It takes time to grow spiritually.

Growing in spirituality takes time. We are, in effect, born again, so we have to grow from there. How fast we grow depends on how serious we are about wanting to know God better. There are some behaviors that we can change immediately, but our core thinking will take time to develop.

Don’t feel hypocritical if you say what you don’t actually live yet. When you are filled with the Spirit of God, you have His love, joy, peace, patience, etc. You can say that you have His patience because you have God. It’s the truth. However, it may take time for that patience to have its perfect work in you. That’s ok. God knows that you are growing, as long as you actually are growing. Keep declaring what it is that you want, and eventually you will start to see the changes.

The Holy Spirit will prompt you to respond with Him, but it will take time for you to begin to recognize His voice. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t feel mature spiritually as a new believer, or even as an old believer. The key is to want to be changed by God. What are the aspects of God that you need? Read His word, ask Him, keep asking Him. It won’t be days, it will be months before you begin to realize how you’ve been changed, but if you want to be changed, you will.

It’s almost startling how clueless the scribes and Pharisees were when they talked to Jesus. Like this question: Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? (Mat 15:2) Jesus related their question to the prophetic word from Isaiah: And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. (Mat 15:9)

The thing is, the scribes and Pharisees didn’t see it that way. There were very religious in what they did. For some it was probably political and career building, but for others, it was what was taught to them and what was right. They weren’t trying to offend God. They thought they were obeying Him by following all their rules.

The truth will keep you safe.

Danger, danger, danger. When religious people fail to see God right in front of them, you see how easy it is to be misguided. Good intentions are not the same thing as godly obedience. That’s why we are told: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1Jhn 1:4)

How do you test the spirits? By being very comfortable with the Holy Spirit. When you recognize Him, you know when it’s not Him. How to you get to know the Holy Spirit? You ask Him. Look up all the references to the Holy Spirit and see how He operates, then look to see Him in your own life. He will lead you in truth and keep you from deception.

Are your thoughts acceptable to God?

How do you think about life? What do you tend to daydream about?  Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. (Ps 19:14)

Are your thoughts acceptable to God? Somethings will not be hard to determine. You know the bad stuff that goes through your head. You feel conviction about it. But there are other thoughts that you may be so used to thinking that you don’t even consider them as being bad. Stuff that does not honor God, like worry, depression, fear, anger. Those are all thoughts that work against the good aspects of the Spirit.

Having good thoughts is serious business. Your thoughts will solidify your attitudes and actions. Negative thoughts will prevent you from trusting God. Ask God to show you if your thoughts are unacceptable to Him. Allow yourself to be sensitive to conviction. He doesn’t want to make you feel badly, but He does want to bless you more. Negativity will block blessing, so it’s important to get rid of it.

Be honest and confess bad thinking. Ask God to help you have better thoughts. The Holy Spirit is there to give you with all the good stuff. Ask Him to fill you with love,, joy, peace, patience. You’ll start having wonderful thoughts that take you straight to the heart of God.

The Holy Spirit is here to help.

When the Bible says to not grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30), I don’t think it means that we do things that hurt the Holy Spirit’s feelings. I think that God is bigger than that. I think His capacity to love is so vast, that we can’t do anything to actually hurt Him.

What I think happens is that He sees us doing things that are harmful to ourselves. Just like you would feel terrible about watching someone drink poison. You would try to stop them and feel badly when they suffered from it. He only wants to protect us, but we have to let Him.

We grieve Him when we fail to listen to Him, because He is trying to protect us and make us safe and free. When we continue in bad habits and attitudes, we actually work against Him. But He is kind and patient. He will wait until we get the message and see what He was right all the time.

But nothing, nothing, nothing that we do can make God stop loving us. Even the worst human being is loved completely by God. We may frustrate His effort, but He will never stop loving us. And when we realize that we have sinned, He forgives and forgets. He is amazing.

Speaking in tongue will make your spirit strong.

Is there a more divisive issue than speaking in tongues within Christian circles? Paul said, I wish you all spoke in tongues. (1Cor 14:5) Why? Why is it so important?

One reason is that if a message is given in a language that a visitor understood, they would hear the praises of God in their own tongue. That is, if the message were given in a public setting.

But when we speak in tongues privately, we build ourselves up. (1Cor 14:4) No, not in a vain way. It strengthens our spirit. We can speak in tongues of men or of angels. So what happens if we are speaking the language of angels? What is our spirit saying?

I think it can be number of different things. I think it can be praise to God. I think it can be releasing strategy from heaven to defeat the enemy on our behalf. I think it can be telling ourselves how good God is so we have stronger faith.

Speaking in tongues is a tremendous way to work with God to release the kingdom around you. When you allow your spirit to communicate directly with the Spirit of God, you get exactly what you need for your life. If Paul can say, I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you (1Cor 14:18), then there is a strategy of the kingdom that I am going to follow.

The Holy Spirit is your open window to heaven.

Do you ever wish you could have your own personal window to heaven? You know, that portal that takes you straight to God, where you can talk to Him about everything you need? Like an elevator that opens right in front of the throne of God? It sounds fantastic, but the truth is, you’ve already got it.

When we receive the Holy Spirit in our lives, we connect with God on such a personal level, it’s just like having our own private conference room with Him. We get privileged access because we are sons and daughters.

That window to heaven opens up every time you quiet our heart and turn to God. When you lay down your own agendas and soak in His presence, you can hear what He has to say. He can fill you with all that you need. You can talk to Him about what is important.

And the wonderful part is, you can do it anywhere. You don’t have to be in church. You don’t have to go through any special preparations. Emmanuel is with us, all the time. And what’s even better is that He loves being with us and wants to bless and guide us. That’s why He created a way of salvation.

Open the window and let heaven come in. It’s the awesome life in the kingdom of God that is ours.

Ask God for gentleness.

When you think of all the aspects of God, you don’t normally think if gentleness at the top of the list. God is big, and loving, and merciful, but we forget that He is gentle. And He requires gentleness from us as well.

When you think about it, gentleness is not for the faint of heart, especially if it’s cool to be sarcastic. It takes guts to act gently in an environment that’s built on pride. Gentleness is humble. Gentleness takes great care about the feelings of others. It’s very protective.

Let your gentleness be known to all men. (Phil 4:5) If your gentleness is known to all men, you have to be gentle all the time. It should be something that you are known for. If you are a boss, your employees should know that you will never treat them harshly, even in discipline. It means that you can correct and guide without shame or humiliation.

We are supposed to be gentle to each other, all the time. It is preferring other people over ourselves. It’s basic to kingdom principles. If we can’t do that, then we have a long way to go. Ask God to make you gentle. Your gentleness will be the touch of God to someone else’s life.

Patience will make you godly.

Imagine your life if you were patient. Not a patient, but someone who can calmly wait in the checkout line or let someone else finish a sentence. Impatience is pretty rude. It means that what ever you are doing is more important than everyone else, and they should know it.

Patience will allow you to listen to people. That is a gift. You know how it feels when you talk to someone who really listens and isn’t waiting for you to finish so they can talk? Patience lets you slow down and see the beauty in people and everything around you. When you are bent on getting your way not matter what, you miss all the good stuff.

Patience is rather key in developing you into a godly person. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:4) Whoa! Patience will do that? Yep. But we are not changed into perfection overnight. It takes time. It takes us desiring  and pressing in to be changed. We have to be patient with the progress. If we get frustrated because we don’t see instant results, then we won’t get any.

Patience is yours for the asking. Just be patient about getting it.

Self-control will change your life.

When we think about the fruits of the Spirit we want in our lives, we usually think of the obvious — love, joy, and peace. We rarely think that we want, or need, self-control. Lack of self-control can raise its ugly head in every area of our life. We can lose our temper, spend more than we should, or eat ourselves into disease.

Lack of self-control will manifest through pain, money, and frustration. Now here’s the creepy part. If you are not in control, who is? God does not manifest Himself through pain, poverty and frustration, but the enemy does. Your lack of self-control is handing over the reigns of your life to the enemy, and he will gladly take them.

How can you live happily in the kingdom if you claim to love God but fail to show discipline in your life — if you are constantly overdrawn, suffer health issues do to overeating, or yell at people in traffic?

Self-control will change your life. It will help you balance what is good and what is over the line. The Holy Spirit will lead you in this if you ask Him to. Be persistent. It takes time to change, but if you really want it, you can have it. And everyone around you will be glad you did.

All the fruits of the Spirit are your if you really want them.

For some reason, I was always a little confused by the fruits of the Spirit: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control. (Gal 5:22-23) I’m not sure why, but I always assumed that there was one “fruit” that was mine, that I was defined by. I was supposed to know which one it was and live up to it. Or I had to pick one that I wanted in my life.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The fruits of the Spirit are all aspects of God. And when we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, we have all of Him. All those fruits are in us. But they are probably not all active, so to speak.

Each one of those fruits is yours for the asking, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. Like all things in the kingdom, we have to “earnestly desire” the things we ask from God. It can’t be casual. I learned this from personal experience.

I asked God over and over for one aspect of Himself. I thought I would feel a download from heaven and be changed when I asked, but it didn’t happen like that. It came over time. As I continued to ask, He continued to change. I can see now how gradual it was.

Press into those aspects of His Spirit that you need. Keep at it, and you over time, you will see a difference.