Grow Up!

"And Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people."

Luke 2:52

For the past several Sundays we have been looking at: "Stepping Into Your Destiny".

A point that was made this week was that if you want to step into your destiny what you need to know is that God has a plan for your life but He matures you through a process.

So often we cry out to God: 'Lord, reveal your plan for my life so that I can fulfill it!'

God answers that prayer by setting us on the path to maturity. We fail to make the connection between maturity and His plans for our life, so we consider our prayer unanswered. In extreme cases we can even lose our faith in God and fall away.

Simply stated; Gods plans for my life include my maturing.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul said it in Ephesians 4:13 "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." While this verse is most often applied to the church as a whole it is not unreasonable, in light of scriptural principles, to apply it to individual lives as well. As a matter of fact, Paul goes on, in the next verse, to say: "Then we will no longer be infants..."

It is not Gods' intention for you to fulfill His plans for your life and find at the completion of that plan you are still a spiritual infant.

Failure to yield to the maturing process of God cuts short our fulfilling His plans.

We step out of Gods plans when we refuse to grow up.

Abraham, Moses, David and so many other biblical patriarchs, we could note, fulfilled the plans God had for them. They grew and matured in the process as well.

Our example from this past Sunday was Joseph.

He had changed significantly and matured through the process of being betrayed by his brothers, being sold into slavery and spending time in prison. Each of those trials were part of the process God brought and Joseph yielded too. He then stepped into his destiny as Pharaoh's trusted leader and God's provision to maintain the covenant promises to Abraham.

Are you anxious to step into your destiny?

Then you must surrender to the process of God's maturing work!