Growing In The Local Church Series

Growing In The Local Church

Philippian 1:6 - Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

Reasons to grow spiritually:

* Gives you authority over the enemy

* Makes you tough

* Allows you to discover your strengths and weaknesses

* Enables you to take on bigger battles

* The bigger the battles you succeed, the bigger the territory God gives you

* Spiritual growth is a life-long process

Cooperate with the process

There is a process that God has for you to fulfill your purpose, but you need to cooperate with God because He has placed a seed of success inside of you. It is a seed of greatness that can only grow if you are cooperating with the Holy Spirit and sometimes that process can be painful. So many people give up because of this and choose the easy way out. They want to be blessed but do not want to endure the painful process to maturity.

Remember, the Holy Spirit is your Helper and He will help you through your journey of growth. God will not do everything on His own. He will only do the things that you cannot do. God will do the impossible but He wants you to do the possible. The first thing that you can do is to make yourself available and then allow God to bless that which you have made available. God cannot bless nothing. Fall in love with your life’s purpose and your destiny. When you discover who you are in God, you will not have to be pushed to go to work, or to do those things that need to be done.

Personal growth

If we really believe in the coming move of God which will birth the church in power, we need to make sure that we have prepared ourselves for this anointing. Before the Holy Spirit was poured out on the early church, they prepared by separating themselves from everyone and waited patiently in the Upper Room. These were men and women who followed Jesus and had walked away from their careers, businesses, family, and religious community, and waited by faith for the anointing that Jesus promised before He ascended into heaven.

There were so many who followed the ministry of Jesus, but there were only one hundred and twenty who prepared themselves for this visitation and they were the only ones who received God’s power and they took this anointing to the nations. In the same way, we need to set ourselves apart and prepare for the apostolic anointing which will transform the church entirely. The Parable of the Ten Virgins demonstrates this so vividly. There is a clear difference between the two groups of five virgins whom Jesus referred to in the New Testament. Their story is told in Matthew 25.

The essential difference was that one group of five had the oil of the anointing, and the other group did not. The church has a destiny which will be characterized by the apostolic anointing which will manifest a greater corporate demonstration of God’s power. Preaching, programs, and fellowship can never become a substitute for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Only through a personal, intimate relationship with God the Holy Spirit can we be empowered to bear fruit that will produce a Kingdom legacy.

1. Study

We must progress spiritually and grow to maturity. A child cannot grow physically without proper food. Good parents are concerned about proper nutrition. They want their children to eat what is good and not what is bad for them. Likewise, we cannot grow in our gifting without feeding on God's Word. Some Christians believe that they can do without the Bible and only need to wait on God for a prophetic word. But all ministry is based on God’s Word and cannot flourish without it.

The anointing works through the Word. Make sure you know the Word thoroughly in order to be more effective in your anointing. Study the anointing evident in the lives of God’s leaders and ministers in both the Old and New Testaments. Read and meditate on the Word of God continuously over and over again. Equip yourself by studying further through a Spirit-filled anointed Bible College.

Training and mentoring is a Biblical concept. In the Old Testament, Elijah and Elisha had groups of prophets that looked to them for leadership. Jesus trained His disciples who in turn trained other leaders to do the work of the ministry. To function successfully in the anointing will take years of study, practice, and training to develop to its fullest potential. To be a good steward of the gifts God has given to us, will mean that we will have to invest time and effort in order to increase in the anointing.