Growing And Learning
by John Wright Follette

Jesus says that in the growth of anything, even in nature, there is always a process: "First the blade, then the ear, then the corn in the ear..." He doesn't say, "Plant the seed and you'll have a beautiful crop of corn tomorrow." He says, "You have to have a law of growth and development. You will have certain periods in the growth when things are phenomenally manifest; they should be. Then that form drops out, and you will have a new form ... and another new form ... and, finally, corn in the ear. But you don't find that final form the next day after you planted the corn."

Everything in God is like that, but we are not patient enough; we live in the age of gadgets, where we push everything and have it in two minutes. And we try to drag that mechanism over into the realm of the Spirit, and it just will not work. There are no "shortcuts" to glory.

We have to take the established form - the laws which He has established - and become familiar with them and be obedient to them, and we shall live. But if we defy or ignore them, and try to get through on some other basis, we'll be frustrated ... and in the end we'll never reach our goal. We won't go to hell, but we come out at the end of life with such a meagre showing of anything of God.

When Peter was speaking He said, "Desire the sincere milk of the Word" (1 Peter 2:2). Now why did he say to desire it? People say, "I desire the Word of God so that I can be an efficient worker! That's why I want to know the Bible - so that I can be a great worker!" Peter wasn't talking about work. He was not talking at all about working for the Lord. He was giving us a simple analogy: "Desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow!" Progression ... expansion ... a sense of time ... not an immediate possession.

Desire the sincere milk of the Word that you should be satisfied? No! Desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow under the power of it - under the impact of it. It will begin to release you and set you free. It will begin to do miracles in you, so that you will not be that same old static thing that you were when you settled into your place in God, maybe years ago. You will find yourself strangely moved by God, coming out of one thing and coming into something fresh and new in Him.

Now don't be frightened if anything like that happens to you, because it is possible that He may deal with your emotional reactions in these fields. It is the tendency of this human, natural creature to retain, if possible, all of the emotional reactions which fitted you in that scheme. But when He moves you into your next order, you want to drag all of that along with you so you can have it repeated again, and again, and again.

Now, God does a very daring thing. Sometimes with some spirits who are willing to take it He dares to say, "I'm not going to please you with that right away. You'll find enough emotional reaction, and you'll be greatly blessed; but it may not take the form it did when you were a babe in Christ."

So He says, "Desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby." The whole idea was a development and a growth.

The Example Of The "Last Adam"

God created Adam, and in the very first test to prove him he crashed - and all creation crashed with him. God never found in that Adam the thing that He had in mind when He created him. But He is going to find it in the next One; He demonstrated what God wanted man to be. So when He brings forth Jesus Christ, He is called the "Last Adam"; and this Adam has to glorify God and fulfill all the desire of the heart of God which God had when He created the first Adam.

The Last Adam was limited and dependent in this mode of expression. Now what has to happen? Two things have to happen to Him that will have to happen to us if we are at all identified with Him. As He walked about, it was said, "He grew." In what? In every phase, from His physical up to the very spiritual - every bit of it.

As a Man, He had to grow. He was a child, a little baby, nursing at Mary's breast. Did He sit up one day and say, "Here, Mom! I'm God's Son. What's the use of My doing this business?" He is God's Son, but He laid that aside. He limited Himself to become what we are.

What is the other thing? He learned. "Though He were a Son of God, yet He learned!" Imagine Jesus Christ learning obedience! He did. "He learned obedience through the things which He suffered."

The Necessity For Growth And Development

People never make any place at all in their scheme for growth and development. They think if they are translated, and the bugle sounds, and "we shall all be transformed," they're all going to be matured saints. Well, there will never be a greater disappointment in heaven than that, when people wake up and find out that they are only just exactly what they had when they went up.

You'll have a new, glorified body, but the thing that is going to live in the glorified body is going to be that old you that you are in your spiritual life! That's all. Just what you are in spirit today! The spiritual accumulation, the spiritual vitality, the spiritual conception - all of that which God has been able to bring into you of spiritual worth - that is all that is translated and put over on the other side.

Paul tells about the lovely Body that God has got out of the world, the lovely group of spirits - redeemed, brought out of damnation and darkness, out of the confines of a natural entanglement. They are released through the power of Truth. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin, but the power of Truth will cleanse us from all of the strange traditional things. There is a double cleansing, continually.

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