Your growth pace is entirely dependent on you

How long should a dealing from God last?

This brief article is a sequel to how to interpret God's dealings in your life.

One thing we need to know is that the duration of our dealings is different. Someone can learn about how to honor men experientially for five years, and you can learn it in a day. By “learning” it, I am not referring to the mental understanding of it. I am talking about the translation of whatever you have learned from your head to your heart.

This heart experience is the one we live daily by, and I am saying that the time it will take for God’s word to move from your head to your heart (that is, from knowledge to living by it) differs.

So, someone can know a lot about respect, for instance, yet he doesn’t know how to respect everyone. He still uses societal measures to show respect.

Spiritual things aren’t the same as physical or mental things. So, when you hear someone saying, “God taught me how to love, pray, give, etc., for three years,” do not condition your mind that it will take you all those years or a shorter time to walk in these things. It may take you longer or shorter depending on your level of obedience/stubbornness.

You can learn to trust God from just a single experience, and that becomes so ingrained in you that no man would ever be able to talk you out of it.

I have heard of people who simply read it from the scriptures, did not need much teaching, were thoroughly convicted, and immediately began to live it out. For someone else, it may take them to have four to five experiences to fully become conscious of that part of their life.

All the experiences they will have will culminate in teaching them to trust God. They had to pass through more experiences, probably because of the stubbornness of their hearts.

That you learned yours in a shorter time does not mean you didn’t arrive there. It just means you were more yielded to God and his dealings.

Remember that Jesus described different kinds of hearts that receive the word and what happens to each of them.

That’s how our hearts are.

We may need to hear and hear again before we begin to bear fruit.

So, don’t short-circuit your walk because of the experience of another believer.

Your pace of growth is entirely dependent on you.