If you want to grow higher in your faith, then you will have to understand what you must do. Most of us have the wrong idea of what we must do, and in all of our striving, we are actually being a hindrance to what must happen for us to grow higher in our faith.
To be led by God, you must wait for God. “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:25-26 NKJV).
The greatest obstacle we must overcome is ourselves. We hold onto the right to ourselves with such ferocity that the Lord can barely move us. God will not force you to change, but you can be sure He will allow those circumstances that will cause us to finally yield to Him.
The most useful saint is not the one that does the most but yields the most. “Now yield and submit yourself to Him [agree with God and be conformed to His will] and be at peace; in this way [you will prosper and great] good will come to you” (Job 22:21 AMP).
The strongest attribute we have is our pride, and that is exactly what stands in opposition to us growing higher in our faith. So long as we stand tall in our pride, we will not bow down before the Lord in all humility. He won’t lift you one inch until you first lower yourself to where He will pick you up.
The higher your faith, the lower your pride. “What sorrow for those who are wise in their own eyes and think themselves so clever” (Isaiah 5:21 NLT).
Once you start surrendering to God and emptying yourself of yourself, then it will be there that the Holy Spirit can fill you, and the life of the Lord Jesus Christ can start to reign in you. It will be here where you will find how wasteful all your prior striving truly was.
The more surrendered you are, the less striving you will do. “Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him to help you do it, and he will” (Psalm 37:5 TLB).
Your potential is never reached by your own power but by the power of God, who is in you. God can do more in you in two seconds than your power can do in a lifetime. Victory for believers is found when they forfeit themselves before God, who is their victor.
Wherever you don’t have victory, you are relying upon yourself. “But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57 NLT).
The next step is crucial, as after we have surrendered to God and He has filled us with His Spirit, we must then exercise our newfound spiritual life. We must do our part in living out the Christian life that God has given us the power to do.
God has worked salvation into you, but it is up to you to work it out. “…work out your salvation [that is, cultivate it, bring it to full effect, actively pursue spiritual maturity] with awe-inspired fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12 AMP).
The higher faith is not found by striving in our own power, but it doesn’t just happen without us playing a part in the journey. We must make choices in what we will do. When we are tempted, God will provide the escape and give us strength, but we must choose what it is we will do.
The only sin you cannot escape is the one you do not want to. “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 NKJV).
God puts the life of His Son Jesus in us, but we have to work the life of Christ out through us. So long as we remain alive to ourselves, we will not have the Life of Christ reigning within us. God has put Christ in us, but we must be the ones who will let Him be the Lord over our lives.
The greatest obstacle that you can ever overcome is yourself. “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 NLT).
The higher faith is not complicated, nor is it filled with striving. It is a life that lives out the simple truths of God and yields to His power so that we can be who He wants us to be. A child can do it, so you can be sure that you can do it, too.
Live a life worthy of the mercy God has shown you. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8 NKJV).
Blessings to you,
Paul Balius
The pure in heart shall see God, and that, not only in the hereafter but also in this hour. Even now, in this present state and span of life, the vital vision of His vivid, vaunted Self is to be increasingly ours through the supernatural sight in the lambent light of the Spirit sent from Heaven. Is there anywhere any sight as widely winsome, as wondrously worthy as that of beatifically beholding the One Beautiful God? Is there any motivation as marvelously magnificent for marking up obedience to our matchless Maker and munificent Master as this? Paul in Romans 1 tells us unequivocally that the invisible attributes of God are poignantly presented and preciously perceived by the things made, even His eternal power and divine nature.
The heart of David, God-romanced and entranced King of Israel, in the twenty-seventh Psalm, exulted and extolled, “One thing have I desired, that will I seek, that I may behold the beauty of the Lord all the days of my life…”
Obedience to our Sovereign’s overtures of opulence opens ourselves to be spiritually sensitive and sharpens spiritual sightedness. It purifies one’s heart to perceive the personality, the intentionality, the emotionality, the supernality, and the eternality of our righteous, resplendently royal Redeemer more nearly, more clearly, and therefore, more dearly, more sincerely. Grandly, given to gazing our hearts upon our inimitable, immutable God of all wisdom, potency, and splendor, in the divine doing so transfixed, we are transfigured and transported into His loving, lofty likeness and just jubilation, which likeness is the manner and manifestation of mutual honor. Such honor is the highest honor of Heaven, the happy holiness of His divine nature infusion, our privileged partaking of and possession by this selfsame celestial collusion.
Increasing obedience to the Son of God’s love empowers man’s spirit to know Him, to go with Him, to grow in Him, to sow to Him, to flow in Him, and to show Him to others more effectually, more efficaciously. Obedience positions us in the place of being anointed with the oil of gladness above the madness, the badness, the sadness of the wanton, the worldly, and the wicked.
Of obedience of alignment with truth, humility, and righteousness, we ride revelatory galloping white horses triumphantly with His Majesty. The arrows of our order of obedience are sharp in the hearts of the King’s enemies to salvation and sanctification of saints and sinners. We applaud our riding Master, vanquishing Victor, the Holy One and the Just.
Obedience from the heart draws the love sought blood-bought bride of Christ into the living flames of blazing love intimacy in this now season with the very One she longs for and belongs to by consummate creation, righteous redemption, and royal marriage as His eternal partner, His ceaseless companion. The degree to which we shall both exceedingly enjoy the Triune God and experience the excellency of His enjoyment of ourselves in love union and close communion through the endless ages is in absolute, direct proportion to the degree to which we choose to consciously cultivate closeness with this glorious Godhead in His graciously given moments throughout each day He grants. These exceedingly precious moments and epically predetermining days shall be chief, cheerfully conspicuous memorials to our secret, personal history believingly built in our beautiful Beloved, evidenced throughout the memory scape and landscape of endless eternity. For those who diligently seek Him, He is a rich rewarder and no reward does He delight to award His chosen as much as that of intensifying, inveterate intimacy with Himself in the linguistically limited, indescribable infinitude of love that wondrously works by the fathoms of faith.
We must mindfully maintain that invigoration of intimacy with our Lover Lord,, funds and fuels indefatigable obedience, especially over the long term. By gritting our teeth and clenching our fists in the supposed strength of our fallen flesh foolishness, we have plied, tried and lied to ourselves, merely became weary and worn, religiously rigid, vainly void of the riches of ravishing relationship.
Instead, as day by day, we deliberately draw near, with singular attention and ardent affection beholding His Face, we become more and more susceptible to the scintillating seduction of His superscendent splendor. His precious, peerless Presence supernaturally burning in us and burnishing about us the treasure of His transcendent beauty, His furiously fiery love, His everlastingly undiminished omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, our hearts’ capacity and spirits’ tenacity enlarges and energizes. And this, so that we in our rejoicing revival shall be more receptive, more responsive to His overtures of companionship, more compassionate with His ceaseless compassion for the creation He went to the cross of crucifixion to conciliate. Thus transpiring is that we are increasingly correctable, teachable, and leadable for the worshipful loving obedience of His wondrous Majesty in His steadfast, sinless strength. Yes, by His supernatural skill to carry out His perfect, perfecting will, as instruments of good, channels of blessing, weapons of righteousness, vessels of glory to neighborhoods and nations. Alleluia!
The more wisely and less wistfully obedient we are to our Divine Romantic, the more our hearts are excited by and enthralled with Him, and the more His Excellency is extolled and exalted. The Beloved of our souls is the Bridegroom-King of Heaven! By the invisible, intimizing, ever present, ever watchful, caring Holy Spirit of grace and glory, the bride is awakening in maturing bridal love, readying herself for the Beauty of her burning, the Yes to her yearning, the Amen of her affection, the Righteous of her reflection, the Just of her jubilation, the Unction of her universe, the Lamb of her love, and the Lord of her liberation, and a sudden shift of celestial consciousness that shall summarily sweep her ecstatically off her world-woven feet into the bosom of her holy Husband in Heaven forever.
“When You said, ‘Seek My Face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your Face, Lord, I will seek”‘ (Psalm 27:8).
Abba, Jesus, Eternal Spirit of Holiness sent from Heaven, dig within us deepest depths of desperation to know You and go with You in the flaming Fire of ever-increasing Love-Desire, in spirit and in truth, in the beauty of holiness. Fill and flood those depths with Yourself, and we shall be Your obedient overcomers, who sit down with You on Your throne, even as You obediently overcame, and are seated with Your Father on His throne. All honor, glory and dominion be to You alone, now and through ages without end. Amen.