“By the God of your father who will help you,
And by the Almighty who will bless you
With blessings of heaven above,
Blessings of the deep that lies beneath,
Blessings of the breasts and of the womb.”
Genesis 49:25
The first mandate given to humanity was to be fruitful.
Fruitfulness presupposes that Got has given you and I a seed. God didn’t say, “Be seedful”…He said, “Be fruitful!”
Fruitfulness means you’re going to have seeds.
When I started thinking about seeds, the image God put before me was of a pomegranate.
Did you know that a pomegranate has 613 seeds…and that there are exactly 613 laws that God gave His people in the Old Testament?
To be fruitful, all of God’s laws must be operating in your life.
And in order for you to operate according to these laws, you must mature spiritually.
This is why I am teaching on the 8 Stages of Spiritual Maturation in my bi-monthly Bible study.
Please join me TONIGHT here in Atlanta for a small group Bible study!
(Click here for details!)
I consider this is to be my own personal life group where we dig deep into the Word of God together.
If you’re in the Atlanta area, I encourage you to join our live studio audience as we film our 4 Points Broadcast.
Many people are not as fruitful as they could be because they are breaking spiritual laws—not out of rebellion, but out of ignorance.
There are laws of the Spirit we need to understand.
How do we function in this world?
How do we fulfill the purposes God has seeded within us?
We must grow up and mature spiritually.
This is why God is going to begin to incubate us again—He is going to take us back to a place where we are growing and maturing…because of things like prayer, fasting, Bible study, and devotions.
How many of you woke up this morning and had a time of devotion?
How many of you spend at least 15 minutes reading your Bible and at least another 15 minutes in a time of prayer every morning?
These are elementary practices.
We say we desire the wisdom of God, yet we don’t seriously pursue it. We say we want to hear from God, but we rarely take time to listen.
Sometimes God needs to get you into a place of spiritual incubation where it’s just you and Him—where you are not pulled away by distraction—where He begins to speak to you about your purpose and your destiny and your assignment.
God wants to speak to you about all He has for you!
Too many of us are preoccupied with our cell phones. A lot of people live by their cell phone! As soon as a notification goes off, they pick it up.
What about picking up the notification to read your Bible?
What about picking up your Bible when the Holy Spirit notifies you it’s time to read? Or it’s time to pray?
How many of you are so in tune with Heaven that you pick up the notification?
What we do during these times of incubation—in the womb, so to speak—determines to what extent we’ll mature.
Therefore, to grow and fully form, we must participate in the gestation process: the process of carrying or being carried in the womb between conception and birth.
The womb is part of the maturation process.
This is the first stage of spiritual maturation. You can’t skip this stage. Those who don’t undergo a proper gestation period are still born. Their purpose is aborted.
Even a baby that is born prematurely will spend time in an incubator. This is a critically important stage of development.
In this season, God is going to begin to do some amazing things.
I’ve learned that the word pomegranate means “to rise up” or “rising up.”
This is your season of rising up…for growing up into everything predestined for you.
God is about to reveal His glory to this generation.
The pain and discomfort that you are experiencing may not be because of the enemy, rather you may be in the throes of divine contractions.
You may be growing in the things of the Lord so much, but it’s a gestation season for you.
You’ve been fasting and praying while hidden in the incubator.
Nobody else knows what’s going on but you and God.
You know God has a great work for you…you know you’re anointed and have a great purpose.
Could it be God is incubating you and hiding you and developing you in the things of the Spirit?
Stop blaming people.
Stop blaming your boss.
Stop blaming the devil.
Stop aborting the seeds of potential God has sown in you. Stop aborting the Word God has spoken over your life.
Stop aborting your purpose and the answers to your prayers.
If you want to learn how to bring what God has seeded in your heart to full term, go listen to the 4 Points Broadcast on demand now.
I can only skim the surface of this powerful truth here. I believe if you take the time to listen to the entire message (download the app here and listen on the go), it will change the trajectory of your life.
“For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.”
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
You must be able to discern the seasons. But first, you must know how to recognize them.