In Luke 2:40, 52 we see that Jesus had a posture for growth, he practised growth. You must be deliberate about your spiritual growth. That is what informs you to decide on your local church and the local church determines your growth agent, your growth agent determines your diet and your diet determines your growth.
If one can accurately experience this dimension of growth, every other thing will follow. The bedrock of everything is the spiritual. Once you have the right posture and prioritise the spiritual, every other thing takes shape automatically, it sets the tone for every other aspect of our lives.
People say the spiritual controls the physical, it controls everything because God is the foundation of our lives. We have seen the scripture in Luke that Jesus grew, and increased in wisdom.
In Romans 12:1-2 we see how we can be conformed, by the renewing of our minds. One major way to renew our minds is through the word of God. After salvation, one of the most important things that should happen to a believer is the transformation of the mind. This is important because it will be difficult to comprehend revelation, depth, or teachings from powerful ministers if this does not happen. Mental growth has a way of sharpening our comprehension.
One question we should ask as students is “why do we have different levels of comprehension and understanding”…? You need to learn to engage your mind appropriately and when you do, consequently your mental capacity begins to increase.
You’ll experience a shift in your mental capacity, understanding and reasoning. In the parable of the sower, the scripture is quick to tell us why some of the seeds did not grow.
Here we learn that even the seed that fell on the good soil had different levels of yield.
So why was there a different yield capacity even though it was the same seed, same soil and the same sower?
Luke 8:4-15
Hence, this is where we begin to understand that, although we are given the same opportunity for exposure; we turn out differently.
“Life sorts everybody out” such that you find yourself in different places, phases and levels.
It is also important to note that it is not what we have received that matters but rather what we have done with what we’ve received and this is why we profit differently with the word of God.
The System of God is not partial. His words are Yea and Amen.
God does not like anybody more than you. God does not favour your best preacher more than you.
Outside the Holy Ghost, each of us has duty and responsibility. That was why Jesus from day one was intentional with the way he lived his life. The way he chose to live his life was unique, just because he knew there was a purpose attached to his growth. The purpose he knew earlier determined his practices. The purpose brought a sense of priority.
What is the role of anyone that is having a strong posture for mental growth?
– The same way you are passionate to grow spiritually, you must also be passionate to grow mentally.
Understanding precedes revelation. If there is no understanding, forget revelation.
Formal education does not guarantee understanding but taking responsibility for mental development, mind-opening, and having deep comprehension of things that pertain to life.
After salvation and the gift of the holy spirit that comes by the new birth into the life of a believer, the next thing a believer must do is to take advantage of the new birth and the presence of the holy ghost in his life to ensure that his mind gets open up; That is where everybody has a responsibility.
What are you doing with the Holy Ghost you have?
Speaking in tongues should not be the only evidence that you have the holy spirit in you. The holy spirit also has a way of removing the limitations around the mind of a man such that a man’s reasoning is out of this world.
An example of men in scripture was Daniel and Joseph. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were not the only Jews in Babylon, there were other Jews that were lost in the crowd but Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were different, they stood out and were outstanding in fact they were 10 times better.
Others were eating well but the three Hebrews took a pulse. He was not eating the delicacy of the king. The man put in charge of them insisted they eat to prevent him being killed by the king. This is to show how well Daniel and the two other Hebrews made up their mind not to eat the king’s meal.
Daniel 1:3-8
There was something much more than food. There was something worth more than nutrition. These are men without the Holy Ghost. They understood the dynamics, concept of what the Holy Ghost can do in a man. These were only done in the old covenant. Now we have the Holy Ghost and have the Spirit of God on the inside.
The people that wrote the Scripture were at first afraid to write the Spirit of God from the original translation as the Whole Spirit. It is not an inferior version to the God of Heaven. This means there is nothing taken or removed. It was an inferior version to the creator of heaven and earth.
This is why we would understand the dynamics of the whole Spirit of God as He breathes into Adam to name all that He has created without no tutelage.
Yet we are studying what Adam named. The study of what we have done in the university was by the infusion of the Holy Ghost.
The first man was sound until the corruption. He was close to Yahweh in His image until the fall.
God created trees and inside the trees there were a lot of products from those. God is the creator. The dimension He has created us is to be a co creator.
In the same vein we should be creating solutions to solve problems. The unbelievers only engage their minds yet more creatively.
The question is now what we have but what we do with what we have. The platform to which we can engage what we have, which is the Holy Ghost, is our mind.
After the Spirit and our soul is our mind. Failure, success, defeat, victory, possibility starts from the mind.
Once our mind has gotten to the end of the possibility, then will we see it. However, if our mind has not gotten to the end of it, we will not see it.
Most of the inventions that we use today are made by Christians. They give credit to the Holy Ghost and the supernatural and to what God can invade the mind of a man with.
This is why the renewing and transformation of our mind, expressing a shift from where it used to be is a journey to where God will want us to be is the beginning of the journey that cannot be expressed by our mouths on this side of eternity till we see Jesus face to face.
It must be received and conceived.
Once your mind is stretched, you cannot go back to that level of thinking. The reason many of us are still struggling is because we have not embraced a new thought pattern or mindset. They refuse to engage their minds, they do not allow the spirit of God to help them, consequently, they see impossibilities. This is why many end differently in life. Life on the other hand has a way of placing us at different levels.
There is a journey of life transformation that you must embark on, it requires a mental shift and when people come to this point, they become record breakers and boundary pushers and so on. This is because at this level they are no longer what they used to be. In an innovation class what you will learn is building on existing solutions. The technology may not be new as it could just be an improved version on the basis of someone thinking without any limit or barrier.
Jesus was in the wilderness and his disciples came to him that there is a need for food and he instructed that food be given to the multitude. One of his disciples exclaimed that a man’s salary for a year will not be enough to feed the multitude. However, Jesus knew what to do, he said that to stretch their faith. Do you know that even the boy who brought the five loaves of bread for the multitude, had his mind stretched already.
John 6:1-13
The reason why many of us are where we are is because of our mindset and the limitations we place on ourselves. You may think your mind has been stretched but there is more to conceive. If you don’t conceive it first in your mind, nothing can happen. Before you see it on the outside, someone had conceived it and began to run with it.
Once you can conceive it then it can be achieved and the moment you attain that point you have passed that stage, that is the least you can do. Changes are prone to occur and it may happen through a friend or through your environment. However, you must come to a point where you determine that a particular life you lived will be the least you have experienced, such that you start making decisions around where you see yourself and conforming to it even when the resources are not available.
Your mindset is very critical as it determines your spiritual growth and financial growth likewise. It also determines what you are believing God for. It reduces the size of your vision that it even shapes the size of your fishing net.It is fundamentally a thing of the mind. There is no doubt about you being born again and having God’s spirit in you. However, can we know how stretched your mind is? It determines what you believe God for.
Jesus is a good example of someone with the right mind posture. He was determined not to leave Jerusalem with his parents but to stay back with the teachers. The nature of his questions and manner of conversation kept his listeners wondering that even his mother kept those things in her heart.
Luke 2:43-51