CHAPTER 1
The Father — Developing the Spirit
A Relationship with the Father Develops Our Spirit
The primary responsibility of a pastor is to assist God in developing, growing, and maturing believers into the vessels that God wants them to be. In conjunction with that, God's people must be willing to be pliable, not to the pastor, but to God. Every child of God has to be ready to hear God's voice, understand what He is saying, and be willing to change as He directs. Change is a good thing, and it is necessary. You cannot stay the same or have the same mentality and perform a different action from your current thought process. Please understand that if your desire is to do something different, you have to become something different. Doing the same things and expecting different results is insanity, and that is why change is necessary.
Salvation is the constant process of change, and it is God's plan for us to be changed from the way we used to think. Unfortunately, as members of the body of Christ, we have not fully comprehended the whole master plan of God. Many have understood and grasped certain areas, but for the most part, we are not totally focused on what God is trying to do in our lives. We do not always comprehend as we should, so there is a need for us to learn and recognize God's plan of salvation for us.
Developing the Complete You was written for this very reason. Through this study, it is my prayer that God will help us understand how we get to the place that is necessary for us to fulfill God's will. Most people do understand that God is their source; however, there is an ultimate place that God wants us to be. Developing the Complete You is an attempt to get every believer who allows these words into their hearts to change them for the better, forever! So let us begin with how our relationship with our heavenly Father develops our spirit.
Created in His Image
1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 says, for us to be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. According to these verses, we are supposed to be a certain way when Jesus comes, and God is able to help us reach that destination. Many Christians want to know and operate in God's perfect will; but when we do not understand how God develops us, His desires become difficult to accomplish. We need to learn who God is and how He does what He does in us.
God is a triune God, just as man is a triune being. God is also the God of divine order as well as divine purpose, and He does nothing by accident. God has also preordained and pre-established our lives. When God did what He did during creation, He had an exact picture in His mind of what He was doing, but it is not like that with many of us. We want to check if certain things are going to work before we take action. Unlike us, God already knows how things are going to work. We want to see if certain things are going to work. God already knows what is supposed to happen, and we can see this as He demonstrates the surety of His plan in the book of Genesis.
The story of the creation of mankind may be elementary to some, but I want you to get a full understanding of how man was created. For many, this will be a new level of ministry and a new level of the church, as you have understood. To get a better understanding of this, we will have to put away old ways, old thoughts, and old habits. It is vitally important that we start looking at the specifics of God's words and not just the generality of His words.
Many people have kept God in a general place in their lives and not in a specific place. Thus, we are not maximizing the full potential of who God is at the same time not maximizing the full potential of the Trinity of God. I thank God for Jesus. I thank God for the Holy Spirit. I thank God in everything. However, we will never understand the fullness of the benefits of Jesus or of the Holy Spirit until we know all the benefits of God the Father.
Genesis 1:26 says, And God, said let us make man in our image. Notice, He said "our" image. God is talking in the sense of "me, mine, and ours." In this verse, God has already acknowledged the Trinity of Himself. He said "let us" because the Trinity is real to Him. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are the "us" that made man in their image and after "their" likeness. It is not a coincidence that God is a triune being and that He made man a triune being. If God is going to make man in His own image and likeness, He had to make man like Himself. Understand that God is three persons in one, and all three make up the Godhead. This is just how we are: three entities in one (spirit, soul, and body), and this makes us like God.
Unfortunately, we sometimes generalize our creation. In the Old Testament, God was still unified in himself. There was not much clarity of the differences of God. The translators interchanged the words Lord and God; however, they were talking about all three. It did not matter whether one part was doing the work or not, they were still God. All three were three in one.
In the New Testament, we begin to see the distinction, separation, functions, and benefits of the three parts of God. Yet we still generalize it and put them in one. We still keep them grouped together even though they are separate in their workings, trying to bring the unity and oneness back. I remember teaching a message on the final level where I outlined how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit wanted to reunite again in you. The final level is when you connect all three of Him as one in you. It is when all of you and all of Him become one together.
Different Parts Develop Different Functions
Each part of God develops a different part of man. Each part of God must be targeted toward the right part of man, or you will never get all the benefits or the fullness of any part. The order is very specific. It is just like eating. If I eat physical food, it is going to benefit my physical body. However, eating the physical food will not benefit my spirit until I start eating spiritual food (the word of God). In other words, my physical body will be benefiting and receiving from the physical food, but not all three parts of me. My mind does not fully grow by physical food alone. I do realize some foods are called "brain" foods, but I do not know if that makes you smart or not. Nevertheless, the primary benefit of food is specifically for the body, more than anything else.
The primary part of man that God wants to develop and establish is our spirit man, which is the main part of us. The Holy Spirit does not develop the primary part of our spirit man; however, the Holy Spirit can help. Neither is our spirit man primarily developed by Jesus the word, even though Jesus can...
