Christianity in three stages – Just as a natural baby must grow in stages to enter maturity, so it is with the Christian who has just been born into the kingdom of God. You must go through three stages to fulfill God’s destiny for your life: the new birth, the knowledge of the head, and the knowledge of the heart. Most Christians never make it to the third stage because they are stuck in the first or second stage on the road to maturity. You want to do your best to go beyond the first and second stage to enter the third stage.
Why do you want to do everything you can to get out of the first and second stages to enter the third stage? Because the third stage is where the real fun begins. That’s where you begin to walk into a realm of glory, virtue, faith, and power that people only dream of. That is where the most spiritual fruit is produced for the kingdom of God. Where you can save, heal and disciple more people than you ever imagined. That is where the peace, joy, and love of God flow through you like a river to minister hope and life to people. That’s where God’s grace abounds for you to do things you could never do on your own. That is where you fulfill the destiny that God has set for you. That is where you grow in the fullness of Christ, the ultimate Christian goal. So, let’s take a closer look at these three stages to understand how to move from Christian childhood to Christian maturity.
Stage One – The New Birth
When someone first becomes a Christian, their understanding of what God expects of them is based on the knowledge they have. Your knowledge is probably limited to the elementary requirements of a Christian: stop sinning, go to church, be baptized in water, read the Bible, and pray. These are the basics that help lay the foundation for moving on to the next stage, the knowledge of the head.
Stage two: knowledge of the head
As a Christian spends time reading his Bible and listening to the messages given by his local church pastor and other ministers, he begins to gain more knowledge of who God is and what Christianity is all about. The quantity and quality of your biblical knowledge will depend on how long you read and study God’s Word and how much knowledge you obtain from your pastor and other sources.
Some scriptures tell you the things you can do through Christ, such as praying to the Father in Jesus’ name, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons, and raise the dead. Some scriptures tell you what you have inherited from your Heavenly Father through Christ, things like power, riches, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing. You could also learn that you have been redeemed from the curse of the law that frees you from sickness, poverty, fear, lack, the second death (lake of fire) and a host of other curses listed in Deuteronomy 28: 15- 68. .
All this knowledge is good, but it is mental knowledge, not heart knowledge. There is no faith in mental knowledge because faith is from the heart (man’s spirit) as it is written in Romans 10:10, “Because with the heart (man’s spirit) it is believed for righteousness, but with the mouth it is confessed for salvation .. “We are not talking here about the physical heart that pumps blood through your body. No, we are talking about your spiritual man, the inner man. That is, the same, the heart of man and the spirit of man are interchangeable.
So we see that mental knowledge does not give the Christian the faith to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, or raise the dead. Intellectual knowledge will not free you from scarcity, disease, and disease. Mind knowledge alone will not allow you to walk in God’s love, joy, and victory in every situation. Intellectual knowledge will not give you victory over sin. Mental knowledge will not give you supernatural wisdom and knowledge to solve impossible problems. Mind knowledge will not cause God’s supernatural financial blessings to flow into your life so that he can be blessed and be a blessing to others. Mental knowledge will not make you fulfill God’s glorious destiny for your life.
Because head knowledge (mental assent) alone won’t do the job, that’s why Christians continue to have problems with their flesh, sinful nature, and why they can live very frustrated and defeated lives because their minds don’t. they have been renewed with that of God. The Word and the Word of God have not fallen into their hearts and have come true for them. They continue to live far below their divine potential, prisoners of the lusts of the flesh and without God’s provision for a victorious life that only comes through knowledge of the heart. Knowledge of the heart is what creates God’s kind of faith to overcome the world.
Sadly, most churches are filled with first and second stage Christians who cannot walk in the faith, power, and power of God’s liberating promises, and never grow in the fullness of Christ. Never become children of God manifested to advance the kingdom of God. Why are Christians trapped in the first and second stages of spiritual development never to graduate to the third stage? They have simply never been taught how to enter the third stage or, if they have been taught, they have lacked the zeal to move on. Assuming you want to please and obey God to move on and fulfill your divine destiny, let me explain below how to make God’s promises fall from your head to your heart so that you can graduate to the third stage where Christian maturity is a process. I kept going from glory to glory.
Stage three: knowledge of the heart
Jesus said in John 8:36: “If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free.” He said in John 8:32, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” So how do you get the truth, the Word of God, to fall into your heart and free you to start walking in the power and power of God’s liberating promises that will make you fulfill God’s destiny for your life? It is not enough to read the Word of God. You must memorize and meditate on the Word of God until you receive the revealed knowledge of the Word of God, specifically the promises that belong to you as a son or daughter of God. These promises help mold you into the image of Christ so that you can live the abundant, overcoming life that is pleasing to God.
First, start memorizing the scriptures that tell you how great your God is, who you are as a child of God, who you are in Christ, and what your inheritance is in Christ. Then you should take time to meditate on these scriptures so that they become a reality for you, so that they become rhema in your heart. Rhema is a Greek word that refers to a word that is pronounced and means “an expression.” An “expression” is when the Holy Spirit illuminates a scripture in your heart producing faith so that you believe that the scripture is now true in you. Enlightenment, the revelation of the mighty promises of God is what sets you free. Meditation on the Word of God is what God told Joshua to do so that the Word of God would go from his head to his heart, and become a reality for him: “This book of the law will not depart from your mouth, but you will meditate on it, day and night, that you may observe and do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way successful, and then you will be successful ”(Joshua 1: 8).
So what is God’s Word meditation? Meditation on God’s Word as defined in Strong’s Hebrew dictionary is muttering, pondering, imagining, meditating, speaking, studying, speaking, and pronouncing God’s Word. God’s Word no longer becomes just words on a page, but a reality in your heart and His Word becomes part of you. Then 2 Peter 1: 4 will begin to manifest itself in your life by assuming the divine nature of God: “Through which precious and great promises are given to us, that by them you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped corruption. who is in the world through lust. “
The memorization, meditation and revelation of the Word of God allows you to graduate from the second stage of mental knowledge to the third and final stage, the knowledge of the heart that produces Christian maturity. Christian maturity is a continuous process, your goal is to grow in the fullness of Christ and fulfill your destiny that advances the kingdom of God. The more time you spend meditating on God’s Word, resulting in a revelation, the knowledge of His Word will determine the speed of your spiritual growth.
In addition to memorizing, meditating, and revealing God’s Word, there are other important things that God wants you to do to please him and accelerate your spiritual growth: being baptized in the power of the Holy Spirit, fire, and the love of God, praying daily in tongues as it is written in Acts 2: 4 and Romans 8: 26-27, spending time daily alone with God to listen to his instructions for your day, daily prayer for yourself, others and those in authority, worshiping God daily in spirit and truth, living a life of generosity. while sowing your finances for divine harvests guided by the Holy Spirit, sharing the Gospel with the lost and having fellowship with other believers as commanded in Hebrews 10:25, living a holy life free from sin and of course always walking in love and forgiving others as God forgave you.
Romans 14: 10b says, “For all of us (Christians) will appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” That said, we should always be concerned with our Heavenly Father so that when we stand before Jesus Christ we will not lose rewards, but will receive rewards. May the grace and peace of God be multiplied for you by the knowledge of God and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May your desire to know, love, and obey God grow mightily each day.
