GOD BEING A PARENT
While I am not a parent, leaving me to look on with an over-view eye, I’m looking at God as a parent and his “born-again” brand new babies, in spirit, who mature in remarkably similar ways in relation to growth the first go ‘round, in the flesh.
But we experience the process of spiritual life within a mind that barely listens to the prompting of the body for correct nourishment, and then suffers from an evil assignation attempt against our species by a demon with a demonic army, which lead to us having misbeliefs about our, supposed, responsibleness for controlling our growth, physically and spiritually. This misbelief is part of what I hope to highlight and address because I think many people are ridiculing themselves for requiring growth. I want to add some perspectives I think are biblical. And that’s another word for true.
Being born-again is different from being born as a baby in body because when God recreates us we’re within a body that is grown. But it’s similar in that it becomes a newness that, immediately, places our dependance on him and on no one else. But because we’re not babies, nor toddlers when he recreates us into new beings, although this spiritual umbilical cord is growing a brand new you within relationship and a brand new relationship within you, we are babies while we can already walk, born with shoes on our feet in the natural before we we’re ready for shoes on our feet in the spiritual.
I have heard a couple preachers harshly respond against themselves as soon as God tells them they are ready for shoes, feeling like he or she had been told a criticism. They respond with a frustration against themselves for having not been wearing the Shoes of Readiness that is apart of the armor of God believing that because it was told to them, commanded, they were supposed to always been ready for shoes in the spirit, thinking God was intending on birthing a full-sized and full-ready full-able, nearly independent spirit.
I think it would be a mistake to hear the words of Jesus as he said, “Can you add a single inch to your height by effort?” as a command that you’re suppose to find a way to accomplish that, for the reason that it was observed. That would be to take his words and run with them, not for Jesus’s intended use, but used as a weapon of fear loosely based on the specific words he used but contextualized by our worst fears about what he might possibly could have meant, corrupting it into an assumption sounds like, “ He probably, means to destroy me.”
I do not believe we can understand anything God does without understanding that he longs to be our Dad.
We begin as helpless as babies, in the spirit, born-again into a state of crying for our Father’s voice and nursing on all his strength, comfort, and love while he responds, “I’m here,” after every time we check-in, asking him, “Abba?” He doesn’t grow weary of replying, no matter how many times an hour or how many hours in a day you need to check-in with him.
There’s going to be times of learning and times of play and times of resting and times of making friends. And he’s near us, all the time.
And there are going to be times of healing; the more submitted the wound, the more painless the surgery.
And then there’s going to be times of readying for a future that needs a great deal of strength. This is needs learning to abide – this is learning to eat solid food; where do we find it, how do we seek in his word, and how to we chew our food, and when do we know full is full enough, and how often do we eat? We learn about our needs, in regard to God’s spirit becoming food for strength, joy, and wisdom.
But we didn’t need to have begun, day two of being born-again, able to eat solid food.
So, there’s no righteousness to chastising our growth any more than there would be righteousness in belittling a baby while he or she is chewing food at dinner until insecurity attempts to convince them, their worth as a person was on loan and suddenly the bill is due because you’re accusing the baby of failing at birth for not having had been born equipped for solid food. If a voice were so ignorant and so evil, you’d easily call the demon out as speaking evil. It’s not always so easy to call out an evil thought when it sounds like your own heart. That’s why I’m writing this, to add to the perspective to help everyone be a lot more gracious with the concept of being born children, in the natural and in the spiritual space. God is good. And God is sovereign. What he says goes. And he said making children who require growth, even slow growth, is a good thing; and that means, enjoyable. God enjoys your spiritual childhood, seeing it as precious, much like parents cherish the months and days of babyhood.
No toddler needs to harm their own soul with harsh words, saying they should have grown faster; their parents are still grieving the passing of a stage of the life of the person loved by every space available in their human capacity to love because they know they’ll never to live another day like that, ever again. But they grieve with hope because the days to come have all new goodness and little rewards of getting to know a person during these slow growth seasons, and the times of sudden growth.
Getting ready for solid food
Essentially, there are seasons of quick growth resulting from the milk being served by preachers. Eventually, you’re going to grow. With growth means a greater need for more substantial food.
If the preachers you’ve been listening to aren’t saying anything new or you’re not hearing the word of God like you used to, it’s probably time that God is going to help you eat the scriptures by searching out wisdom, relationship, and identity in his responses to the nation of Israel and the nations of the world, and individuals near to him and far from him.
He will help you.
One way you’ll know if you’re reading in the right place is words that once sounded like garbled discombobulated juxtaposed phrases of seemingly unrelated subjects or concepts with flow as ideas build one on top another.
Then we must stand.
After we’ve grown on some solid food, a while, we’ll be strong enough to stand.
This is when we’re needing to know who we are before we go some place really good. It’s a no bullying-zone. But we’re needing to set down all the negative things ever spoken against us by people or familiar spirits in the unseen realm.
You can’t believe in Jesus of Nazareth as God while pretending that demons aren’t real. If you’re still trying to pretend that demons aren’t real, I doubt you’ve entered the presence of Almighty God or accepted your identify in Christ, because once you do they get very obvious. You’ll see their proclivity. And then you’ll be in repeated situations to rebuke them out of people. And if you’re going to follow Jesus, you’re going to become one with God.
Standing can feel like waiting
Waiting well is like standing while the door to heaven behind you remains closed but the promise is there and the keys are in your pocket: it’s choosing to believe you’re safe on nothing else but God’s will, which is a framework of our freedom by his works to our benefit built out of only the abundance of his love for us, personally. We rest in trust so we can enter greater rest in faith. Then we know that we are saved. Then we can live saved without fear of being forsaken.
Living out our salvation is entirely unique to your wants and personality.
So, standing.
When standing, you will discover God is your shield.
This is adding to your life, and to your name, all the power of Almighty God.
But it’s not even a tinsy-winsy bit like “feeling powerful.” It’s so far away from feeling powerful, it’ll separate you from the memory of what you once imagined felling powerful might come into your life experience as a sensation.
No, it feels like a comforting awareness of the knowledge that you are like a child standing before a remote activated fireplace, while your Father tells you to speak to the flames and command them into a fire. And with your obedience, he lights the fire. Do you need to point at the fireplace for it to work? No. Do you need to hit the mantelpiece to make it work? No. It’s just a conversation between you and your Father. Does it matter what words you use? Mostly, no. If he says, “Command the fire to life,” that’s general. If he says, “Speak the words…” that’s specific.
At the height of power, once you can do anything, there is want for relationship. Nothing else matters. That’s a cold practical reason why God isn’t favorable toward people increasing in his power while not understanding that he’s with them. While they are learning they might be distracted enough to not perceive loneliness, but he knows that the destination will be cold lack, if we don’t know him. So, it is better if we grow, slowly. It is better for us to never play in God’s power but learn that he is, eternally, with us, as a friend who genially loves talking to us then to do amazing things and grow feeling hated by God for the absence of joy from feeling loved by God.
Once you can stand, then there’s walking.
Walking has more freedom in it; your wants matter, and you’ll see how his commands are informing your soul that it is valuable in God’s eyes as a person with a personality, thoughts and wants. You are God’s plan.
This is taking you toward a joyous, heaven-like place.
But first, you must become out of darkness.
But much like there was a long growth season with your parents saying, “Trust me,” there is going to be a season where God is going to not explain things. Instead, he’s going to say, “Trust me.”
Walking while in a season where God has said, “Trust me” is like this time I told a gentleman who was driving to a corner store about 6 miles down the road, “Just keep going, you’ll see it.” I knew how much that road would change scenery before he would reach his destination. He might wait while traveling in a state of worry while uncertain, thinking every courter mile, “Here? Did I pass it?” It would have been difficult to say at the beginning, “It’s not just passed the abandoned mill, or just passed the ball field, or just passed the tiny houses, or just beyond the pond. It’s not pasted the woodsy area, or just beyond the auto store. It’s not passed the windy tunnel of oak trees, not is it just passed the school. But once you’re passing the wide-open crop fields on both sides, you’ll see it on the corner at that next stop sign.” He didn’t need to know all those details. And even though each section feels like a different village, so that he might could doubt his progress, he needed only to keep going. And he wouldn’t miss it. It’s the only business for miles. And it’s always brightly lit by the sun. He wouldn’t miss it. But I can’t donate confidence. I can only encourage with my words. But if God’s confident and says he knows exactly where he’s taking me, and I won’t miss it, then I can know the truth has spoken. So confidence makes sense as a worthy way to spend my waiting while I travel.
If a feeler in the spirit asks God, “Where am I going?” He physically cannot inform you through a feeling because you’re walking out of darkness, healing, and fighting spiritual attacks, upholding new words as truth and discarding lies that used to torment. He can’t inform you because you’re not there, yet. He can’t inform by depositing a feeling, because the way a feeler knows is by feeling; this means you don’t know what being healed feels like until you’re healed. He will drop hints, but it’s not the same. You’re not going to be able to hold a healed bodily experience before your body is healed any better than a healed mental experience. Nor is a spirit able to hold a restored spiritual life before being restored. You’re not being punshed, nor are you in trouble, and you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re between the place you came from and the place you’re going; you came from a spiritual state of death and you’re going to a spiritual place of abundance, which not even closely, similarly, resembles the previous state of death.
But once you’re out of darkness and into his light, you’ll get it saying in grateful understanding, “Ohhhh! I was dead, that’s why! That was death, but it was all death, not a little bit death, so all my previous experiences were counted as death, even the good days because I was asking for so much less than what this is. But wow! I like this. I can do eternity in this.”
a word on commands
You will be commanded to stand; it will be more firm the less trust you have in his goodness.
The more your relationship transitions from wounded slave of sin, passed servant of God, through trusted friend, beyond a rightful heir of responsibility, into a child who is loved greater than all the created universe, you’ll pass from being comforted by his stoic commands into a joyful response when he’s causal, joking, laughing, celebrating, and speaking in paragraphs.
If you’re walking out of danger or stress, where all the choices were wrong, his commands are necessary because they will cause comfort from being firm.
But this is not the destination in the relationship. And his stoic commands should not make your heart or soul or body feel on he verge of being discarded, ever. The true God will never threaten you or make you feel expendable. If he warns you, you will feel informed with a slight sense of ‘now.’
With every word his spirit sings into you strength, peace, safety, excitement, and love.
Even while your stress is high from a low level of trust in his goodness or faithfulness, he will speak assurance of grace with his attitude. Be cautious of any spirit who says, “If you don’t… then I can’t help what bad things will happen.” That is the sound of weakness. The true God is sovereign, so all things are on in his timing. And he’s all-powerful so no mistake is beyond is aid. So, in his perspective mistakes aren’t real. So, to him, you’re perfect, and you’re beyond the ability to perform a mistake, as soon as you’re accepting of him as your Father and your helper. He can’t stress out.
Satan is stressed.
Because the sun has dawned; his time is over, he’s convicted, he’s fired, he’s on the run.
God loves you.
God thinks you’re wonderous.
But he is able to heal us.
And if he heals us, all the way, so that we’re whole, then we’re going to have wants that are more fun. And so, if we like, we can choose to trust him and learn to let go of all fears, so that we can go places and do things by his power. But he won’t take us up that high, if we fear falling out of his hand. Because then we’d experience our growth in fear and not joy. He’d prefer we live in the comfort of anxiety’s morphine rather than us live in fear.
And then there’s more; just wait until you get your running shoes.
the Kingdom Seekers Ministry 