* Growing Up in God

And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.  2 Peter 1:5-7

Spiritual maturity helps us maintain God's standard and also helps us achieve emotional maturity. If we lack emotional maturity, important decisions may be made in a fit of anger, self-pity, doubt or delusion. This can have disastrous short and long-range results.  Apostle John recognized this as he prayed for his spiritual brother:  that everything is going well for him and that his natural body is as healthy as his soul is prosperous.   3 John 1:2

As we mature spiritually, we develop the "Fruit of the Holy Spirit" which is evidence of spiritual maturity that results in emotional maturity:  

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.  Galatians 5:22-23

. . . But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. . .  Romans 12:2

Spiritual maturity leads finally to transformation, another prerequisite that enables us to know the voice of God. What natural man (human nature) desires to do and what God desires for our life is different. This creates a conflict between the flesh (natural man) and the spirit (spiritual man).

Apostle Paul warned us of this conflict when he said everything the flesh desires goes against the Spirit, and everything the Spirit desires goes against the flesh. There’s a constant battle raging between them that prevents us from doing the good we want to do.   Galatians 5:17

Apostle Paul recognized there’s a continuing struggle of the flesh against the spirit in matters relating to the fulfilling of God's will. He identified this struggle as taking place in the mind:

But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.  Romans 7:23

Because of this he urged:  

us to offer our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to God, a sacred offering that brings Him pleasure; to know this is our reasonable and necessary worship. Because of this, we can’t allow this world to mold us in its own image. Instead, we have to be transformed from the inside out by renewing our mind.   That’s when we’ll be able to discern what God wills and do whatever God finds good, pleasing, and complete.  Romans 12:1-2

 Apostle Paul is beseeching us; which means he is pleading, imploring, or begging. The phrase "present your bodies a living sacrifice" indicates an unreserved surrender to God.

 To offer something for a sacrifice means to give it up completely. In the Old Testament when a sacrifice was made, it was given completely to God to be burned with fire, consumed by the priest, or both, as the law indicated. The giver of the sacrifice had no further claim to it.

 So, it must be in our surrender to God; a total surrender; a release of our will to God’s will.   There is a way; a manner that this is done.  We must change first through our efforts:

if our life is just about satisfying the impulses of our sinful nature, then prepare to die. But, if we’ve invited the Spirit to destroy these selfish desires, we’ll experience life. Romans 8:13

We have to kill our earthly impulses: loose sex, impure actions, unbridled sensuality, wicked thoughts, and greed (which is essentially idolatry).  We need to avoid these things at all costs; it’s because of these that God’s wrath is coming [upon the sons and daughters of disobedience].   Colossians 3:5-6

The natural man, the old self nature, must die to the world and the flesh and succumb to the will of God. This is what is meant by "transformation." It is being changed into another image that is patterned after the Lord Jesus Christ.  Apostle Paul gets it, he said I have been crucified with Jesus —I’m no longer alive—but Jesus is living in me; and whatever life I have left in this failing body I live by the faithfulness of God’s Son, the One who loves me and gave His body on the cross for me.  Galatians 2:20

They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh.  Galatians 5:24

But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.   1 Corinthians 9:27

 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.  Romans 6:12

Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.   2 Corinthians 7:1

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.   Romans 6:11

As we succumb to the wisdom of God; come into agreement by faith and acceptance, we find our life; our physical, mental and emotional state, in a much better place because we are no longer warring in our spirt and we are at peace with the entreaty from God:

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.  James 3:17

Actual physical crucifixion, as Jesus experienced, is an unnatural death. There is significance in the fact that the death prescribed for the self-nature is crucifixion. The fleshly nature of man will never die a natural death. It will not die voluntarily. It must be put to death by force just as in actual crucifixion in the natural world. 

As Apostle Paul lets us know, such surrender precedes the knowledge of God's will. If we want to know God's voice and His will, we must first surrender. We often want to reverse the process. We want to know His will, then decide if we will surrender to it. But our ways are not God's ways and He says through His word to surrender and be transformed by the renewing of our mind first and then we will come to know His good, acceptable and perfect will.  

The reason we are hesitant about surrender is because we do not understand God's will is always, good, acceptable and perfect. We are afraid to surrender to God totally because we have not grasped this basic concept; this declaration from God towards us:   

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.   Jeremiah 29:11

To be in God's divine will, we must totally surrender to Him; consecrate our self for Him – to a new and living way.  To serve God better in the future is the reason we’re here today; seeking God in a very solemn way, taking heed to the things we do and say.  Offering ourself to Him.  Realizing now that's God we need and with His help we deny ourself and put our hands in His.

 

That's growing up in God.