Suppose you discovered that there had been a large warehouse of wonderful gifts just for your use, but that you chose to ignore it.

That would be a shame, right?

Well, there is just such a place in Heaven crammed full of spiritual gifts reserved just for you, BUT they have a “Use By” date.

In last week’s essay, we used a “time-release capsule” to illustrate the whole package of blessings that every Christian receives the moment they are born again. This is their Heavenly “warehouse.”

But unless they are aware the gifts are there and that they must personally be claimed, they can easily lie unclaimed indefinitely.

God wants to bless Christians with as many spiritual gifts as they can handle. He doesn’t want you to wait until you pass through the “pearly gates” to enjoy what He has prepared for you.

In Ephesians 1:3, at the beginning of his Epistle to the Ephesians the Apostle Paul writes: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ …”

Note the tense, “has blessed us.” Done deal. He wants to give you a taste of eternity right here, right now.

But there’s a “gotcha” to reach full spiritual potential.

You have a part to play in this process. The Christian life is designed to be an active cooperative mix of divine and human effort for a believer to reach his or her full spiritual potential.

Unless we proactively reach out and receive what God has for us, we can remain spiritually immature.

In Hebrews 5:11-12, the writer of the Book of Hebrews addressed some Christians who were like that:

“… you have become poor listeners. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the actual words of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.”

As a good parent, God expects us to grow up in our faith to maturity. It’s no use hiding behind our go-to cop outs like, “I’ll never change,” or “I’ve always been this way,” or “It’s too late to change now.”

God has already deposited the fruits of His Spirit in your heart so that you can live your life to the fullest and bless others in the process.

Spiritual fruits like, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” are already yours — but for them to manifest fully in your life, you must let God prepare you by His Spirit. This takes time.

We would all like to have more patience with people at work and at home, but we picture the process as something that miraculously descends from Heaven in an instant like a gossamer cloud.

God doesn’t work that way. 

How it actually works: God is very practical when giving us gifts. They are not meant for personal use as much as they are for the edification of the Body of Christ and for the benefit of the world around us.

Miles Stanford writes insightfully in The Complete Green Letters, “Once we see what is ours in Christ Jesus, practical need will cause us to appropriate, to receive the answer to that need. ‘There was a supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ for Paul, and that made it possible for Christ to be magnified in him. It was a supply which was always available, but only appreciated and appropriated as, and when, the Apostle came to know his need. Life is meant to bring a succession of discoveries of our need of Christ. And with every such discovery the way is open for a new inflow of the supply …’”

Our job is to ask Him, He then takes over and meets that specific need in His time, not ours.

This is especially difficult in a world filled with people who have the attention span of a fruit fly — but wait upon Him we must. 

I doubt if Michelangelo ever attempted to dash off an overnight sculpture to meet an impatient client’s demand. But that is often how we expect God to deliver Amazon-like results when we, “need it and need it now,” even when praying to God for patience!

Ironic huh?

How About You?

The laws of physics teach that coasting is always a downhill process. It is the same in the spiritual realm.

There are no shortcuts here. Do you earnestly desire to grow spiritually? God won’t force you.

As shared in Luke 8:14, “And the seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way, they are choked by worries, riches, and pleasures of this life, and they bring no fruit to maturity.”

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