Spiritual Maturity

Prerequisite to spiritual growth is your view to Bible study and that is that you know what it says. You have to hold it high and learn what it says. There are no shortcuts. There are no shortcuts. Spiritual maturity is related to the application of truth, is it not? Spiritual blessing isn't something you get zapped with while you're just wandering through a revival tent. It doesn't happen that way. It's not something that's going to happen to you because a sermon was a real zinger and captivated you. You may have a momentary working of God in your heart, but spiritual
maturity and spiritual growth is the long-haul process of the application of divine truth in your life.

It calls for meditating on it day and night. It calls for observing to do everything that is in it. And then you begin to make your way prosperous and have good success. It doesn't happen in short spurts. It doesn't happen with ecstatic event. True spiritual development, true spiritual growth is just like human growth, it is a process fed by nourishment. And that nourishment is the Word of God. Jesus said, "Sanctify them by Thy truth, Thy Word is truth." Sanctification doesn't happen in a stadium, at a big rally. Sanctification doesn't happen at a camp somewhere where somebody gave a message that grabbed your heart.

Sanctification is a long-haul process by which someone is matured into Christ's likeness through the intake and the living out of the understanding of divine truth. So we must learn then what the Scripture says and then we can begin to make a deeper effort to understand what it means by what it says. And that puts it into the fabric of our life and allows us to begin to live it out.

(Adapted from John MacArthur - What it takes to study God's word)

How true...