lamentable spiritual demise into which they had fallen - if the church was to survive. The true gospel of Christ, which was once the foundation upon which this church was built, had been eroded, and John was instructed to urge these believers at Sardis to strengthen whatever remained of the faith that had once been delivered to these saints.
• The church was sick unto death, but yet there was still a little life left and, in this urgent appeal, John implores them to stir up their spiritual resolve and reignite their flickering flame of faith.

• Secondly, they are to respond in the spiritual sphere.
• The prophecy of the dry bones speaks of a physical restoration of the whole nation of Israel followed by its spiritual resurrection.

• But praise God that the second Man is a heavenly Man with a spiritual nature, a godly character, and a life-giving Spirit.
• Praise God that all who are born of Him become a heavenly people: a spiritual people, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own special possession, to the praise of His glory.

• The Lord Jesus is not only the Source and Sustainer of our physical life - the old, fallen, biological life we inherited from Adam, but He is also the Author and Finisher of our new, spiritual, eternal life, which we received by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

• This was a physical scene that was to illustrate a spiritual truth that would become the guiding principle of every member of His Body.
• It was a life-principle that was to become the code of conduct of all spiritual Christians.

• He purposed to illuminate our spiritual understanding through His written Word, so it would be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, by means of His Holy Spirit Who would guide us into all truth.
• But although the enemy of our soul may afflict us with temptations and trials, God is good, and in His grace He will use those trials to test our faith and develop in us spiritual endurance that brings us into a maturing faith in Him.

• It would spur them on to greater spiritual maturity, strengthen their faith in God even more, and produce their mutual 'joy in the faith'.

• However, this godly love is only possible as we abide in Him so that His abiding love in our hearts is enabled to flow back to our Heavenly Father in thanksgiving and praise... and out to others as a healing stream of living refreshment.When hatred towards another believer is excited in the heart of a fellow Christian, it is a hindrance to spiritual fellowship and an obstacle to godly growth.

• That inner power is not of ourselves but the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit, for He is continuously working in the inner man (that new life in Christ that we received at salvation), in order to transform us from glory to glory into the person and character that befits a spiritual man, a child of God, a joint-heir with Christ, and a citizen of heaven.

• In times of weakness and weariness, he ran for comfort into the loving arms of his faithful Shepherd and in times of spiritual thirst he cried, Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I, for David had proved God’s faithfulness towards His people and that His everlasting mercy is new every morning.

• He touches on mysticism, with its emphasis on dreams, visions, feelings, and one's personal experience of the spiritual realm rather than on Christ, and in this verse Paul cautions against asceticism, where holiness is acquired through severe self-discipline, self-denial, the renunciation of pleasures, or austere religiosity, rather than through faith in Christ. 

• John also identified Jesus as the One sent to dispel spiritual darkness and Who came as the heavenly Lord of eternal Life.

• As the story unfolds, it is evident that there are godly principles that were shelved by Esther and her uncle, in the political, cultural, physical and spiritual arenas.
• Perhaps we should rejoice that God will use sinners, such as you and me, to bless others and to increase our own spiritual temperature, and perhaps we should recognise that God is in control of this fallen world system and use this story to develop our personal trust in God and maintain a growing faith in His Word.

• Every time Christ's piercing 'woe' rang out, He accused them of serious spiritual failure and pronounced them as religious deceivers.

• The message that Paul delivered was a demonstration of the power of God as the Holy Spirit worked through him, causing a spiritual stirring in the hearts and minds of those that heard his healing words of truth which brought them to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

• The beautiful picture of Christ as the true Vine captures the spiritual union of Christ with His people.
• He is the Source of our spiritual life, the fountain-head of all spiritual fruitfulness.
• But as we abide in Christ and remain in Him (and He in us), He will do His good work through us so that we will produce the spiritual fruit that only flows from Him.
• As a natural vine-branch should bear sweet grapes, so we who are spiritual vine-branches should bear forth the spiritual fruit that comes from our true Vine: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

• It is only as we abide in Christ and He in us that the process of spiritual growth can take place and the spiritual fruit of righteousness be imparted.
• In Galatians 5, Pauls presents us with a comprehensive list of spiritual fruit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• We received the imputed righteousness of Christ at salvation, but the impartation of the spiritual fruit of righteousness, is rooted and grounded in godly acts of faith which can only be produced as we allow the Spirit to lead and guide us in all we do.

• It was Solomon who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, and although he was a king with unmatched wisdom, and wealth which outstripped every other mortal being, he was a man who lost his spiritual direction over time because of the carnal choices he made.

• Despite breaking their covenant with the Lord, staying in apostasy, and indulging in spiritual adultery, the Lord is ready and willing to save His people from their sins.

• There will be no enemies to fight – neither natural enemies nor spiritual foes.

• The division of light from darkness as God's first act of creation is almost a picture of the illuminated soul that has been made alive in Christ Jesus through spiritual rebirth and placed into the kingdom of light, while the ones that are dead in their sins remain a prisoner in the kingdom of darkness.

• If the spiritual fruit of love is to bud, blossom, and mature in our life, we must keep our eyes looking to Jesus and our hearts submitted to the Spirit, as we humbly kneel before the Father and say: Thy will not mine be done.

• But it beautifully illustrates the victorious life and spiritual richness believers can enjoy if they walk by faith and not by sight.
• While the literal land of Canaan is a physical inheritance promised to God's earthly people, Jesus is the spiritual inheritance promised to His Body, which is kept for us in heavenly places. 
• For 40 years, Israel was prevented from entering their rest due to carnality, and in the same way, the redeemed Body of Christ who have been brought into glorious union with Him can remain in a spiritual wilderness of spiritual infancy and live a defeated life throughout our sojourn on earth.
• He has pledged to defeat all the spiritual giants we may face.
• It is in Him alone that we can live a victorious life and claim a better resurrection in our own spiritual battle, and it is all done by grace through faith in Christ alone.

• Although initially written to Jewish Christians in the fledgling years of the Church, Hebrews is written to all believers to warn of the spiritual dangers we face, if we follow Israel's example in their wilderness wanderings.
• Like them, we are under His protective care and sovereign authority, but we are in spiritual danger if we ignore His voice, harden our hearts, test His patience, disobey His Word, and do not press on to spiritual maturity. 
• In like manner, instead of pressing on, growing in grace, maturing in the faith, trusting His Word, acting upon it, and resting in Him, we too can remain in spiritual infancy.
• Only 2 did not remain spiritual infants.
• Like Israel, we have a choice to live our entire Christian life in spiritual infancy; wandering in a wilderness, frightened of the 'giants in the land', living defeated and disobedient lives OR we can trust His Word, hold fast to His promises, and live a victorious life as we abide in Him, grow in grace, mature in the faith, fellowship with the Father and do not lose faith when challenged by life's circumstances.
• Similarly, once justified, Christians do not lose their salvation, but lack of faith can keep us defeated and wandering in a wilderness of spiritual immaturity, rather than claiming the precious promises of God that are 'yes' and 'amen' in Christ.
• Rather, may we press on to spiritual maturity and worship the Lord our God all the days of our lives, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.

• The things about which John and his fellow apostle wrote, produced in them a harvest of joy, for a knowledge of the gospel produced spiritual well-being in all to whom they ministered.
• John was getting on in years and he knew that his letter would not only rejoice his own heart, but would bring spiritual joy to all who are one in Christ; a mutually beneficial joy; joy unspeakable and full of glory!
• He knew that the truth he taught, not only completed his own joy but would fill to overflowing the inner, spiritual joy of his readers.
• But there is an even greater joy that can be experienced, when the people we care about and those with whom we share the truth of the gospel, also discover that same, inner thrill that bubbles up into a spiritual knowledge and understanding of who we are in Christ and what He has accomplished on our behalf: These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete, these things we write so that your joy may also be complete

• Even the archangel Michael said to Satan: The Lord rebuke you. However, we can certainly resist his evil advances, for we have been given the spiritual tools to do so.
• We have been given all we need for life and godliness and we have the spiritual armour of God that is necessary to withstand his evil wiles and stand fast in this evil day.

• These are truly heartening words that have helped to bring consolation and comfort to generations of believers young and old, who have clung to this precious promise as a spiritual lifeline.

• We are born into the family of God and have become a new creation through spiritual birth, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
• Unlike Israel, we are not a chosen race of earthly people, but a spiritual body of believers that has been called out of every nation and language and people and tribe, to be His holy, heavenly people with a celestial citizenship.

• The punishment for adultery was stoning, but the wages of all sin and every trespass, whether sins of the body or sins of the heart, whether physical sins executed in our body or senses, or spiritual sins undertaken in the secret smugness of our own prideful hearts, the wages of all sin is death, and death means separation from God.

• The truth that Paul is teaching has come through the Spirit of God Who combines spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
• Spiritual truth is not acquired through any approach other than by direct revelation to God's holy apostles and prophets, which is recorded for our learning in the holy Scriptures.
• The Bible must remain our singular plumb-line for spiritual truth... for when we deviate from the truth of the Word of God, we are on the downward road to substituting man's flawed wisdom for the perfect wisdom of our Almighty Creator and Heavenly Lord.

• We are the spiritual Temple of God that is being built together by His Holy Spirit.

• In this dispensation, Christians are a spiritual house and all believers are living stones that are being assembled together as a fitting dwelling-place for God, with the Lord Jesus Christ being the chief Cornerstone.
• Not only are we living stones that are being fashioned into a spiritual house, but we are all ambassadors of God, representatives of the King, and a holy priesthood: You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, Peter writes, in order to offer up spiritual sacrifices, that are acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ. 
• The spiritual sacrifices we offer to God are presented on His authority.
• We are living stones that are being fashioned, honed, and built into a spiritual house because of what Jesus did on our account.
• We are only able to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God because we are identified with JESUS. Jesus identified with our sin through His sacrifice so that we could be identified with His righteousness, by faith.
• But now Christ is our merciful and faithful High Priest, for His death tore down the barrier between man and God so that all who believe on His name are born from above, adopted into God's family, are living stones, a spiritual house, and holy priesthood.
• And because of Christ's sacrifice, we can come fearlessly before the Father to intercede for others and offer up our spiritual sacrifice of prayer and praise.
• We have been endued with heavenly gifts and holy graces so we can offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God, in our service to Him and in our ministry to others.

• There may be times we wished we had lived in the days of the apostles and SEEN the Lord with our own eyes, and felt His gentle touch, but how blessed are we who have not seen Him in the physical realm but have SEEN Him with the spiritual eye of faith and are still able to cry as Thomas did, my Lord, and my God.

• It is only after the sovereignty of our Heavenly Father is fully acknowledged, and we are encouraged to ask Him for the spiritual and physical needs of our everyday lives, that we come to the verse that says: And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

• But if or when we sin, we give the old, sinful nature supremacy over our new born-again nature, which can stifle the inner workings of the Holy Spirit in our life, quenching or grieving Him and stunting our spiritual growth.

• We have been raised up into a new life in Christ because we are Christ's spiritual seed, because we have become a brand new creation, and because we have exchanged our former earthly residency for a glorious new citizenship which is reserved for us in heaven.
• We, who are His 'spiritual seed' were 'in Christ' when He was raised from the dead, and so we also were raised with Him on that day.
• Since we have been raised to a new life in Christ and since, by God's grace, we have been clothed in Christ's righteousness, given the free gift of eternal life, been showered with every spiritual blessing, received a heavenly inheritance, and been seated with Christ in heavenly places, we are called to set our hearts and minds on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honour at God's right hand.

• There is probably no higher pinnacle of praise to the glorious grace of God than the first few chapters of Ephesians, and there is possibly no more staggering truth for believers than to be accepted in the Beloved: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
• It is because we are accepted in His Beloved that when God looks at you He sees you as being placed in Christ and identified with His righteousness.Some Christians suggest that God's freely bestowed grace is reserved for 'good' Christians or 'spiritual' believers, but this distorts the character of God for it implies that you have to do something to stay saved or to remain accepted in the Beloved.

• The first topic Paul addressed in his epistle to the Corinthians was their inappropriate, childish behaviour, which not only presented a poor testimony to the unbelievers in their local community, but also caused them to revert to carnal behaviour and regress into spiritual infancy.
• They exhibited the fleshly characteristics of a natural man instead of living in spirit and truth and Paul had to reprimand them for their unholy behaviour and remind them that their carnal conduct would result in the loss of spiritual rewards.

• It opens our understanding that we are in a spiritual battle, in which wickedness in high places can only be overcome by the blood of Christ.

• We live in a fallen world, and there are many challenges that face the believer who has not only trusted Christ for salvation, but is also ready and willing to deny self, take up his cross, follow Christ’s example, and say without compromise – Thy will, not mine, be done.The newborn baby Christian has to grow in grace and mature in the faith over an unspecified period of time, to reach this level of maturity in his faith, while other who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ may slip in and out of carnality and worldliness for many years, stunting their growth and even regressing in their faith back to spiritual infancy.Many, if not all believers, are called to become mature in the faith by walking in spirit and truth and living godly, Christ-centred lives, but few are willing to exchange the cosy blessings of early Christian infancy, for the difficulties that inevitably follow the mature believer.
• In other words, they simply remain in spiritual infancy and keep repeating the first stage of their Christian faith, over and again, without pressing on to spiritual maturity.Many are falsely taught that becoming a Christian will secure a quiet life and provide a ticket to prosperity, with numerous earthly blessings and a free pass from God, to prevent or remove any difficulties or dangers that may arise.
• We live in a fallen world with a spiritual enemy who prowls around as a roaring lion – or appears to us as an angel of light – seeking to devour, destroy, or deceive us.Jesus clearly told us that in this world, those who believe in Him would suffer persecution and pain, and Paul expands that truth by adding that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

• May we recognise the serious spiritual danger we are in and determine to teach the truth diligently to our children, and to our children's children when we sit in our houses, and when we walk by the way, and when we lie down, and when we rise up.

• While God saw His entire creation was good, Adam was unique within His creation because the Lord formed man to be like Himself, with the capacity for moral, intellectual, and spiritual choices.
• Triune man is endowed with a God-consciousness, spiritual capacities, and a moral nature that distances him from every other created being.

• Although they are doing well and maturing in the faith, Paul is encouraging these believers to do even better in their spiritual life.
• Having finished telling them some personal details of his recent ministry, Paul's thoughts transfer to the spiritual wellbeing of these believers, and he starts exhorting them to keep putting into practice all the things he's taught them and to excel in their spiritual walk more and more.
• Paul begs and admonishes them, by virtue of their mutual union with the Lord Jesus, that they carefully follow his instructions on godly living and apply all they have learned about spiritual matters so that they please and gratify the Lord.

• How important that we ALL recognise our spiritual poverty and that riches that are found through faith in Christ.

• Every child of God is called to mature in the faith and grow in their spiritual life... and throughout the New Testament we are taught that maturity in the faith is tested and established through trials and tribulations.
• Peter reminds us that the testing of our faith is more precious than gold and calls on us to rejoice despite being distressed by various difficulties, while Paul encourages us to exult in our trials, knowing that tribulation is a necessary step towards spiritual growth and godly wisdom.
• But there are times in our Christian growth that we recognise a lack in our spiritual maturity and desire to be infused with godly wisdom from above.

• For although the genuine faith of a spiritual believer will indeed be accompanied by good works as James indicates here, a carnal believer may have a genuine saving faith and yet be walking in the flesh and not showing forth any good works in their lives, similar to the carnal Christians that Paul described in 1 Corinthians 3.
• Only the fruit of saving faith can be demonstrated through the good deeds that are carried out to the glory of God by the spiritual Christian who is walking is spirit and truth.

• The first chapter of Ephesians is weighed down and running over with countless spiritual blessings in heavenly places, which God our Father has freely given to us by grace through faith in His only begotten Son.

• Although there are many more qualities that Paul lists in later verses connected with a man's spiritual maturity, his reputation in the community, his behaviour at home, his relationship with his family, and his ability to act with self-restraint whether alone or in company, this verse deals specifically with the important issues of a man's moral attitude, ethical behaviour, and spiritual maturity.
• It is not surprising that Paul lays such emphasis on the character and integrity of church elders when they have such an influence on the spiritual development and eternal destiny of other Christian men and women.
• Although the characteristics of an overseer, which are clearly laid out in this verse, and the essential qualities Paul lists in this passage, are of the highest ethical, moral, and spiritual standard possible, they are, in reality, the qualities and characteristics towards which we should all strive.

• However, they remain ignorant of the spiritual exchange between God and Satan.
• Zophar showed himself to be a traditional legalist who was both opinionated and dogmatic in his monologues, and who considered himself to be super-spiritual.
• Perhaps if these comforters been spirit-filled counsellors who listened to Job's pain rather than becoming prosecuting attorneys, their interaction with their friend may have been different and we would not have gained so great an understanding of the spiritual war continuously raging in heavenly places, or the way God deals with man in the heavenly realm.
• May we learn the many spiritual lessons presented in the drama of Job, avoid the mistakes of his critical comforters, and in everything fulfil the will of God in our lives.

• How often our pleading prayer is for an escape from the fiery trials that we may be facing, without recognising that there are important lessons in all circumstances of life which God desires for us to learn; lessons which teach us spiritual truths that we might otherwise have missed.

• The many precious promises, spiritual gifts, and eternal glories that God has prepared in heaven for those that love Him can never be broken, for to do so would discredit His righteous name and contradict His eternal character.

• Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and spiritual understanding is the right of ALL born-again children of God.
• Those that do God's will by trusting His Word will understand, through Spirit to spirit communion, whether the teaching is from God, while those believers that choose to walk the way of the flesh, will be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine; eternally saved but without spiritual understanding.

• The heavy yoke of bondage to sin is a weighty burden we all have to carry on the treadmill of life, which causes physical weariness, spiritual fatigue, and emotional exhaustion.
• However, this offer was made to an unresponsive and unrepentant generation, who were more interested in their temporal needs being met than their spiritual needs.

• Maybe they had started to fall into apostasy once again, and the psalmist recognised an ongoing need for spiritual revival and restoration among his people.

• The day is coming when Christ will rule and reign on this earth as King of kings and Lord of lords and Satan will be bound in the bottomless pit for a thousand years, but during this Church dispensation we are engaged in an ongoing, spiritual battle with unseen spiritual forces of evil.
• We are members of Christ spiritual Body and our spiritual battle is against a spiritual enemy.
• We are engaged in a spiritual battle with a wicked fallen angel and many evil principalities and powers who are the authors of evil, deception, lies, fear, sin, evil, unrest, and war.
• The spiritual forces of evil will use the unsaved and blinded people to carry out their nefarious plans, and it is the evil spirit of wickedness that works in the sons of disobedience.
• And because our battle is against spiritual rulers of darkness that influence the evil that is taking place in this world today, they can never be defeated in our lives through natural weapons and worldly ways. There is only one way to defeat the spiritual enemy that seeks to shipwreck our faith in Christ Jesus, and it is through the Holy Spirit of God Who works in believers.
• We are in Christ and He is in us and we are to fight this enemy with the spiritual weapons that He has provided, through the Word of God and all-prayer.
• He triumphed over Satan through His death, burial, and Resurrection and only through Him and the spiritual weapons of war that He provides, can we successful wrestle against the evil forces in our world today.

• Unless one has a new birth, a spiritual birth, one cannot see God's kingdom.
• Nicodemus did not understand that Jesus was talking of a spiritual birth, an immediate and irreversible action that is carried out in the human heart by the Holy Spirit, on everyone who believes in Christ Jesus.
• The new birth is a supernatural, spiritual act that is performed by the Holy Spirit within the heart of a man or woman, the moment that they put their trust in Jesus Christ.

• The peace of God is conditional and can be lost, destroyed, or broken, when we fall into sin, engage in fleshly activities, or regress into spiritual infancy.

• The natural man cannot accept or understand spiritual things that are revealed from God.

• Another way of wording this could be the outworking of Christ's Resurrection in our lives which will result in spiritual rewards. 
• He knew that the good works that we do to the glory of God and not for the honour of self will result in spiritual rewards as the Bible clearly teaches.

• He had compassion for this son of Abraham who had been imprisoned and enslaved in his physical and spiritual prison for so long.

• Paul prays for spiritual blessings, godly wisdom, practical obedience, moral excellence, and a Christ-like character.
• Paul knows that spiritual knowledge, godly counsel, and an understanding of the Scripture, is able to make us wise for salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• But he also knows the dangers of spiritual pride, which promotes 'self' and encourages unloving Christian service that relies on our own human strength and our own carnal capacities.
• Paul knows that unless our Christian walk and spiritual witness is rooted and grounded in love, it is as sounding brass and clashing cymbals.

• The apostle Paul showed great concern for the spiritual wellbeing of the believers in Philippi.
• What godly lives we would live if it were not for the foibles of others!But this life is fraught with disappointments and disturbances and we are warned that murmuring is the consequence of unbelief, while disputing is the product of a discontented heart which brings in its wake grievances, disease, envy, and sin, as exemplified in Israel’s forty-year long wilderness wanderings when the people murmured against God's wisdom and complained about His gracious provision.God, in His wisdom, knows that patient-endurance, humility of heart, and a soul that trusts in the Lord, does not spring forth from a stress-free life but is the out-working of a man or woman who has received God’s sufficient grace to face any temptation or trial which may happen along the way.Paul knew that a Christ-like character is not birthed from a bed of ease and that blameless integrity and spiritual maturity takes many long years, if not a lifetime, to fully develop as one is tried like silver or honed in a millstone of suffering. God uses the storms, sadness, disappointments, and dangers of everyday life, as well as the difficult people that cross our path, to conform us into the likeness of Christ.Let us, therefore, resist the temptation to enter into murmurings and disputes with one another and let us trust the Lord in all things so that our lives will be a living sacrifice that becomes, to Him, a sweet fragrance and we will become blameless and pure children of God, without fault in this warped and crooked generation.

• He is riding in triumph to set up His kingdom, having defeated the forces of spiritual wickedness in high places.

• He will save Abraham's physical descendants (the Jews) at the end of the Great Tribulation and He saves Abraham's spiritual descendants (the Church) during this post-Cross dispensation of grace.

• In Job, we read of a man whose spiritual character and understanding grew when he was placed under extreme pressure, and Israel's king David discovered the trials he faced only served to develop his understanding and appreciation of God's long-suffering faithfulness towards His people.

• Physical death is the separation of the spirit and soul from the body... but the spiritual death of the unsaved person is separation from God and is the essence of everlasting punishment.