Chapter 1: Unrealized Christianity
More To Christianity Than We Realize
Many Christians don’t have the Holy Spirit living within them. Most don’t even know that this is something they should be looking for in their walk with God. As a result, their prayers are little more than begging God to give them what they need, then hoping that God will overlook their unworthiness and bless them anyway. Most of these types of prayers aren’t answered, and the typical Christian then goes away either blaming God or blaming themselves. This results in discouragement such that the Christian finds himself asking God for less and less so as not to get his hopes up and be disappointed. Thus he feels that God can’t be trusted to help even when help is needed most; but at the same time he doesn’t want to consciously admit that he’s thinking this way, so he makes excuses for why his prayers aren’t answered and he falls into a cold and formal religious life.
Even if you currently are fully satisfied with your Christian experience, please consider that there is something more than we’ve been practicing the past 100 years or more. There is much more than we, the Christians of the 20th and 21st centuries, have been practicing; more than we have even conceived. We have the potential to do the miraculous works of the great men of the Bible. But few of us realize that. We Christians are only at the most basic level of possible spiritual growth; and most of us are completely unaware that there is more available. Yet we feel satisfied and think that we already have “the ultimate experience” in our relationship with God. The reason Christians don’t reach the higher levels isn’t because they reject them; it’s because they are unaware of their existence. As you study, please open yourself to the concept that there is much more available to us if we will look for it. What the early Christians had is also extended to us. Seek, and ye shall find.
We must wake up! We as a people have been asleep for generations. We’re proud of our present theology. We’re proud of our deeds and our works. We feel we already have all the wisdom there is to gain, all the relationship there is to experience, all the blessings there are to receive. We feel we have need of nothing. But this is the exact description of “the church of Laodecia” in Revelation. The truth is we have lost touch with God, but we don’t know it. We no longer have personal guidance from God for our daily lives. We’ve even forgotten that this is possible.
When we hear someone mention that we can have a new kind of closeness with God, we dismiss their message as fanaticism. We draw a parallel between them and those “reformers” of years gone by who went on to form splinter groups and led many away to dishonor. Yet there is a difference. Those who formed offshoot groups were led by human ideas and human wisdom. That is why their messages failed. True leading from God, however, will not fail and cannot end in the same result. But by being cautious to reject every new message, we are in danger of also rejecting a genuine revival brought by the Lord.
Herein lies a dilemma — how can we tell the difference? If we don’t already have God’s leading, then how can we receive God’s attempt to give us His leading? Without God’s guidance we don’t even have the discernment needed to recognize His true revival of the Church.
So we find ourselves in the condition of the priests of Jesus’ day who rejected “the One” whom God sent to them (Jesus) because He didn’t fit their ideas of the “Messiah” they were expecting. We today are likewise in danger of rejecting “the One” God is sending to us (the Holy Spirit) because this concept doesn’t fit our ideas of the “Latter Rain” we are expecting.
Beware, beware, beware! Take care not to reject what is true while trying to avoid what is false.
Steps of Spiritual Growth
Christian growth runs along a continuum, with one end having the person who is not a Christian and the other end having a person in such close relationship with God that they are equal to the greatest men of the Bible. Since our growth does not progress upward at a constant and equal rate but instead progresses in stages with plateaus or even dips, it is useful to liken the progress of the continuum to a set of stairs. Each step upward marks a new level of spiritual growth with increased understanding and a better relationship with God.
At the ground level is the person who is not religious in any way and holds no belief in any higher being. The first step up is the nominal believer who acknowledges that there is a God and on occasion may even engage in a religious activity, but who is not “active” in their belief. (Although this and other stages may be applied to several forms of religious practice, for the purpose of this discussion we are limiting the consideration to only Christianity.) The second step up represents the sincere Christian who frequently engages in religious activity and is making a decided effort to live up to most of what they know to do.
Unfortunately, these first three steps seem to be the extent of Christian practice today. For at least the past century, and conceivably much longer, very few Christians have reached a stage of spirituality higher than what is represented by the first three levels. As a result the majority of Christians don’t even consider the possibility that there is something higher.
When talking about the great men of the Bible, their level of growth is explained away as being something special that was for their time only, but which isn’t available today. When talking about the handful of great people that have had higher experiences since the close of Bible times, they are considered as being called to a special mission, but again what they had isn’t open to us.
These explanations are mistaken. We today can have just such a closeness with God as they had; if we will but seek for it. But it requires a commitment to God that goes beyond what we’ve considered. The reason we haven’t seen more people reaching the higher levels isn’t because God has withdrawn access to them, but because so few people are truly willing to surrender their all to God. Many make the claim that they do so, even singing songs to that effect; but nearly no one actually follows through. We’ve gotten to the point where we no longer grasp just what such a commitment truly means.
When we come to Christ we offer our lives to Him to use as He will; and we truly mean it. But, seemingly the next day, we pick our lives back up again and continue from where we left off with only a few minor adjustments to reflect our new commitment. This happens not because of a lack of desire but because of a lack of knowledge. Once again, sincere Christians are, by definition, doing all or most of what they know to do and they are genuinely trying their best or nearly so. But due to being unaware that there are higher stages available, they are limited to merely doing the things they already know, just with more effort.
This increased effort eventually leads to frustration, because although we’re doing our best we inherently feel that there should be more to the experience, but we don’t know how to get it. We look to our spiritual leaders but find little help there, because they can’t take us any higher than they’ve progressed themselves. A minister who doesn’t have the Holy Spirit for himself can’t give the Holy Spirit to his flock. And this has been the problem with the Christian experience for the past century — nearly no one has had the Holy Spirit in a way that they can use to help others to have the same. Christianity needs people who have the Holy Spirit, who can teach others that such an experience is possible, and who can show the way to obtain this higher relationship with our God through receiving the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
By accepting the concept that there is more to Christianity than the three well-known levels, we then begin seeking to discover what the higher levels are and how to get there. The next step past “sincere Christian” is to receive the experience we are referring to as “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit”. The following chapters will present more about this subject. That experience then takes you through a process of spiritual growth that prepares you for even higher levels.
To reach the step of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit you must first recognize that there is such a step and begin striving for it. Scripture has many verses that address this; but perhaps the best known are in the Gospels. Mt 3:11, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Lk 11:13, “Much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” Jn 1:12, “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.”
We thus can see that it is God’s desire to give the Holy Spirit to all His children. From the very beginning of the plan of salvation this has been one of the important parts of our spiritual growth. However, our enemy has successfully misled God’s children to the point where they no longer know how to obtain the most powerful and crucial element of their relationship. Satan knows that once we become empowered with the Holy Spirit, we then become much more effective at fighting against him, and teaching others how to resist him.
Receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit starts us on a course of development and understanding that brings many profound changes. We, and others, begin seeing in us the large improvements that we were hoping for when we first became Christians. More than this, we come to realize that receiving the Holy Spirit within, as great as this is, is not the ultimate experience either; there are higher and still higher stages yet to come. The growth that came after receiving the Holy Spirit within prepares us to later receive the Pentecost experience.
Even our own Pentecost is not the final stage. After progressing through the stages associated with receiving the Holy Spirit in power, we find that there is even yet more to come. Our God is infinite. And as His beloved sons and daughters, He has in store for us experiences that are higher and still higher, beyond what our minds can imagine.
1Co 2:9-10, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But God has revealed them to us by His Spirit.”
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