4 stages of Spiritual Growth
By: Monika Koniecka
Tags: Abiding In Christ, Spiritual Growth, Love Of God

“14…I bow my knees to the Father…15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you…to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell [manifest His presence] in your hearts…that you…18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — 19 to know the love of Christ…that you may be filled with all the fullness of God”. (Eph. 3:14–19)

Ephesians 3:14–19 is a prayer to experience more of the presence of God. That is obviously what we all want. And so I look at this as a patterned prayer to pray for me to experience the presence of God, and I pray it for my friends and family to experience the presence of God. I look at this passage, and I refer to it as a diamond with many facets of truth. It will equip us to love God and also to relate to other people because we see ourselves and we see them through the lens of God’s heart and God’s love. That is a normal idea, but it is a very profound one, even though it is an idea that we are all familiar with.

Now I want you to notice, as you read the prayer, the word, “that” is mentioned 4 times. Paul says, “I pray that this happens so that that happens so that that happens so that that happens.” There is a very distinct and clear progression in Paul’s mind. If you notice it, then it will even equip you as a discipler of other people. These are the four progression points that the Spirit showed Paul. He prayed according to this, but he also taught and pastored people according to this fourfold progression.

Let’s look at verse 14. Paul said, “I bow my knees to the Father from whom the whole family is named.” It is interesting that this prayer has a very specific relational family dimension to it. Strategically and intentionally he is not saying, “I bow my knees to the king who has authority over all the nations.” Now he could pray that way at another time, but he is saying this is a family matter here. There are family dynamics. This is relational.

He said, “Here is my prayer,” verse 16, “I pray that” — here is the first one — “that the Father would grant them to be strengthened with divine might inside of them in their inner man.” That is their mind and emotions. So he starts there: “strengthen them with divine might in their inner man.” Touch their mind and touch their emotions. Stir their mind and emotions.

And so I pray this for myself, “Strengthen me in my inner man. Holy Spirit, release more of Your inspiration to my inner man, my mind and my emotions.” I also pray that for friends and family members.

He says, as it were, “Well, it does not end there: so that Christ would dwell in your hearts so that you would be rooted and grounded in love and therefore able to comprehend the family dynamics with all of the saints this fourfold dimension of God’s love — the width, the length, the depth and the height — that you could experience, you could know, know by experience, the love of Christ that passes knowledge, so that” — here’s the fourth one — “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Stage #1: Paul is praying for them “to be strengthened in their inner man” The practical application is that you are praying this for yourself to be strengthened in your inner man. You are praying this for the people that you are interceding for. The inner man involves and includes the mind and the emotions, the thinking and the feelings.

Why do we need God to strengthen our mind and emotions? So we can sustain a resolute desire to obey Him. I mean, we want to obey Him today, but tomorrow we do not want to obey Him so much, because that inspiration is a temporary inspiration. Jesus said, “Pray the Father would give you this day your daily bread.”

I always like to say, “Lord, give me monthly bread! Okay? Better yet, yearly bread!” You know bread is that provision for the heart. That daily bread is direction, finances, provision. It is all of that stuff. I like the monthly and yearly installments, but He gives them daily. He says, “Come back and ask again.” I say, “Oh, I asked yesterday,” and He says, “Yes, and I gave you a little inspiration yesterday. Now come back again today.”

That was actually intentionally communicated by God when the children of Israel were in the wilderness. He gave them manna every day. And yesterday’s manna was spoiled today. The Lord was making a very important point. Jesus said, “I am the Manna from heaven” in John 6. So that is, “You need daily interaction with Me because yesterday’s inspiration was real, but it does not hold you steady today.”

And so we pray. This is a regular prayer. As a matter of fact, I have a little prayer booklet called, “Prayers to Strengthen the Inner Man” where I have ten different prayers using the acronym F-E-L-L-O-W-S-H-I-P. You know F for the fear of God, E for endurance, L for love, etc. And I give ten biblical prayers that you pray for your own inner man. The point I want to make is that our part is to pray this prayer for ourselves or pray it for others, and it is something that we do daily.

Again, it isn’t like, “Lord, give me enough inspiration so I can talk with you next month on Tuesday, at this same time next month, and then we will do it again.” It is just like eating a meal. The meal you ate on Monday was helpful in the overall, but it is not helping you much today. He wants it that way. It takes God to love God, and we have to talk to God regularly to have regular inspiration. He does it on purpose because He is a God of relationship. He wants us communicating with Him. I mean He could just wave His hand, and we have inspiration for life.

Stage #2. This confuses some people because Paul said, “…so that Christ would dwell in your heart.”

People say, “Wait! I thought the day I was born again I invited Christ into my heart?” That language is good, but there is more in the Bible to Christ dwelling in your heart than the day you are born again. What Paul is talking about is the manifest presence of God and you feeling it in your mind and your emotions. Your mind is touched by it, and you are actually praying it, stage one, and you are feeling it in stage two. He is manifesting His presence. Jesus is manifesting Himself in your heart. That is His active presence.

Paul connects that idea with being rooted and grounded in love. When He is manifesting His presence in my heart, my mind is much more clear and my emotions are tenderized. That is the same as being rooted and grounded in love. I am seeing it. I am feeling it. It makes sense, and I don’t mean feeling it at the level that is exaggerated, but it makes a difference. He is manifesting Himself in our heart.

A lot of people say, “I need to feel Him!”

I say, “Good. Start at stage one. Begin praying to be strengthened with might in the inner man. And in time — it is in little bits, it is incremental; however, it is real — you will start feeling His manifest presence in your thinking.”

Now what does that mean, to feel His manifest presence in your thinking? That means godly ideas make more sense. And when that inspiration is gone, those godly ideas are foggy like, “Aghhh, yeah, yeah, living for eternity. I was really into that a few months ago, but it has kind of lifted.” That is the presence of God touching our hearts, and again our mind and emotions.

Stage #3: when I am feeling a little bit — and I do not want to exaggerate this because a little bit of this really matters — then I have a new capacity to comprehend how God sees and thinks about others. When I am not weighed down with my own dullness, and darkness, and dark emotions, and condemnations, and rejection, and bewilderment, this kind of frees up our emotional bandwidth so we can see others, like, “Wow! I see you! Not just I see you, but I see you through the lens of God’s heart a little bit. Wow, life is much better this way!” If I do not see you through the lens of God’s love, then your deficiencies or whatever you do might bug me more than I want to be bugged or vice versa. However, when we have this greater capacity to comprehend, we say, “Wow! You know what? You have flaws and deficiencies, but there is a big storyline about your life. I do not see it all, but this is worth it to me. This makes sense to engage with you and to see your value.”

Life is so different when we can see people a little bit through the lens of God’s heart. Because, if we do not, we live in comparison, anger, fear, frustration, annoyance, constantly being annoyed, like, “Why are they doing that?” And most of the human race do not really walk in stage three, not even a little bit, even believers I mean. The reason they don’t get to stage three is because they don’t do stage one. They do not actually pray for strength in their inner man.

Now, don’t make these stages compartmentalized, like, “Well, I am in stage two, and eventually stage three.” It is all a little bit fluid, like I touch all four of them and lose ground in all four of them as I am moving forward. Therefore, making them like compartmentalized stages, meaning you do stage one fully before you do stage two, is not the right idea.

However, I know that if I focus on stage one, stage two starts growing, stage three gets more clear, and I am moving in all of them. I am wanting to grow in all of them regularly. I know that these four things are an overlapping progression. It is not super distinct, but one does lead to the other. At least Paul thought so when he said, “This, so that, so that that, so that that, so that that…”

Stage #4: we are equipped to walk in the fullness of God. Now you might think, “Whoa! The fullness of God!” The way you might interpret that is the fullness of God’s purpose for this season in your life, because every season God has a purpose, an assignment, and they only go so long. The Lord would say, “Actually, I gave you all that I made available to you, and you are walking in it, or that is what you are aiming for, and later on there will be a bigger measure, and later on there will be a bigger measure.” And so we can walk in the fullness of what He intends for us even now. That is not just something in the resurrection because even then that “fullness” will get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Now I want you to connect this prayer with what Jesus said in John 15 where Jesus gave the famous “Abide in Me” statement. Everybody knows it. “Abide in Me, and I will abide in you.” However, it is easy to miss what Jesus is saying. He said, “I am the Vine” — I am the Source — “You are the branches” — you are the expression. In effect, “I am the Source of the supernatural life. I dwell in your spirit. I am the Source of supernatural life that inspires you. If you do not talk to Me, that inspiration is not going to rise up nearly at the level as it will if you do talk to Me. I am the Source, and so don’t think that you can be the expression if you are not talking to the Source. It will not happen.” It might happen a little bit because the Lord is so gracious. And the Lord would say, “I actually will give you new desires. You will bear fruit on the inside. You will feel differently. You will see differently, but you have to talk to Me. Then, little by little, I will talk back to you.” Or using Paul’s phrase, “I will manifest My presence on your mind and your emotions, on your inner man. And you will bear fruit. You will start loving what you used to hate and start hating a little bit what you used to love, but it is progressive. It is step by step.” Every now and then there is a big giant breakthrough, but mostly it is incremental, little by little.

Here is the challenge: He allows us to set the pace of the conversation. He says, as it were, “If you talk, I will stay with it as long as you want. If you end the conversation, usually I will end it.” I have found out over the years that as long as I talk to Him, He will talk back. I do not mean I hear something. I do not mean like if I am talking to Him at ten o’clock in the morning and at ten-o-one I get an answer. No, I am saying that if I am dialoguing with Him throughout the day, then over time and not necessarily that day I get more back from Him. If I talk to Him, He talks to me. And I am talking about Him inspiring me in just little incremental ways. If we stop talking to Him — I do not mean that we stop at ten-o-five and so now at ten minutes after ten we are in trouble — I am saying that if we go for some weeks and months, and we say, “Oh yeah, I am just too busy. You know I mean to do that, but I just get busy, and then I am going to do this instead of that…” Then He says “Okay! I am here. I will stop when you stop.” Abiding in Christ — I want you to catch this — it involves an ongoing conversation. I am just kind of whispering, just a little bit, not all the time, but throughout the day in little ten and twenty-second increments. That is abiding in Christ. That is core to abiding in Christ. If you do that, many other things will fall into line.