Spiritual Life 101

To live a godly, peaceable life in this World, a Believer must be "filled" with the Holy Ghost and have the Fruit of the Spirit, in his personality. However, before he can possess these emotional qualities and grow spiritually, the field of his mind and emotions have to be "cleansed" by the Word of God and he must understand the spiritual principles that govern and support the "Word" that he is standing on. Unfortunately, Satan is not just going to sit back and let this happen without putting up a fight, so he uses all kinds of sly, deceitful manuevers to slow down or stop this process in our life. He systematically uses sin, unrestrained emotions and false teaching to "dig holes" in our health, character and personality. If we intend to reach the more and much fruit-bearing stage, that Jesus spoke about in John 15:2,5 we must strive to "catch" the foxes we see in our life, go through our wilderness experience and take advantage of every opportunity to grow in grace and gain more spiritual knowledge and understanding. The woman who was healed from the Issue of Blood understood what the "hem" of a priest's garment represented so, as a result, her knowledge + her need + her determination energized her faith and pushed it to a level that drew so much virtue out of Jesus that He had to ask, "who touched me?" When we understand the fundmental prinicples that support what we believe and what we are commanded to do, it will energize our faith and maximize the level of what we receive from the Lord! Understanding is a key to spiritual success!