The Holy Spirit was present when the plan for our lives was developed by God. He was sent by Jesus to serve as our guide. He will help us discover and walk in the plan of God. We will not be able to recognize His leadings though if we have not first crucified our flesh. The Holy Spirit will strengthen us and be with us each step of the way in our journey.
And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. (Mark 4:26 – 29)
Everything in the Kingdom of God operates on the principle of seedtime and havest. Ground must always be prepared before the seed is sown. This is true in the natural and spiritual realms. Jesus told us that our hearts are the ground in which His Word is planted. It takes time to prepare our hearts to receive the Word. There are no shortcuts. If we are going to succeed, we will have to make time for prayer and meditation in the Word of God. It is possible to cruise through our Christian walk and still end up in heaven. God will love us regardless of whether we choose to live a lukewarm life or one that is focused on pursuing Him with all of our being. The choice is ours! Our journey is focused on discovering and fulfilling the plan of God. This will require us to rise out of lukewarm Christianity with a commitment to spend time daily in prayer and meditation in the Word. This cannot be overemphasized! There are no shortcuts in this journey. Our flesh will want to see results much faster that they will come. The ground must be prepared, the seed planted, and then time given for the seed to grow before we experience harvest. Over time we will begin to see harvest more frequently if we continue to plant the seed of the Word in our hearts. The anointing is a precious gift. God must know that He can trust us with it. We often are unable to see His plan because He knows we cannot be trusted. A spiritually immature person will often get a taste of the plan and try to accomplish it in their own efforts. This will lead to their destruction. God desires for us to succeed! He will show us only what we are able to receive. There may be times when He will give us a glimpse of what is ahead because He knows we will need the time to prepare our hearts. In the end His goal is for us to find His plan and fulfill it without veering off course.
That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:12)
At this point in our journey we are seeing the need for patience. This will be a big part of our success. The development of patience is key to our discovering and fulfilling the plan of God for our lives. Impatience is the opposite of patience. The Holy Spirit will sometimes use our impatience as a catalyst to get us moving in the right direction. It will not enable us to arrive at our destination. Impatience is a disease that has infected our society. People today are focused on instant gratification. Grocery stores are introducing technology that allows us to order ahead and an associate will be waiting curbside to load our order to avoid the inconvenience of walking the aisles to search for an item. Fast food restaurants are experimenting with ways for us to have our order ready before we enter the drive through line. Everything is becoming focused on self. Impatience is becoming the norm and the idea of waiting for something is almost a foreign concept anymore. Developing in the things of the spirit will require patience. Instant gratification and selfish desires have no place in the Kingdom of God. We still need to allow time for the ground to be prepared, the seed planted, and then for growth.
For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. (Mark 4:28)
The Holy Spirit will lead us one step at a time. As we develop and become more mature, He may show us more steps. The norm will always be just one or two at a time. The next step may be revealed just as we step into the current one. It may also be years before we see the next step. If we will continue to seek God, we will see the harvest coming forth, “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear”.My wife and I recently purchased a new vehicle. We did not follow the time-honored tradition of going from dealership to dealership test driving different vehicles. We also did not automatically gravitate to the brand that we had the best experience with. The Holy Spirit began to prompt us that it was time to trade-in my vehicle three years before delivery. The leader of our church had taught about them importance of not moving until we received a witness from the Holy Spirit. Each of us was committed to this so we agreed to spend time in prayer before making a move. Neither of us realized that it would take three years for the new car to be received. We began to pray. Months went by without us receiving any clear direction. Three letters dropped into my spirit at the end of the first year. I knew they had to do with the car but did not know what they meant. We did an Internet search for the three letters and found a car manufacturer with a model matching those letters. It was a brand neither of us would have thought to even look at. In our minds the car was much more than either of us would have believed for and thoughts of doubt began to kick in. At the time I had a commute to work. Several days after we received the three letters, I was prompted by the Spirit to look in the rear-view mirror. One of the vehicles the Lord had directed me too was following my car. The driver passed me and then I was following the car! We don’t follow fleeces but by the time I arrived at work another one had pulled alongside me and a third was following me! This was confirmation of what we heard. With the knowledge of which car to believe for in hand we then began to pray for the plan. The model was received in January and then in August we received the plan. This vehicle’s engine was rated as four hundred horse-power so we printed for sheets of one-hundred horses. The total cost was divided by the number of horses and we began to believe for each horse thinking things would start moving quickly but months passed by and the money only trickled in. One year later I was fighting discouragement because we had not even received half of the cost of the car and we were over two years into the car project. The Bible tells us that we inherit the promise through faith and patience, but I was not expecting for it to take such a long time! A few months later we returned from a trip and had only nine days at home. The Lord prompted us to test drive the vehicle. This would be our first time to see it in person, so we made arrangements to visit a local showroom on my birthday. The day came and we were both shocked to find the car we had been believing for was to small. I am six foot eight inches and could not sit comfortably in the driver’s seat! It seemed that we had missed God. Through a series of events another dealership in our area contacted us. They had the next vehicle up available and were trying to get rid of the current year model as the next year models were arriving. The salesman told us that they would reduce the price by ten thousand dollars if we would purchase it! We visited and knew it was right. The Lord enabled us to drive off the lot with a paid for vehicle, but we were questioning why He had led us to the smaller vehicle originally. A little research revealed that the larger model was not even released until about seven months after He led us to the original one. It turned out He used the original model to get us on the path to that car maker which originally ended up with the right vehicle. It took three years from the start of our faith project until the car manifested. If we had been in a hurry, we would have missed the blessing He had in store for us. It took time to prepare our hearts to receive the vision for our car. It also takes time to prepare our hearts to receive His plan and walk in it. If we are going to discover the plan of God, we are going to have to be willing to take the time to prepare the ground of our hearts. This will require us to spend time immersing ourselves in prayer and in the Word. It will not be an easy process. Our flesh and the enemy will seemingly work together to keep us from pressing through to victory. The old-timers used to call this process “dying to self”. It is easy to do what our flesh wants us to do. We are going to have to learn to tell our flesh no if we are going to discover and walk in the plan of God! Unfortunately, it seems that the idea of crucifying the flesh is out of vogue in many churches today. It has been replaced with services focused on making attendees as comfortable as possible to avoid any possibility of offending anyone.
Please visit our other social media channels:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfU4MHGJ4zTkxcxTFze4PjQ/
- Instagram: MB Bible – A verse by verse journey through the Bible @mb_bible
- Instagram: MB Devotion – Daily devotions @mb_devotional
- Twitter: @tweets_mb
- Cloud Security Training: https://www.cloudsecurityessentials.org
We recommend Dr. Kenneth E. Hagin’s book “How You Can Be Led by the Spirit of God” (https://amzn.to/2Ye45o4) as a supplemental resource for this blog series. You do not need to purchase this book in order to “credit” our account. Any purchases that you search or make from anywhere on Amazon, after first clicking on the included link, will credit this blog and support our ministry. We are truly grateful for each of our readers and appreciative of those who will help us. There is no cost to you for using our links and they provide an easy way for you to support us!
Please consider helping support our social media outreaches for as little as a $1 per month. You can enroll at https://www.patreon.com/mb_devotional
MBDevotional 