Welcome to another episode. Many believers want to grow with God. That desire is real.
It is genuine. But somewhere between wanting to grow and actually growing, something gets lost. And I think I know what it is.
We use the language that sounds right, but sometimes it never produces change. We say things like, "Be aligned, walk in obedience, or stay close to God. " Those phrases are true, but we never explain what they actually look like on a Tuesday morning when you are tired, distracted, and your Bible is sitting on the shelf.
Then all of that language just becomes noise. It is encouragement without instruction. And you cannot walk in what you don't understand.
That's a kingdom principle. So today, I want to do something different. I don't want to just tell you what God requires of you.
I want to show you how to actually live it out in your daily life. Not in a dramatic way, in an ordinary consistent way. Transformation is built.
Before we get into the five things God requires of you, I need to lay one foundation. And I say this with as much love and directness as I can carry. You need a personal relationship with God.
Not a relationship with a pastor, not a relationship with a ministry or a church building or even a powerful set of teachings. Those things have their place and God uses them, but they are not the destination. They are pointers.
And one of the most common and most costly mistakes believers make is this. They outsource their walk with God entirely to external voices. They depend only on the pastor.
They depend only on the Sunday service message. They wait for someone else to hear from God and then they receive the updated secondhand. And here's the problem with that.
God has called you personally. Not generally, not corporate only, personally. He knows your name, your seasons, your specific blind spots, and the exact pace at which he wants to grow you.
And the person best positioned to receive all of that is you in your own room, in your own time, in your conversation with him. So, we first understand that God wants a relationship with you. And before we even talk about the things that God requires of you, Philippians 2:12 says, "Walk out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
" Paul doesn't say, "Have your pastor work out your salvation. " He doesn't say wait for the conference. He says, "Walk out your own with fear.
" meaning with the weight and seriousness that it deserves with trembling meaning with an honest awareness that this is not a casual thing. Your salvation, your walk with God is not casual. Your walk with God belongs to you.
God will use people to guide you, but he never replaces your personal responsibility in your walking with him. Everything I'm about to share with you is built on that foundation. These are not things to do to impress God or to earn his love.
They are the practical architecture of what it looks like to actually walk with God day by day. God will use people to guide you, but he never replaces your personal walk with him. A pastor can show you the door.
Only you can walk through it. The first thing God requires of you is to grow in grace and knowledge of God. 1 Peter 3:18, but grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Savior.
To him be the glory both now and forever. Amen. Growth is not optional in the Christian life.
That sounds simple, but it is one of the most misunderstood realities in the church today. Because many believers have accepted a version of Christianity where staying the same is fine as long as you are attending. Not doing anything overtly wrong.
But Peter says grow. Present tense continuous action ongoing. Which means the moment you stop growing something else starts happening.
You are either growing towards God or you are drifting away from him. There is no stable middle ground in a living relationship. Water that stops moving starts stagnating.
And a believer who stops growing doesn't just stay where they are. They slowly start losing the ground they gained. Now I want to correct something here before we go any further because there is a version of growing in the knowledge that produces more information but not transformation.
You can know scripture well and still not be changed by it. You can hear powerful sermons consistently and still be carrying the same patterns, the same fears, the same unhealed places you have been carrying for years. Knowledge that does not produce change is not yet the kind of knowledge Peter is talking about in this scripture.
Revelation without application produces spiritual frustration. You will feel the weight of what you know you should be without the traction of actually moving toward it and that gaps becomes discouragement. So you must make sure you don't just grow in the knowledge of God to have information but revelation intimacy.
So, three practical ways to grow. Daily personal time with God. Not just church, not just ministry.
Matthew 6:6, but when you pray, go into your room. And when you have shut your door, pray to your father who sees in secret place. And your father who sees in secret will reward you publicly.
If you want to grow in the Lord, ask yourself, has God seen me in secret? This is where most people struggle. And I want to be honest about why.
It is not usually a lack of desire. Most believers genuinely want to pray. It's that they don't know how to start.
They get distracted easily or they have been waiting to feel spiritual enough before they begin. And that last one is the trap. Waiting to feel ready means you will never start.
The secret place Jesus described is not a performance space. It is a conversation. Talk to God like you would talk to someone who already knows everything about you and still chooses to be present with you because that is exactly what he is.
Start with 10 minutes or 15 minutes. Talk to God honestly. Read a small passage of the scripture and sit with it.
Then go quiet for a moment. You don't have to feel every second with words and prayer. No, sometimes the most important thing is simply be still in his presence with some worship.
How to build this habit? Pick a specific time that works for your life. Morning tends to work best for most people because their day hasn't crowded your mind yet.
All right. Set it as an appointment you don't want to miss. Even 10 minutes of honest, consistent time with God will do more for your work than an occasional hour that happens only when you feel inspired.
Two, remove the pressure of performing. Your daily time with God is not a devotional checklist. It is a relationship.
Some days it feel rich and full. Some days it feel dry and mechanical. Both days count.
Consistency builds a relationship, not intensity. Show up on the dry days, too. Three, use a simple structure if you need one.
Talk to God about your day. Read one passage slowly and end with silence. That's it.
You can always go longer, but have a flow you commit to keeping. The second thing, apply what you learn. Don't just hear James 1:22, but be doers of the word, not hearers, only deceiving yourself.
James uses the word deceiving which is a strong language. He's saying that hearing without doing does not just leave you unchanged. It actually distorts your perception.
You think you are further along than you are because you are being exposed to truth even though exposure and transformation are very different things. After every message, every personal reading time, every moment where something genuinely landed, ask yourself one question. What is one thing I will actually change today?
Not a broad spiritual resolution, one specific thing. Forgive the person you have been avoiding. Respond with patience in the situation where you have been reacting.
Stop the habit you keep delaying. Take the step you have been waiting on. One thing done consistently, that question becomes the engine of genuine spiritual growth.
Stay consistent even when you don't feel like it. in Galatians chapter 6:9. And let us not grow weary while doing good.
For in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. There will be days where you don't feel like praying. Days where you're reading your Bible feels like a chore.
Days where God feels distant and the whole thing feels like performance you're doing for no one. Those days are not evidence that your faith is failing. They are the testing ground where spiritual maturity is actually forged.
Spiritual maturity is not built on feelings. It is built on discipline. Showing up even when nothing feels alive.
Trusting that faithfulness in the dry season is what positions you for the fruit in the growing season. Create a system. Same time, same place if possible, distractions removed.
Don't rely on motivation. Build a structure that keeps you showing up when motivation is gone. The second thing God requires of you, walk in obedience practically, not just in principles.
In John 14:15, if you love me, keep my commandments. Jesus doesn't attach obedience to law. He attaches it to love.
And that changes everything about how you are supposed to understand it. Obedience in the Christian life is not the performance of a religious rule system. It is the natural expression of a relationship.
When you genuinely love someone, you pay attention to what matters to them. You adjust your behavior not because you are afraid of the consequence, but because you care about the relationship. But here is the part we often miss.
Obedience is mostly not about the big dramatic moments. It is built in the small daily decisions that feel almost too ordinary to register as spiritual choices. What you watch when you are alone, how you respond when someone irritates you, what you say when you are frustrated, whether you act on the nudge God gave you this morning or ignore it because it was inconvenient.
These are where obedience actually lives. Delayed obedience is still disobedience. When God speaks and we respond with eventually we have made a decision about how much his voice matters to us.
Even if we don't frame it that way to ourselves, practical obedience day to day. When something feels wrong in your spirit, don't override it. Sit with it.
Ask God what is he saying? When God nudges you towards something, respond quickly. The nudge rarely gets louder the longer you wait.
When you know something is seen, stop justifying it. Justification is the armor that keeps conviction from doing its work. When you feel the pull toward the old pattern, name it, pray about it, and call someone who can help you hold the line.
Practical obedience check. At the end of each day, ask yourself, was there a moment today where God was asking something of me and I looked away? You don't need to condemn yourself.
Just name it and bring it back to God. This daily accounting keeps small disobedience from silent compounding into something larger. Two, identify one specific area where you know God has been speaking and you have been delaying.
Not a vague area, a specific one. Write it down. Make a decision about it this week.
Delayed obedience is one clear area often creates a kind of spiritual stagnation that bleeds into everything else. Number three, keep a heart that seeks God. This is one thing God requires of you.
Jeremiah 29:13, "And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with your heart. " This verse carries one of the most relieving truths in the entire Bible. God is not asking for perfection.
He's asking for pursuit. He's not looking for someone who never fails, never drifts, never gets it wrong. He's looking for someone who keeps turning back to him, who wants him, who makes space for him in the middle of the full ordinary life.
The word seek in that verse implies active intentional movement. You don't drift into closeness with God. You don't accidentally become someone whose life is deeply rooted in God.
Closeness with God is the result of choosing repeatedly and consistently to make room for his presence in the everyday rhythms of your life. And the enemy's primary strategy against this is not usually temptation to award dramatic scene. It is distraction.
It is the slow comfortable feeling of your time and attention with things that are not bad, but that crowd God out. You don't drift into closeness with God. You pursue it.
And you don't drift out of it in one dramatic moment either. You drift through a thousand small decisions. you let something else take the space that was meant for him.
So practical ways to keep your heart seeking God. Reduce the noise. Phone, social media, the constant background sound that fills every quiet moment.
Silence is not emptiness in this kingdom. It is often where God is loudest. Put God first before the day starts.
Not after emails, not after news, before. The first conversation of your day shapes the frame for everything that follows. When you feel dry or distanced, don't retreat from God.
Run toward him. Distance is not his doing. Drw near and he will draw near.
How do you build a seeking heart? Create one intentional quiet moment each day. Even if it's 5 minutes where you put the phone down, step away from the screen.
Simply make yourself available to God. Don't fill it with request. Just be present.
Over time with worship, that intentional space trains your heart to recognize and respond to his voice. Two, when you notice your heart growing cold, treat it as a signal, not a verdict. Cold doesn't mean finished.
It means something has been crowding the fire. Identify what it is, specifically a habit, a relationship, a season of busyness, and make one deliberate adjustment. Not a dramatic overhaul, one adjustment.
Then watch what begins to return. The fourth thing God requires of you, surrender your will, not just your actions. Romans 12:1, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
There is a version of the Christian life that looks like obedience from the outside, but is still fundamentally selfdirected. You are doing the right things, attending church, praying, reading, but underneath all of it, you are still the one making the final call on every significant decision. You bring your plans to God for his blessing rather than bringing your open hands to God for his direction.
That is no surrender. That is consultation. You're either treating God as a consultant or he's your God.
Paul calls the surrendered life a living sacrifice. And that phrase is worth sitting with. A sacrifice in the Old Testament was not something that kept input.
It was placed on the altar entirely. The living part is what makes this different from death. You are still fully present, fully engaged, fully alive.
But the direction of your life has been handed over. Not just your behavior, your will, your agenda, the version of the future you had mapped out for yourself. This is the requirement that most believers find hardest.
Not because they don't love God, but because surrendering your will requires a specific kind of trust. It requires believing that what God has for you is better than what you will choose for yourself. And building that trust is the work of a lifetime.
Many believers bring God their plans and ask for his blessing. Surrender is the opposite. Bringing God your open hands and asking for his plans.
The difference in outcome between these two postures is enormous. What surrender looks like practically before making significant choices. Pause and bring them to God before you already decided not after.
The prayer that happens before the decision is made is categorically different from the prayer that happens after. When God's direction contradicts your preference, name the tension honestly instead of spiritualizing your way around it. God, I don't want to do this, but I trust you more than I trust my own comfort is a more honest and a more powerful prayer than pretending you are fine with it.
Identify the area of your life you have never fully placed on the altar. The thing you believe in God about but have not yet released to God, that is often where deepest breakthrough is waiting. Practicing surrender is very very important.
And we need to go back to teaching people how to practice surrender. Start each morning with a short and an honest prayer of release. Not a religious formula, but a genuine moment where you hand the day to God before you start managing it yourself.
Something as simple as this day is yours. My hands are open. My plans are open.
Lead me. Done consistently. This prayer reshapes the posture of your whole life over time.
When you feel resistant towards something, God is asking, don't push past it or ignore it. Sit with it in prayer. Tell God honestly.
What you are holding on to and why. Surrender that is wrestled for is usually deeper and more durable than surrender that comes easily. The wrestling is not failure, it is the process.
And number five, what does God require of you? Walking in community and accountability. Hebrews 10:4-2.
And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together as in the manner of some, but exalting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. Everything we have talked about today, the personal prayer life, the obedience, the seeking heart, the surrender, all of it can and should happen in private between you and God. But here's the part that private devotion alone cannot produce.
The sharpening, the accountability, and the encouragement that comes from genuinely doing life with other believers. The writer of Hebrews is not just talking about Sunday attendance. He's talking about a quality of community where people are actively considering one another, paying attention to each other, stirring each other up toward love and good works, exalting one another.
That is the relational posture. either virtual or physical, not a logistical one. It is not fulfilled simply by being in the same room at the same time each week.
It is fulfilled when you are genuinely known by people who are walking the same direction and when you are genuinely investing in knowing them. I want to bring this back to something I said at the beginning because it connects directly. I said primary relationship with God, not with a pastor or external voice.
This is still true. But that truth was never meant to justify isolation. The personal walk with God and the communal walk with other believers are not competing requirements.
They are complimentary ones. You need both. The person who has the private life without community becomes a private island.
The person who has a community without the private life becomes dependent on the crowd for what only God gives. And you need both. Iron sharpens iron, but only when they actually make contact.
Community that never gets close enough to challenge you, encourage you, or hold you to the things you have committed to is warmth without distraction. It feels good, but doesn't move you. What does real community looks like?
Real community looks like at least one person who knows the real version of you. Even if it's your pastor, not the Sunday version, the real you. Someone who knows your struggles, your patterns, your specific weak points and is committed to speaking truth into them.
Regular connection that goes beyond Sunday. A small group, a spiritual friendship, a consistent accountability, relationship where real conversations happen. Being willing to receive correction as well as encouragement.
Community that only affirms you is not sharpening you. Growth requires the courage to be known honestly and to be corrected. Identify one person in your ministry or a spiritual community who you could pursue for a deeper, more intentional connection.
Not a large group. Start with one person. Even if it's your pastor, invite them to meet regularly for an honest conversation about your walks with God.
Most people are waiting for someone to initiate this. Be the one who does it. Don't wait for your pastor to look for you.
Be honest with at least one person about the specific area where you are struggling or where you need to grow. Accountability without specificity is just general encouragement which is helpful but not particularly powerful. Real accountability names the thing and then has a follow-up conversation about whether it moved.
I want to be clear before we close because this teaching carries a lot of practical weight and I don't want it to land as pressure. None of these five things are requirements in the sense of earning God's love or proving your worthiness. You are already loved.
You are already accepted. God is not standing at a distance waiting for you to get your spiritual disciplines before he engages with you. These five things are the architecture of a life that stays close to God, not the conditions of his acceptance.
Think of them the way you will think of the practical habits that sustain any deep relationship. You don't call the person you love because you are afraid of losing them. You call them because you want to stay close.
It is the same with God. These practices are not the payment. They are the pathway.
They're not the condition. They are the tools. And you don't have to start all five at once.
Start with the one that feels most urgent, most alive, most like the place God has been nudging you. One honest step in the right direction taken consistently will take you farther than a dramatic plan that collapses after 2 weeks. God is not asking you to be perfect.
He's asking you to walk with him daily. Return to him. Revisit.
The moment you stop depending only on external voices and start building your own relationship with God, things change. Your clarity changes. Your spiritual instincts sharpen.
Your ability to hear God for yourself begins to develop in ways that no pastor can produce in you from the outside. That is what these five requirements are pointing toward. Grow in grace and knowledge because you are either growing or drifting.
Walk in obedience because love for God expresses itself in how you live. Keep a heart that seeks him because closeness is pursued not assumed. Surrender your will because the life God has for you is better than the one you would engineer on your own and walk in community because no one grows alone and God designed the Christian life to be carried together.
These are not five boxes to check. There are five dimensions of a life that is genuinely walking with God. And the good news is this.
You don't have to have it all together to start. You just have to start. So let's pray.
Thank you, Father, for you're not requiring perfection, just pursuit. I want to walk with you genuinely in the ordinary days and the hard ones. Give me the grace to grow, the courage to obey, the hunger to seek, the trust to surrender, and the humility to walk alongside with other believers who can speak into my life.
I don't want to outsource my walk with you to anyone. I want to know you for myself in Jesus name. Amen.
You cannot walk in what you don't understand. But now you do start walking. I am glad this has blessed you.
Like, subscribe and drop in the comment section. Oh Lord, help me to stay faithful to you in Jesus name. God bless you.
