Welcome to 15 Minutes in the Word with New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer. On today's program, Joyce will be teaching from her series, Developing the Character of God. To grow spiritually is a process. We need to consistently read and study the Bible so the Lord can change us from the inside out. Slowly but surely, we'll become more like Jesus and reflect His character in our lives. Now, here's Joyce with today's teaching. All right, I am going to teach this weekend on developing the character of God. How many of you want to grow and become more like Christ? Spiritual maturity. Recently I felt like God gave me this simple little definition of what spiritual maturity is and I'm sure it's much more than just this sentence, but I like this. I want you to think about this. Spiritual maturity is asking God what you can do for Him, not only asking God what He can do for you. I wonder how many of you, every day when you say your prayers, ask God, what can I do for you today? Who can I bless? Who can I help? Show me something I can do for you. I want to serve you. I started doing that on a daily basis, maybe three, four years ago, and it's amazing if you listen to people. I mean, if you just form a habit of listening to people, they'll tell you what they need, where they're hurting, what they might like to have. You know, somebody doesn't have to be in desperate need for you to give them something. A lot of people just need to be blessed and they might even have more money than you, but they still just need a blessing. Giving is one of the greatest things that you can become an expert at. I mean, it really truly is. If you want joy in your life, then become a giver. Don't just give when the offering time comes, but be a giver in your life. Make giving a lifestyle. I want to say this again. Don't just ask God to do things for you. Matter of fact, you could probably give that up completely for a while and it wouldn't hurt anything. God knows what you need before you ask Him. You can mention it if you want to, but you don't have to camp on top of it and do nothing, but just tell God over and over what you want Him to do for you. Instead of that, try asking God every day what you can do for Him and see how it changes your life. I really believe that when we come full circle, that's what spiritual maturity really is. It's getting yourself off your mind and learning what Paul meant when he said, it's no longer I that live, but Christ that live within me and the life that I now live by live by the faith of the Son of God. When he said, in you, I live and move and have my being. Or when he said, I die daily. He didn't mean that he died physically every day. He meant that he died to self every day. You know, selfishness is in bread and every one of us. And if you don't believe we're selfish, all you have to do is watch a baby and it's not very long until they tell you when they don't like that you're not giving them what they want. Amen? We have a grandson that's going to be four in July and he's quite a little character, got a little temper on him. Month or six weeks ago, he was having kind of a cranky rough. I'm going to have a fit every time I don't get my way today. And he was out with his mother. She was doing some shopping and he wasn't acting very nice. And she said his name is Brody. She said Brody, we're going to pray about the way you're behaving. So she wrapped her arms around him. She's really a great mom. She wrapped her arms around him and said, Lord, we just ask you to help Brody be a good boy today and help him feel better and not feel so cranky and help him smile and listen to what I tell him. And she got all finished with her prayer and said, amen. And he said, not amen. He didn't agree with that prayer. And I think sometimes when God tells us something, that's kind of our attitude too. Not amen. Because amen means yes, let it be so. And he wasn't about to get into agreement with that. Spiritual babies. It's sad when somebody has been a Christian for 30 years and they're still a spiritual baby. After we're born again, the next thing that's supposed to happen is we're supposed to start growing in Christ. And it's a process. It's a process that goes on all of our life. We never stop growing. God never stops showing us ways that we can improve. And I'm grateful that God doesn't just leave me alone and let me stay the way I am, but that he keeps nudging me and showing me ways that I can be more like him. Amen. So Paul was dealing with the Corinthian church and they were born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit. They were operating in the gifts of the Spirit. But you got to remember gifts are given. You don't have to do anything to get a gift. Just because you have a spiritual gift doesn't mean that you're spiritually mature. Amen. Yet he said to them in 1 Corinthians 3, 1 through 3, however, brethren, I could not talk to you as to spiritual men, but as to non spiritual men of the flesh in whom the carnal nature predominates as to mere infants in the new life in Christ unable to talk yet. Now I'm teaching from the classic amplified Bible. I love it. I've always used it. And I like it because I don't read or understand Greek and the amplified Bible amplifies some of the Greek and gives you a little bit more than what some of the other translations might. And he says here unable to talk yet. Now what does that mean? How many people in the world can talk? He meant they didn't know how to talk the way they should talk. And do you know if you listen to a person, well, first of all, if you listen to anybody, it doesn't take long and you can tell whether they're a Christian or not. And if you listen to Christians, it doesn't take very long and you can pretty much determine where they're at spiritually when it comes to spiritual maturity. If all they talk about themselves, then they're selfish. If they can't receive correction, then they're proud. Doesn't take long. He said I couldn't talk to you like mature adults. He said I fed you with milk, verse two, not solid food, for you were not yet strong enough to be ready for it. And even yet you're not strong enough to be ready for it. Well, what's the difference in milk and solid food? We give milk to babies, don't we? And then you slowly begin to integrate solid food. Well, the milk or the word are messages that baby Christians can handle. They're all about what God can do for me, how much He loves me, how wonderful I am, all these good things. And that's good. That's a good place to start. It draws people in. Somebody who's just been saved doesn't really need to have anything too strong right off the bat. They need to get established in their relationship with God and know that He loves them and that He wants to do things for them and that He answers prayer. But if that's all they ever have, then never grow up. I call them dessert messages. It's like everybody likes dessert, but we all know if you just live on dessert, you're either not going to live very long or you're going to be very unhealthy. The meat of the word are stronger messages. They're messages that confront behavior. They're messages that if you receive it, they're going to make you change. They're messages that make you swarm a little bit in your seat and make you want to run out of the room and wish you had never come. But without those messages, you'll never be strong. So we need both. If that's all you ever heard, then you might start to feel beat up a little bit. So I try to bring a good balance of meat and dessert. But this weekend we're having meat. So I hope you've ... Maybe you can get some dessert somewhere else this week, but I figure if you're bold enough to take a Friday night to come out here and I flew all the way here from St. Louis that we might as well serve up some meat and see if you can handle it. Verse three, you're still unspiritual having the nature of the flesh because you're under the control of ordinary impulses. Now does anybody here ever have an impulse? I have an impulse. I'd like to slap you upside the head. I'd like to tell you where to go and it's not the nice place either. It's the bad place. See spiritual babies will act on their impulses, but mature Christians can control themselves. They don't just do what they feel like doing, they do what they believe Jesus would have done in the same situation. Amen? Amen. And the more you grow, the more you do that. Finally, you come to the point where you're pretty much acting like Jesus all the time. As long as there is envy and jealousy and wranglings, which is strife and arguing and bickering and factions, which is division among you, are you not unspiritual enough to flesh behaving yourselves after a mere human standard like mere unchanged men? So Paul said, I can tell that you're not mature because you're still jealous of one another. We don't have any of that in the church, do we? You're envious of one another. You're divided. You're angry, unforgiving. All of these things need to go. You don't have to feel like forgiving somebody to do it. Well, about half of you liked that and the other half. Unforgiveness is such a huge problem in the church. Satan gains more ground in the lives of unbelievers through unforgiveness than anything else. If you've got unforgiveness in your heart, the Bible tells us, if we're not going to forgive others and God can't forgive us, it drives a wedge between you and God. And I say something about unforgiveness in just about every sermon that I preach because I know what it did to me when I was full of unforgiveness and I know how wonderful it is to get really good at forgiving people really fast. Thanks for listening to today's message. Spiritual maturity takes time. It requires a deep personal relationship with God. As the Lord changes us little by little, we'll begin to experience the incredible peace, joy and fulfillment that only God can give. But wait, there's more. Discover more of Joyce's programs and exclusive content in the Joyce Meyer app and online at JoyceMeyer.org. We all go through hard times and it's so easy in those moments to focus on the problem. But what if you were able to see the trials of your life the way God sees them and respond to them the way he teaches us in his word? Joyce Meyer wants to show you how in her new book, Blessed in the Mess, even in the middle of life's difficulties, God's kindness shines through. 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