7 Steps to Spiritual Maturity: Christian Life Stages and Growth

Understanding the four phases of being a Christian

Recognizing the purpose of each phase

Learning to cooperate with God's will

Discovering how to overcome sinful habits

where you need to move to. You can sense and feel and be comfortable that you're obeying God and God and you are happy, but that doesn't mean God's happy. You might be missing the entire concept of whether God's happy with you. And so you need to be able to understand by looking at the physical, help you understand the spiritual, whether you're moving along with the whole concept. Does that make sense so far? So first I think I want you to remember is there's four phases of being a Christian. Okay? So far, that's all right? Now, that first phase in 1 John, and if you want to open your Bibles, I'm going to first look at 1 John 2. I'm going to reflect through basically three portions of Scripture. 1 John 2, Hebrews 5, and 2 Peter 1. We'll be jumping through those three areas because those three actually lay out what I'm talking about today. If you follow the scripture that in 1 John chapter 2, I want to make sure you see first of all in verse 12 where I get the idea of scripture saying that first of all there are infants spiritually. John writes, I write to you little children because your sins are forgiven you for his namesake. That is the baby state, phase 1. Now, we get the understanding of that. If you look up here, you'll see that infant is the first stage. But in verse 13 in the King James, it sounds like it's repeating itself. It says, again, I'm writing to you little children, the same two words again. But the problem is they didn't accurately translate the scripture. That second word is not the same Greek word as the first one. It's actually translated to be children. or we could say child. It's not the same as infant. The same way that we don't use the same term for infant and child, there's a division of idea here. The second term in 13 says, I've written to you children because you know the Father. Different class of Christian. Then he goes on in verse 14, if you'll notice in Scripture, he says, I've written to you young people or young men. and he says, because you are strong and God's word lives in you, you have won the victory over the evil one. Third phase of being a Christian. Then he goes on and finishes and says in John 2.14, I have written to you fathers because you have known him who is from the beginning. So I'm getting my four phases directly out of 1 John. I'm not making this from psychology or from social studies. This is Bible. I'm showing you that there are four specific phases of being a born-again believer. And those four phases have specific purposes or God's will is directly dealing with something. If you can learn what God's trying to deal with in your life, you could actually cooperate with Him, right? In other words, if you know when you go to school that you're going to math class, you can cooperate with a math teacher and study math and not history. or music or whatever, when you understand what God is trying to do in your life in that phase, then you can start to stop resisting Him, doubting Him, questioning Him, wondering what He's doing in your life, why He doesn't do this and why He's not doing that. You start to cooperate with Him and get where He's trying to get you to be. And this is each phase has specific purpose that God has as He deals with you. So level one, infant stage, has very clear teaching here. If you look up here, you'll notice I've got some basic points. Level one, there's one thing clearly that God desires from you once you become a Christian. Stop sinning. Stop sinning. And so the purpose of level one is to deliver you from the sinful habits, wrong habits you've carried all your life. if you become a christian and you're 40 years old you've gathered a lot of bad habits more than somebody who became a christian say at 10 but still bad habits no matter what are there have to be broken and stopped and brought to deliverance before you can be useful any further in your spirituality you must get it clear in your mind what sin is and how to get rid of it that is his will. If you don't, you don't have to worry about what's his will, what's his will. His will is you get busy to get rid of that sinful habits. Just like a drunkard or a drug addict or somebody that's trying to get free from their habits, you have to wrestle, stretch, fight, box with, wrestle with, get through it, and stop it. You must really deal with it in a clear-cut way. So phase one is based on freedom. And here are some basic points, and we will spend over the next few weeks, I'll be more specific and actually show you step by step how to go through this. But number one then is when you're born again, you're a new creation in Christ. Remember the verse? It says very clearly that when you come to Christ, you're a new creation, all things pass away, all things become new. Exactly. Just like a newborn baby, all things become new. Now within that little baby, they have all the genetic coding for growth. They have everything there, but what? They're little. They're helpless. They're weak. They can't talk, walk. Only thing they can do is have a hunger to eat and do some couple natural things, but that's it. They're helpless. New Christians the same way. They're not overcome sin yet. The only thing they know is they've been forgiven of their sin, but they're helpless and weak and have no value to the kingdom of God. Does that make sense? They've got to get some strength. And here's what happens. Life comes in just like a true child was born as alive. The Holy Spirit immediately enters into a person who's converted. If you're really born again Christian, you've been invaded by the living God. This is not a mental choice. This is a reality. You literally have God flood your soul, your being, your spirit, and you become a new person. There becomes a hunger that's just like when you're born a baby. You have hunger. You want to eat milk. A newborn believer has a hunger. They don't have any answers, but they have hunger growing. We use the word desire or hunger. It's the same thing, right? Remember we told you what's the idea of grace? Grace is the desire and then becomes the strength and power to do the will of God. Grace entering into a person that's truly saved. They can't deny there's a hunger that grows. They have a desire to want to do what's right. Now, they can't do it necessarily. They feel bad when they do wrong and whatever. But there's a growing, growing trend from within that they can't explain. It says, I want to obey God. I know what's right. I know what's wrong. I feel my conscience is telling me this is wrong. But I can't seem to stop doing what's wrong. How can I continue? I can't stop it. You will, just like a baby. Think of a baby that's an infant. At first, they need to get milk. They need to have some strength. And then eventually, without telling them, they desire to start wanting to do things. They want to roll over. They want to set up. They want to walk. You don't have a lesson with them and say, Here, you must learn to desire to have a desire to walk. The kids just want to walk. Something comes out of them that says, I want to do this, I want to do, they want to develop. And their development is not something they can do. Their muscles have to come along with everything else to grow. They're balanced. All these things happen. But they're part of it, aren't they? They start having interest in doing it. There's something from within pushing them, something without that they keep trying. There's a determination that starts connecting. This is Christianity. When the grace of God enters, the Holy Spirit comes in. He stirs your soul. You desire to do what's right, but you can't do it necessarily yet. It takes time and effort and determination, but you work at it. You have something that keeps pushing you along, desiring to do what God wants. And so that's what we say when we say deliverance from the old ways of sin. And all babies need to learn to walk. That's just part of life. And so that's what I want you to see here. The goal, again, is deliverance from what? Sin. Number one purpose of God for you as a new believer is to free you from that which is sin. Well, how do you know what is sin? How do you know what is sin? You just kind of, what? Okay, the Bible, the law, tells you what's right and wrong, doesn't it? So you start to know what's right and wrong. first of all to get you going is by reading the the bible when i first became a christian i didn't sit around and think i should read the bible i kept having this hunger that i needed to read the bible and i didn't understand a word i read i kept reading and thinking this makes no sense whatsoever but i just couldn't stop reading it and i would go after dinner into the bedroom where after mom and dad, you know, we'd have dinner and whatever, and I'd go in and try to read, and I would just read and read and read and couldn't stop reading. I'd fall asleep, and my face would fall on the Bible. I'd drool all over my Bible. I would enroll on it, and pages would rip out. I'd have to go buy new Bibles all the time. But I couldn't stop the desire to want to read the book. When I got all done and read the whole Bible once, I said, I have no clue what that just said. I didn't get any of it. I didn't understand any of it. but it was like a satisfying feeling. I guess you could use the word feeling. It satisfied me, and it makes me think of a baby drinking milk. It seems like it gives you some satisfaction, but not enough. Hour later, you want more. Hour later, you want more. It never really satisfies, but it seems like it helps, you know, and you can't describe it. There was a desire that grew in me and grew in me and grew in me. I want to know the Bible, but I don't understand it at all. And that's kind of what I'm saying here. Notice what it says, the way it's worded again in 1 John 2.12. I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven. That's all. Your sins are forgiven. You know nothing. You can't do anything, but your sins are forgiven. And look at what it says in 2 Peter 1, speaking of what we're saying. Just like a baby has all the DNA coding and all the stuff built in by God's creation, the miracle of birth, yet there's something that has to add to it. Notice it says everything that goes into life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know personally and intimately the one who invited us to God. Through being born again in Jesus Christ, it says you have got everything inside you miraculously to grow. Then the question is, why do most Christians not grow? Why do most Christians still live like the world? Remember all the statistics from Barna research that I've told you over the last year or two? The research says 94% or 96% of the Christians in churches don't live any different than everybody of the world that doesn't even try to believe in God. Their lifestyles are exactly the same. They practice the same sin. They practice the same philosophy. They don't do anything what Jesus teaches except for a tiny little percent of the church. Now that's scary, isn't it? Now why? Well, there's only can be two things, ignorance or they're not really a Christian, right? So that means either they're still little babies who are absolutely ignorant and weak, or they never really became a Christian in the first place. Even though mentally they were interested, they were never born again, never became a new creation. No, not really did anything happen. All things didn't pass away. They're still the old, dead, sinful being, right? Now, thinking in that terms, look at what it says further. If you look up here, it says, The best invitation we ever received, we were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you. Your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turn your back on a world corrupted by lust. What does it mean when it uses the word turn your back on a world corrupted with lust? In other words, sin. What does it mean when you turn your back on something? What's the Christian word we use? Good term. The most popular term, though, in the scripture that Jesus preached, the apostles preached. What? Repent. Notice what it said. It said, your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on the world of sin. That's repentance. You turned your back. You were going this way. You turned your back on what you were going to. You go back and obey God. That is the picture of repentance. He's stating that the key, what we're talking about for being an infant, is the word repent. Okay? Everybody with me again? Okay, repent. Now, if the goal that God has for you as a little baby is to have deliverance from sin, wouldn't the word repent be connected there? Isn't that the key? if you're going to be delivered from sin, you have to be able to have the strength to turn away from your lying, your cheating, your adultery, and move away from that. That needs the grace of God, but it means an action on your part as the repentance part. God gives the strength. You take the action, right? Okay. Now, let's further look at this. If you don't see it, if it's too low here, I want you to open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 5 because I want you to see this. So if you can't see it the way I've got it here, definitely look at it. Now, thinking in the terms of phase one then and turning away, if repentance is the key, let me show you how the Bible says this is the very thing. Hebrews 5 is where I want you to start looking at the Bible I have a lot more to say about this but it is hard to get it across to you since you picked up this bad habit of not listening Notice that term Now that is I believe, the wickedness of a modern American Christian. They have picked up the bad habit of not listening. You know why? They go to church, but they don't listen enough to make any difference in their life. But they go to church sometimes or part of the time, but they don't listen enough to make a change. He goes on to say in verse 12, by this time you ought to be teachers yourself. Now what happens when guys go to college and finish college? What are they ready to do? Ready to work, ready to do their careers, ready to take charge, ready to be teachers, instructors. They're ready to be in charge of businesses and whatever. After that point of training, they are ready or are supposed to be ready to go. If you think in terms of Christians, Christians do not look at the Bible clearly enough to want to be that determined to rise up and be leaders like they do in business. They have a great drive for greed to say or for money, but not to serve God. And he says here, most of you won't listen enough. You ought to be teachers, but you can't teach because you don't even know what you're talking about yet. You haven't listened. See that? I want you to take the point to listen. Listen carefully. He says, yet here I find I need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics of God again, starting from square one. Baby's milk. Baby's milk. Well, what's baby's milk? When you should have been on solid food long ago, milk is for beginners, infants, inexperienced in God's ways. Solid food is for the mature who have some practice in telling right from wrong. Notice, what's repentance? Okay, what's right and wrong? Knowing the difference between sin and righteousness, Bible words. To be able to properly repent, you have to understand what's right. You have to understand what is wrong, which means you have to listen, right? You have to listen. You have to think it through clearly and deal with it on a very, very strong basis. That thing is driving me crazy. Now, if we look at this, then the key word for freedom from sin is level one is what? Right up here, look, on the top left corner. What's it? Three times. Huh? Level one up here. In other words, being an infant, what's it say under level one? Repent, repent, repent. The key that you must do, if you're going to cooperate with God and travel out of infancy, you must take choice, strong, strong determination that you are going to battle with everything that you know is wrong and get it out of your life with every effort. That's God's will. I mean, if you're a coach, you want your players to do everything they can with all their strength to do their job, right? If you're in business, you want your guys to learn their job and do it with all their might because you want them to earn proper funds for the business. Effort. And God says infancy, you're going to get out infancy only if you take hold of this idea that you must become a maniac over repenting. You must repent until you're sick of it. And then you repent some more. You take and fight everything you know is wrong, and that means you have to go to the Bible and figure out what God says is wrong and then start beating on it in your life and beat it out of your system. Throw it out of your system. Kick it out of your system. Grab it by the hair and throw it out of your life. It means you'd be thorough and complete, just like you would in anything else to succeed, right? And this is what he's saying. I want you to repent, repent, repent, and I want you to fight this through, And this would be the same thing as an infant beginning to try to learn how to walk. Because walking in righteousness means you're consistently doing right. And if you're not walking, you're then still crawling around in sin. Am I making sense? And so this is something you have to take very seriously and deal with completely with all your might. that's why the scriptures talks about this here to like newborn babes you should crave crave thirst for earnestly desire the pure that means the un you know no nasty poisons or anything the pure spiritual milk that by it you may be nurtured and grow into completed salvation now completed completed salvation, remember we're not talking about heaven and hell, salvation, if you're getting saved from drowning, that means you've got to get all the way out of the water. If you're still half hanging there and you're half there, you're not completely saved yet until you get out of it. That's what the lifeguard does, drags you all the way out to your on the shore, pumps your lungs out, makes sure you're okay. The salvation we're talking about is that sin no longer rules your life. That means that complete salvation is that you seek after the Word of God until you get it, understand it, and you kick that stuff out of your life with the grace of God empowering you to do it. Strong desire equals strength to do it until you stop it. Does that make sense? Until you stop it. That's exactly what God's after. It says in verse 3, since you have already tasted the goodness and kindness of the Lord, you should be able to have a hunger for this. You should have a desire for this. And further in Hebrews 6.1, he goes on to explain, Therefore, let us go on and get past the elementary stage in the teachings and doctrine of Christ. Elementary, basics, what are they? Advanced toward completeness. And it says, let us not again be laying the foundation of repentance. Again, he describes in Hebrews the same thing I'm telling you, that you don't keep laying the same foundations. Get it out of your system. Repent thoroughly, completely until it's gone. How long does it take for a baby generally to walk? Yeah, somewhere about between there and a year or so. In other words, it's a long process before they get able to walk. Christianity means that it would take a good year of fighting and repenting and struggling to get out of sin. If you're determined to do it. See, we got lazy people who have no desire to stop sinning. They just want heaven and don't want to really stop sinning. But if you have that grace of God pouring through you, it's a natural, natural, supernatural, I should say, force going through you that keeps pulling a desire to get rid of it. And if that's the case, it takes time. When I first became a Christian, nobody explained this to me. My first year being a Christian was the worst year of my life. I hated myself. I hated sin. Sin became real to me at that point. And everything I did was sinful. Every time I read the Bible, I found the other thing I did and thought and acted was sin. I couldn't get it out of my system, I felt like. It felt hopeless. All I did was continue dealing with it day after day after day of agony and sadness and praying and begging God to please get this out of my life. And no one told me it would go. It seemed like it would never go. It seemed like my change of life would never happen. And it seemed to happen for such a long period of time of agony. The only thing I knew what to do was to cry out to God, deliver me, and keep hating it and fighting it. And all that was God's grace. The desire to hate sin is God's grace. Naturally, you love sin. So if you've got God's grace in you, he's turning you to hate sin. Well, that's amazing. I was hating sin. I was starting to resist sin. It was a good thing, but I didn't know that. I just felt agony and hardness, but I couldn't give up. Well, you know, I went through that stage without being taught what it meant and how to do it, but just God pushing me along. And there came a day when suddenly it seemed like the battles were over. I stopped doing the things that I hated and things changed. Then it seemed like nothing happened. And then I felt like I was in a desert. It went from bad to me to worse. I didn't understand what that, no one told me what to expect or what to do. But yet that was God's hand. Now look at here. If you understand that walking means to walk in obedience, then it makes sense in the picture I'm showing you with the little baby. The baby that starts to walk begins to walk. But I remember my grandson when he started walking in my house, and you've got little kids, you remember, they're kind of wild when they first walk in there doing this, and they're like they're drunk, they fall over, get back up. It's not a real steady thing at first. Well, that's Christianity. Once you get to the stage where you start to obey God, it doesn't mean you're consistent. You fall and disobey God and you have to ask God's forgiveness still. So you're still back and forth. First it's always repenting. Now it's doing good and then repenting here and then going this and repenting there. It's back and forth. But it's still progressing, right? Now you are starting to walk. Before you weren't even able to walk. You weren't doing anything. Therefore, we think of going from stage one into stage two when you understand that an infant begins to take steps, he's entering a new level or phase of life from before. Next, the spiritual babe thoroughly repents over the first year from sinful habits, and when they begin to take step one, which step one is, according to 2 Peter, it says, do all diligence to add to your faith virtue. Anybody tell me what virtue is? Goodness, yeah. And one of the ways to understand it in a way that the Greek saying is basically good character. Character is what it's talking about. So when you start to walk in character, well, what's character? Isn't it consistent goodness? I mean, instead of being half bad and half good, you're generally always good. I mean, that's the point. And so what we understand character to be is when you obey the commands of Jesus. That's character. That make sense? That's what character is. If you consistently obey God, then you've got strong strength. There's that word strength. Character. Because you're doing the will of God on a regular, daily, weekly, monthly basis. You're doing it. That's strength. Because before when you were a little baby, you couldn't even stand up. Now you're standing up, and the stronger you get, the longer you walk, and the more you don't fall down, you get strength. Your character is developing. That's exactly what I want you to see here. The supernatural process, remember, is what? The grace of God pouring into you. The natural process is you learning to turn from sin and establish obedience. You take the action that grace is pushing. And isn't that what children do? Children have a natural desire that's there from their creation, but they still have to take the action. Two things are going. Two sides of a coin are happening, right, at the same time. Okay, so let's move into the next phase then. Then if we say that walking is where you start with phase two, then we need to make sure you solidify in your mind what it is. If phase two, you know you're spiritually there when you are consistently walking with righteous or right character. Is your character established? Well, that's where we talk about Jesus said, Remember, go and teach them to observe all things that I have commanded you. All things I've commanded you. So if you know you're a right disciple of Jesus, you're following all the things he commanded you to do. Well, guess what? If you go through the New Testament, there's like 49 commands of Jesus. It's not just one. You think, oh, no, how can I ever do that? Well, what does a child do? After they get old enough, what do they start doing? They go to school. And what does a child do at school? They go through a long process of learning all that information that takes so much learning. They have to learn all about the 26 letters of the alphabet. Then they have to put them together. Then they have to learn how to write and talk right. And, you know, and then mathematics. They go through huge amounts of learnings. The point is the same thing. I can only lead you to water, but I can't make you learn the 49 commands of Jesus. it's going to take you taking an effort to learn it. I can present it to you, whatever, but if you're honestly going to learn that much information, it's going to take laborious, diligent work on your part to do. Christians are lazy bums in America. They don't want to learn it. They don't want to take the effort to do it. They just want to feel good when they come to church, right? Comfort me, make me feel good. I'm going to heaven. Tell me I'm doing wonderful things, but they don't want to progress. They don't want to mature. Maturing in the faith is not easy. it takes elaborate effort to accomplish the task. If you're going to learn all the commands of Jesus, all 49, first of all, just to know what they are doesn't mean you learn them, right? I mean, you can learn, like my little granddaughter can sing the alphabet song, but that doesn't mean she really understands alphabet. She just can do it, right? On top of that, it's only the beginnings. Most Christians like only to stay at the infantile level, the beginnings, not really get that carried away to really do it To get into the 49 commands of Christ Jesus to establish them in your life to really accomplish them and develop character takes a lot of effort Remember what is character Character would be the same idea as if a physical, if you take a picture, you think of a guy that's a leather, a professional leather designer, like for belts, and they do all the fancy stuff. they take and take a hammer and they take a little tool and they sit there and they cut pound into that leather and leave permanent marks on it. They don't after they go home at night it doesn't go back up and start over again. It leaves permanent etchings and over a period of time that belt or whatever beautiful. I used to have one that was made that was awesome with all the different designs and everything. It's pretty neat. Or you can think of it for metal works. guys who are artists, they do sculpting and stuff. When they're done, they're beautiful. It takes all kinds of effort. They don't just work all night in the morning. It's back to a square block. It's a permanent change. When we talk about righteous character, the same thing. Once you start to take and face the 49 commands of Jesus and then have them beat into your soul so that not only do you hear, you've heard of them, but you start to wrestle with them and you gain ground and you permanently start to obey them, you become a righteous person of character. Think of Honest Abe. Why was he called Honest Abe? Because he lied all the time? Because he lied some of the time? He was Honest Abe because he always told the truth. His character strength was his honesty, right? This is what I'm trying to get you to see. this level here of righteous character means it's a consistency in all the areas that christ commands you no one can say well you're doing pretty good but remember you disobey jesus here here here and here but it's great that you do the one thing good no instead true righteous character means you've established yourself through much effort and learning like a child going to school year after year until you've come to a stage in your life where you truly can say i fully obey all 49 commands of Jesus. That's a little ways to go. But that's the will of God for your life. That is the will of God. Most of us say, Oh, you know, I'm doing pretty good. I don't have to get carried away. I read my Bible every once a day for a minute. Can you imagine a doctor giving brain surgery who studied his book at school once a day for a minute? I don't want him to cut a hole in my head. Can you imagine the engineer build a bridge that you drive on every day who just basically read his engineering book once a minute a day just for this kind of... Oh, that's dabbling in it, isn't it? It didn't make him an engineer unless he really learned what he was doing, conquered it. A musician is not a musician until they really know what they're doing. You can dabble. I can go over there and hit some notes, but I'm not a musician. But if you truly are one, what does it mean? you develop, you work, you establish it. Jesus' will for your life is to establish his commands. He said in the purpose, go make disciples, teach them to observe all things, whatever I've already commanded you. And he already commanded them like 49 things. Wow. Now Christianity takes on a whole new light of effort on your part and mine. It's not generically just wonderful feeling good. So here we go. Step two from 2 Peter then deals with three steps. According to 2 Peter, it says add to your faith knowledge. And that means go to school. Truly learn that book. Jesus taught it. His disciples followed through. Paul said study to show yourself. What? Approved by God. Study. Before you're approved by God, it says you study it. Oh, no, no, no. I just read it once a day. for a minute. If you want to be approved, if God's going to approve you, he says, study it. Do you study it? Is it your concern to make God happy with you? If you want his approval, then you must change from half-hearted reading to study, study. That is only looked at usually for the pastor. Now, if you truly do, here's what happens. From knowledge is once you really get a hold of it, you face life, you'll find that you have self-control being developed in your soul, in your life. You can overcome your shortcomings and your problems. And also perseverance, which means you get strong. You become a strong person in the kingdom. And that's exactly what God's after for the next stages. because, see, with this character idea, notice, if you're going to get out of the children's stage and become a true person of character that God wants and not be a child anymore in your faith, it literally says you have to become strong. Now, here's how we know that if you come to the next stage. Look at what it says here, 2 Peter. For this very reason, adding your diligence to the divine promises, employ every effort. Notice that every effort. and exercising your faith to develop virtue. Notice your part you have to put effort in. Most Christians don't want to put any effort in it. God, I pray you'll make me patient. I don't want any effort in this. I just want you to miraculously hit me on the head with a wand and make me patient. God, I want to be more loving. I don't want to put any effort into loving. Just hit me on the head with your little spirit and knock me over and I'll get up and I'll have more love. I don't want to put any effort in any of these things. I just want you to touch me and make me more loving. I want you to have more control. I don't want to work at repenting a sin. I just want you to touch me on the head and make it so I'm free from sin. Notice what they're doing. No effort. Notice here, to get moral purity or excellence, it says, put every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue, which is strong character. If you're going to get it, it's not going to come because you keep asking God to do a miracle in your life by touching you on that forehead and making all the things go away and you have what you want now. Instead, you must put effort into this to develop that virtue. That means the developed character takes work on your part. It takes studying on your part. It makes you learn and understand what it means to be righteous. It means to learn and understand what it means to be truthful. It means to be strong and clear what it means to be discerning. It just doesn't happen. You must learn it. That make sense? It's a part of learning. Now, it says after you get to that stage and you're there, then you can go on to stage two. If you don't do that part first, you can't go on to the next step. Literally, it says here, it says, notice, and then exercising your virtue. Once you have established virtue or character, then you can go on to develop true knowledge, knowledge of the word of God. and really make sense of what it's saying. And it goes on to say, and in exercising your knowledge, then you can develop self-control. People want control of their lives, but they're not willing to learn from God's word. They're not willing to develop character first. Those are prerequisite to the fact of getting that next stage. Everybody wants to jump to the end. Easy. But it won't happen that way. That's right, but you can't. You can't do it. I can't do it. The Bible says you can't do that. You must develop it. 2 Peter 1.5. So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character. Do everything you can to go past your basic faith of being an infant, drinking spiritual milk, the ideas of repentance, and instead develop strong, obedient character in your life. So any questions on phase two? Everybody understand what I'm saying phase two is? then let's go from phase two into phase three. Phase three, then, the spiritual phase of God is this simple thing. The goal of phase three is once you become free from sin of phase one, once you've started to walk in strong character, then God can use you in strength. Remember, that's like when we talked about physical. That means you've left from being a 1-year-old to a 17-year-old, and now you're 18 years old. What can the world do with you? What can the United States government do with you when you're 18? They put you in the army because you're strong and able to defend the country. You go to college because you're strong and smart, and you're able to go to college and develop your skills to become a leader, to be a teacher or whatever, a person of value. This is the same thing spiritually. We've moved from phase one being an infant, phase two being a child, to phase three being useful for the kingdom of God. There's a reason for that. So leadership, and when I say leader, it's not leader in the sense of American terms. What is leader according to the Bible? God said the greatest among you is what? Servant of all. A leader is a person who takes the action. Doesn't just talk about it anymore, but actually does it. So when we talk about this third stage, it means moving you out of the stage of being a child, and you're now moved into a stage of being a useful adult for Christ. There's what we're saying here. The young people is the word. Remember, King James translated this in 1 John 2 as saying little child, and then it said little child again, and then it said young man. Young man. Now, young man is not as young as you think. The Greek word used by definition means a youth, and it says under 40. The Bible calls a youth a person who's 39 years old and down. So see, it's not as bad as you think. America's got kind of a false idea. They think youth is just being a teenager. But literally, the Bible's terms says that under 40 is a youth because that's the strongest point of your life. Sharpest, strongest. By the time they're 40, the guys are having to retire. You know, sports guys, even before that, sometimes have to retire. Their strength is now waning down. So by 40, they're moving to a new era of their life. They're not as strong as they used to be physically. Well, the same thing spiritually. Once you've passed these two stages, you become what's called a young person. You can be 80 years old physically and be a young person spiritually. See, your age doesn't mean that you're really there. You've got to be careful that you're honest to who you are in your spiritual walk with God. But here's the point. First of all, the young person, it says in 1 John 2.14, I've written to you because, young people, because you are strong. Strong character. It takes strength to walk upright with Jesus. It takes strength to be obedient. It's easy to disobey. It takes weakness. In fact, they call that you fall into sin and weakness, it says. It takes strength to be obedient. So we're talking about a person who's strong and God's word lives in you. Notice that the word of God has been conquered and learned from being a child. And now you got it and it's implemented and you're using it. And your strength is you're pleasing God. You're obeying those 49 commands of Jesus. You're walking with God. You've learned to listen to his voice. You're spending your heart and life pleasing him. That's the strength. and say this is hard to determine. Is that where you're at? Or are you down in the baby stages yet? Or are you still a child yet? This is where you have to really start to understand where you are. And the idea is that you're fulfilling the five purposes of God at this stage. See, if you don't even know what they are, you're still a child. You're not learning yet. But if you can not only know what they are, but you have implemented those in your life and you're fulfilling the purposes of God, you're no longer a child. You're becoming a young adult for Jesus. You are rising up out of college, if you want to call it that, out of the college of the Spirit, and you're starting to do things like love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. You're making disciples. You're accepting them into the fold of life, and baptism is just a sign, just like a ring for a wedding, is just a sign of joining a relationship. Baptism is a sign of a relationship. You're helping people join into the family of God, And then fifthly, you're teaching. You're helping them learn. You're coaching like a coach or like a mentor or like a friend. You're helping people do the will of God. That's the stage that we're talking about right here. And it says in 2 Peter 1.6, this state is basically to get you to a place of true service of God. And so in 2 Peter 1.6, it says, and in exercising steadfastness, develop godliness. What is godliness? being like God. Being like God. No wonder it's strength then. If you're like God and people say, man, that guy's like God, there is something amazing to say. That's mighty strength, isn't it? That's powerful. So that's the state when people can actually say you are like God really, really like Him. Not just say you are a believer, but you're like God. Wow, that's an amazing, amazing thing. That's a state that God wants you to get to and not wait until you're 100 years old. He wants you to get to it before you're 40, right? Between the time you're 18 and 40, he wants you to be there already, the strength of your life. So he doesn't want you to drag on and make excuses. He wants you to move on in your spiritual life. And it says in verse 7 of 2 Peter 1, and in exercising godliness develop brotherly affection What brotherly affection Okay Having a compassionate or a passion that you care for your neighbors It's actually the strengthening of that second commandment. Notice we've already dealing with loving God, but it's getting to that level where you truly have a passion to love your neighbor as yourself. It's really all we're talking about here. Exercising godliness and develop brotherly affection. Have a strong, and what is that? Serving. God says when you truly love them, you'll serve them. You'll help them. Isn't that what Jesus did? He came to the earth. He didn't say, I've come here for you all to worship me. He said, forget the worship. I've come here to serve and lay down my life for you. And what did he do? He showed it by washing the feet of the disciples, helping everybody that ever asked him for help. He served them, he served them, he served them. Instead of them having, as soon as they tried to do anything, he'd say, shh, don't tell anybody, I'm the Messiah. Shh, don't do that. Here, I just want to serve you. He spent his life serving, not being worshipped and served. He didn't want to be served. He wanted to serve, right? Is that correct? If you read it, that's what you'll find over and over again. He served, he served, he served. This is why you be like Christ. This is the stage where, honestly, your passion is to serve others. It's a natural flow of growing in the faith. Remember, what's a child want? Mama, give me this. Mama, I want that. My grandkids make me think of that. Television is now a torture. I want that. I want every advertisement. I want that. I want that. Children want and they want and they want. But when we get to this stage of spiritual, we stop wanting and we start wanting to do what? Give. It's a turning point in your heart where you honestly desire to give. You stop being obsessed with what you need and you think you want and that you think your family wants. And it's a turning point in your spiritual walk that you have a natural desire to give. My wife is there. My wife, every time I hear from her, she'll go, I just bought this for so-and-so. I just got that for so-and-so. I just got this for your mother. I just got this for my grandkids. I just got this for my sister. She is constantly always thinking of giving. Always. I mean, she doesn't buy. I have to tell her, don't spend that birthday money on me. Buy something for you. She always looks to give. Not just money-wise, but that's all she thinks about is giving, giving. She works for people. You know why they like her? Because she doesn't just do the job. She's always, can I also help you here? or do you want me to take you to the doctor? I mean, she's supposed to be just the house cleaner, and instead she's offering to drive them to the doctor, take care of their stuff, send stuff in the mail, can I, you know, whatever. She always is giving. She's so giving, she's passed into this state where it's on her heart naturally, you know what I'm saying? She doesn't struggle with it. It flows out of her like water. Does that make sense? This is a stage I'm talking, it's a passion that comes, and this is where you can start to see whether you're in this level. What is coming out of you? If you're not there where you're naturally thinking of always wanting to serve and actually starting to serve, there's something wrong. You're not there. You've got to go back and say, I have to admit, I'm still a child. I'm not an adult yet. Spiritually, I'm just maybe a baby, maybe a child. I've got some work to do. I've got to learn in here. But you see, this is where you have to take it clearly and deal with it. And so far, everybody with me? You see how the steps are real clear and they're right in Scripture? Now, let me make sure the last couple points on this. First of all, Hebrews 5.14, it says, Solid food is for mature people, that's 5.14, whose minds are trained by practice. Notice the word trained. That's going back to the idea of school. Their minds are trained by practice to know the difference between good and evil. Notice how clear that it is. It went from the stage of just learning about good and evil to strong training so that they practice good and evil. You know, understand that's what discernment is. Discernment is able to decipher truth from false, right from wrong. And again, my best illustration to help you get it is simply when we go to our normal court of law in America. When you get called, my wife was just called recently to go to the court. And what was she called to do? Jury duty. That's right. And she's called there. The jury is the discerning group. They're not the judge. Who's the judge? Yeah, the man that stands up there and the woman's up there with the coat and everything. They're the judge. They're not called to be the judge. They're called to be a jury. And a jury does discerning. That's exactly their job. They listen to the evidence. They hear the testimony. They split it apart and dig it together and talk about it and discern right from wrong. Who's lying? Who's telling the truth? What does the evidence show? That is discerning. It's through work and effort and training you can learn how to tell absolutely what's right and what's wrong. Most Americans don't want to know really what's right and wrong. What they want to do is say, I want to do this. So they try to find a verse in the Bible that kind of sounds like what they want. And then that's it. They don't look any further. You know what I'm saying? Like they start churches that are, say, homosexual churches. Well, they find a verse they think that says something. and they go by that and skip the other verses who say it's an abomination. And they claim that God still loves them and it's okay. God's not okay with them. The rest of the Bible condemns them and will drag them to eternal judgment. They can go all the church they want. They can do all the singing about Jesus they want. They can hear all the sermons they want. But on that one point, if they won't repent, they're going to go to eternal judgment, right? And that's what we find in America. People are obsessed with trying to find excuses instead of clearly going to this stage and learning right from wrong. But when you get to the stage where you truly know right from wrong and you've changed from selfishness to serving, you know you're entering into the stage three of Christianity. In Matthew 23, 11, He who is greatest among you shall be your servant. Now, the fourth last stage I just mentioned. Now, believe it or not, this is only an overview. This is an introduction. I'm just trying to get you the overall picture before we break it down into small pieces. The last stage that God's will for your life is once you've got through stage 1, 2, and 3, is to be motivated that your motives are so narrow that you have one thing. You're driven by the agape, genuine love of God. That you're such a passionate person. You love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And you love your neighbor. And that's the only thing that people see. See, the brotherly kindness was the first phase. but the true love is that you literally will sacrifice yourself for strangers. You will literally sacrifice yourself for the community around you. You'll give up without expecting anything in return to help those when you see they have a need. That's kind of way off into a realm that most people don't live. All selfish motives must be removed and replaced with a strong motivation to please God Almighty, your creator, and nothing else. Now, what that really means in the real sense is simply this. it's not retirement. It's now becoming a mentor, a coach, a counselor, a leader. It's helping others get from phase one, two, and three up to pleasing God and true agape love. Does that make sense? And let me see one last little scripture to show you what I'm talking about. And in fact, the word father is used and it talks about, and like even Paul talks about in Timothy, he says, if an older, don't rebuke and be rough with an older person, but treat them as a father. The concept is not that they are your father, but that you treat them as a father because that's a father concept of being a true overseer. Like a grandfather would almost be an idea in American language, what we're saying. And look at what it talks about for being leadership. Remember the Bible even talks about how do you become an official leader in the church? It never says to be smart. It never says that you go to college or seminary or university. It always deals with one issue, character. Look at how it's described. If anybody wants to be a bishop, which is an overseer in the church, a leader, it says, must give no grounds for accusation, but must be above reproach. What's that? Fully repenting of all sin. That's going into phase two of spiritual life. It's got to do with spiritual levels. Not how smart you are or how much money you have or what kind of business you run. It says the husband of one wife. In other words, morally, they've been faithful to their spouse. Circumspect and temperate and self-controlled. Well, those are parts of what we talked about in phase two and three. Also, he must be sensible and well-behaved and dignified and lead an orderly, disciplined life. Phase three. He must be hospitable, showing love for and being a friend to the believers. Phase three. Brotherly kindness. Right there. Especially strangers or foreigners. Now that is what we talked about up here, divine level four. Especially strangers or foreigners, that they have a passion that are willing to give to those they don't even know. That's only available when you get to phase four of spirituality. Am I making sense? Right there? And then it says, and be a capable and qualified teacher. Now does that mean you have to be a teacher like a school teacher? No. It means coaching. A lot of coaches are terrible speakers. It doesn't mean you have to be a great speaker, but you have to know what you're talking about and able to coach people through. That's all it means. Then it says not given to wine, nothing that will ruin your decision-making, not combative, but gentle and considerate, not quarrelsome, but forbearing and peaceable, not a lover of money. He must rule his own household well, keeping his children under control with true dignity, commanding their respect in every way and keeping them respectful. Notice all that has to do with character and how to handle relationships with people. Nothing about how much you know about the Bible. Obviously you do because if you know it, you would live it. If you don't know it, you would break those commands, right? You wouldn't be, your household would be a mess. You wouldn't be, you know, you'd be greedy or whatever. The very idea is it's not just a head knowledge, but it's a lifestyle change. Absolute change of life. That's true concluding point. God doesn't want you to become a Christian and when you're 80 years old, just sit in a pew or a seat and smile. He wants you to become a true mentor, coach, and leader to others. Be involved in their lives. Have you got there yet? Are you there? Do you desire that? Now, those are the four areas. You can be in one of four of them unless you're not a Christian. Then you're not even in that phase. You're a lost soul over here that we didn't talk about. There's actually five, I'd class this five phases of life. Not born again, born again infant, born again child, born again young man, or born again mentor and father or mother or grandmother would be the same idea. Five phases. What phase are you in? Can you honestly put yourself in a phase from what we talked about so far? Are you there? Do you understand if you know where you are? Do you now understand what you have to do to move on to be pleasing to God? Do you understand where you have to go to make him approve you and be happy with you? That's the key to start with. See, that gives you the development where you can move on and glorify God. Can you imagine if our whole church gets it? We would glorify God, no matter if we're little or not. God will be happy. He'll be approving and saying, Del Rio, you got four people, but yoo-hoo. I'm approving of what you're doing. You are developing and doing what I've told you to do. You see yourself pleasing to me. You're making steps of obedience. You're working to glorify my name. Bless you. See that? God can say that no matter what size church it is. But he doesn't want to look at a church and say, oh, you make me throw up. You guys are apathetic. You don't care what I'm saying. You're just, you know, And that's what he had to do in the book of Revelation to a certain church, didn't he? He said, I have to throw up. You guys are making me sick what you're doing. Churches can make God sick. We don't want to make God sick. We want God to smile and say, proved. Well done. So that's where we're at. Now I'm going to take you through a number of weeks here because I want to help you make sure no matter what, you know where you're heading and how to get there. and truly understand that there are phases of life that can be moved on to and what God's will is for you, then you don't have to keep wondering what God's doing. I can tell you, if you know what phase you're in, I can say God's trying to get you to be self-controlling. He's trying to make you patient. He's trying to give you strength so you can move on and be a true leader. You can tell. And it really gives you peace of mind, wouldn't it, if you really understand where you're at on the road. It's like when you're driving down the highway. If you're lost, it's not as much fun as if you really know where you're heading. then you can kind of know I'm halfway there and I can't wait to get there but at least I know where I'm at on the road and the markers tell me and you know what I'm saying and if you know where you're at you can definitely cooperate with the living God and walk in obedience to him let's pray Stand up and shout, stand up and shout, shout it. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Stand up and shout it if you love my Jesus. Stand up and shout it if you love my Lord.

Playlist coming soon.