Your Obedience, Spiritual Growth and God’s Kingdom Expansion

By Robert Peters

ll Christians must understand the importance of obedience. Through obedience people become Christians. Through obedience Christians grow spiritually. Through obedience Christians make and nurture new disciples. However, stubbornness and selfishness in the life of Christians are the very things that prevent spiritual growth. They cause Christians to stagnate and flail instead of producing and nurturing new disciples for Christ.

Discipleship is not a ministry; it’s a way of life. Spiritual growth is a way of life and discipleship is intertwined with spiritual growth. They run hand in hand.

What did Jesus teach? “Go ye into all the world and make members of all the nations?” No, He said, “Go ye into all the world and make disciples.”

GOD’S MULTIPLICATION

A disciple is one who accepts and helps to spread the teachings of another (Webster). This works through Holy Spirit power. We don’t need 72 million pastors. Let’s take one Holy Spirit-filled disciple who understands that it’s his or her responsibility to make disciples, and who follows the example of Jesus. How many disciples did Jesus make? We know He took 12 knucklehead men and spent three years with them. He spent three years walking, talking, guiding leading, and, generally, putting up with their foolishness.

Let’s see what could happen, because a disciple does what? A disciple disciples! A disciple takes his or her life and disciples. Not once a week. Not only on Sabbath. Their lifestyle, their life work, is to grow and nurture disciples for Jesus Christ. It’s a requirement that if you want to be a disciple of Jesus you grow and nurture disciples for Him. Jesus taught and makes 12 disciples and teaches those 12 disciples to do exactly what Jesus taught, then those 12 disciples go out the next year and they get 12 disciples. They, in turn, love them like family, guide them, care for them, and make them their own. And then those new disciples do the same thing. They accept the teachings of the Master and spread them.

The second year when those 12 disciples do what the first disciple taught them to do, there are going to be 144 more people, more disciples, added. Well guess what happens the next year? Those 144 disciples — after they’ve been discipled for a year — realize what their responsibilities are, and they go out under the power of the Holy Spirit and find 12 disciples each, and they disciple them.

Well, those 12 people are going to learn to do what they are supposed to do, and the next year 1,728 disciples are going to be added. So in the 10 years, there’s five billion disciples adding 61, 917,364,224 billion more disciples. When you are operating under God’s instruction, it’s not addition, it’s multiplication!

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH—IN US

A disciple is one who accepts the teachings of the Master and helps spread those teachings. Discipleship is not just about information. Discipleship is about spiritual growth. And we are going to take the time to look where God lays out in the Bible, in clear instruction, the stages of spiritual growth.

Years ago, (2009) Barna research asked thousands of ministers across many denominations where the explanation of spiritual growth and maturity can be found in the Bible. Further, the researchers asked for a definition of spiritual growth as outlined in Scripture. More than 90% couldn’t do it, and some 95% couldn’t give Scripture to explain spiritual growth.

These are people leading other Christians, to make them into God’s image, and they have no idea what Scripture says. They are unclear as to how Scripture explains spiritual growth. Therefore, the question remains for so many: how is God going to transform us from what we are — broken and sinful — into individuals who have a righteous, godlike character, with disciples? I suggest to you the answer is found in Matthew 5:3-12 (the Beatitudes), and in Exodus 20:1-17 (the Ten Commandments).

The Beatitudes are not individual characteristics of different types of people. I believe that each one of them is a steppingstone of spiritual growth into God’s likeness.

HAPPY GROWING

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. When you recognize your need for God, you are poor in spirit. When you are not so high and stuck up on yourself and you understand you need God, then you are poor in spirit. The Lord says the moment you come to Him realizing your need for Him, the kingdom of Heaven is made available to you.

What happens at that very moment in your life is God begins to show you the idols in your life. The Lord shows you the idols that are keeping you from having the spiritual growth needed. These idols are stealing His worship from you because you are worshipping them, and so He has to take these idols out of your life.

As God takes away from you the things that you worship and He begins to show you the errors of your ways, you go through a mourning process. As when a parent takes away the baby’s pacifier, you do the same thing when Jesus begins to show you the things in your life that you worship that aren’t Him. And you begin to cry when He tells you about things in your life that He needs to take away so that He can grow you into His likeness. So, He says it’s OK! I AM going to comfort you. I am going to replace those things with my character.

God takes you and begins the process of building meekness in you. Blessed are the meek for they are the ones that shall inherit the earth. This is the third stage of spiritual growth.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain” (Exodus 20:7, NKJV).

Meekness is about strength. It’s not about weakness. It’s about controlled strength. It’s about preparing your vessel so that God can fill it. It’s about having control of that tongue. It’s about having control of that diet. It’s about having control of your spirit. God has to do this in you because until He does, you’re not going to be fit to progress with the power He wants to put in the vessel that He’s preparing to hold the Holy Spirit.

Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Power is supposed to be afforded you as a disciple of Jesus Christ to cast demons out of people, to lay hands on the sick, to speak things into existence because God dwells in you. But He can’t dwell in you if you are not a fit vessel.

It’s not until after God has been working in you that you can see how screwed up you are inside. You are going to hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is the stage of spiritual growth where God fills you with the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you sense that you lack Holy Spirit power? It’s because you haven’t developed to this stage.

Let me tell you before I go any further; when the Lord taught this to me and I began to obey Him and let Him take the disciples through this, I have seen demons cast out of people. I have seen God speak through people prophecies that happened just as He said. I’ve seen God tell one person one thing and tell another person the exact same thing in a different location, and make things happen when the individuals had no idea God was speaking to both of them. I have seen people who could not have children, praying for help. The Lord sent one Spirit-filled disciple to that location where they were. The disciple laid hands on those individuals and told them they would have babies in nine months and babies popped out just like God said. I have seen individuals who have grown to this stage of spiritual growth taken away in vision, told exactly what was going to happen later that evening, only for folks to come just as God described it because they were filled with and obedient to the power of the Holy Spirit. This is not for some. This is the lifestyle that every disciple is supposed to have.

When the Spirit of God is filled in you, the purpose that God has placed in you is love. Love can flow from you to a world that is in desperate need of love. And I am not talking about touchy-feely love. I am talking about love as doing the right thing at the right time to the right people for the right reason.

We all know that the first four commandments are about our relationship with God. Likewise, the first four stages of spiritual growth are about your relationship with God. And until you get that straight, you are not fit to help anybody else.

When you have the Spirit in you, then and only then can you be blessed for being merciful, for then you shall obtain mercy. Mercy is when you don’t give people the punishment they deserve; when they do you wrong and you turn the other cheek. You can’t do that by yourself. When your heart is like God’s, understanding that He came to this earth to show mercy to us, that is when you will see God.

In the next stage of spiritual growth, in your process of developing a mind like God’s, you will understand that it is your work to be a peacemaker. God came into this world to bring man back into harmony with Him. This will become your waking, living, working, praying effort to bring a world that is lost back into harmony with God. Because you will understand that they are doomed without it.

Now this is where the fun begins. Guess what the devil’s gonna do when you finally make it to this stage of spiritual growth? When you finally get to the point, where you are walking and talking and rolling like Jesus? You know, just like the prophets of old? When you finally get to the point where you are submitted to everything God wants to do in your life, you’re going to be persecuted. But, once again, God is going to give you all the resources from Heaven that you need to make it through this persecution. Because it’s not about you, it’s about Him.

It’s not bad enough they are going to persecute you for righteousness sake; they will also talk bad about you. Now you know who it is that’s going to talk bad about you, right? It’s the saints! When somebody like Jesus walks into church, it’s the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests who can’t stand the Jesus in you, because it’s making them look bad!

Well, the Lord said rejoice now, when they are cutting your head off and throwing you in oil, trying to wipe you out. The Lord said rejoice now and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven. Don’t forget they persecuted the prophets who were before you, the same way. And Jesus said, look if they did it to me you know they are going to do it to you. This world is not my world. The god of this world is who they love. So when they see the God in you, and its not the god of this world, guess who else they gonna hate? You too!

ROBERT PETERS III, DSL, M.DIV, is Head Chaplain at Navy Recruiting Command and writes from Millington, Tennessee.