Faithbase

Hello! I was just walking around here in this path by the river. Beautiful sounds. And I was also on the phone with a friend. He started out with the words like, hey I don't know what to do. I don't know if I'm on the right path and making this decision. And we were praying and and even sought the Word of the Word of God, the Biblical truth, and what it said on a specific topic. And it reminded me of how far this friend of mine has come. And I had to be to tell him that like, wow man, like you are growing in such levels of spiritual maturity. And he was saying like, man I can't tell. I don't know. I don't know if what I'm doing, if it's truly what I need to be doing. I'm reading God's words. I'm doing my best to follow Him. But it's always, it seems like a flip in the coin. And I told him, well in that moment of the flip of the coin is where you should still rely on God. Is where you should still read His Word and seek guidance. It's where you should still be held accountable for your actions. And that's where I was praying on that about what does exactly spiritual maturity look like. And in the Bible verse that says, the Word of God, it says like, you will know them by their fruits. And I know that it's talking about, you know, false teachers versus the true teachers of the Word of God. But it's basically God is guiding us. Like you will know by their fruits. And it's even the same for us who are Christians and following God's Word. If you need, if you're probably one like, man I don't know if I'm doing this right. This whole Christian thing. Well one, are you being held accountable? Two, are you being repentful of your actions? And three, are you being submissive to God's guidance? You know, and all those three things, there are some parts where it involves another person on this human being to help you along that path. And being part of being spiritually mature means that you're gonna go to somebody else. Especially when you don't know what you're doing. And even if you do know what you're doing, it's the Word of God that's guiding you on that principle, on that business decision-making, on that relationship, on how you're raising your children. So in this world, I know that maturity sometimes comes with the attachment of the word independence. You know, I did this on my own. I figured it out on my own. At first I was taught and now I grew up and now I could do things on my own. You see, the kingdom of God is kind of reversed. As the more and more we grow older in our faith, whether by age or by a time or whatever the length of measurement you want to use for that, we're supposed to be relying on God more and more and more. Because if you think about it, in the beginning we didn't rely on God for anything before we knew Him. As we draw near closer and closer to God, we are supposed to be depending on Him for every aspect of our lives. Every aspect. It's not, I accepted Jesus Christ, I go to church on Sundays, it's been a couple years already, hey you know what God, I'm ready to be on my own. No. God wants us to be more and more dependent on Him in all areas of our lives. In fact, most importantly, He just wants to be with you. More time with you in your thoughts, throughout your day, that means more and more closer and closer intimacy with God. What does that sound like to you? It doesn't sound like as if you're supposed to be moving away from the direction of growth. It's supposed to be in the direction of growth, you're supposed to be gaining closer and closer independence to Him. That's a level of spiritual maturity that can be used to be measured. So are you growing more and more dependent on God or are you growing more and more independent? Are you making your own decisions based on solely what you, your experience and your education by the words of somebody else that doesn't even follow God's, God's words? Or are you surrounded by community that follows and seeks God and they trust and depend on His word and His guidance, His Holy Spirit in all areas of their life? I pray that you receive this because as I was praying, I was like, I was actually being way more grateful to God as I was talking to this friend. I wasn't even remembering my own son because I measure maturity with my children. The more and more they can do things independently on their own. But then a couple years ago, I realized like, you know what, they're gonna have all the time in the world to learn things on their own. I want them to spend as much time with me and I want them to gain and glean as much information from me. And I just want to spend time with them because I know at a certain point, they're not gonna want to be with me. And not just me being an earthly father to earthly children. So how much so do we have that ingrained in our thoughts with our Heavenly Father? We got to challenge that. We got to challenge and say like, you know what, I need to be like a child depending on His Father. But in this case, we're supposed to be growing more and more intimate and closer to Him, not further away. Doesn't matter how old you are, doesn't matter how long you've been following Christ. I pray that this is a reminder to you that whatever you're facing today, whether it be changing the color of the room that you are sleeping in, to dating, relationships, your marriage, business, everything, school, education, that you're trusting and believing in God. Here, we reached another part of the trail. Let me show you this beautiful part of the river. I love it because it's stagnant and still on one side. See how quiet that is? But then on the other side, sorry for the turn there, you can hear the water, sound, and the river noise. So calming. God bless you on your day. I pray this speaks to you.