The book I’m working on, The Abiding, will explain to the reader how the great Spirit, our Creator and Savior, will come and live in us—fully, like in the apostles of old. That is the main theme of the book.
But many Christians will say, “We don’t need to study out all these things; we just need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. All we need to do is raise our voices loudly enough with song and praise. We believe that He will hear our cries and answer us with His slaying power. That’s how the disciples did it.”
Not so fast. The disciples had much more preparation than any of us. The Savior taught and walked with them before their experience at Pentecost. They were with Him forty days after the resurrection. Not to mention the 3 1/2 years that they walked with him before the crucifixion. It wasn’t like twelve men wandered up into an upper room and began to pray and—boom!—they’re all filled with God’s Spirit. With no study? Please.
There was much preparation before their experience. The disciples had studied the Word up close and personal. They were taught daily by the Anointed One. They didn’t fully understand His plan and purpose until they were filled with the Holy Spirit and fire. But they studied the Scriptures and the living, spoken words of Christ, who is the “Word made flesh.”
What Christ Taught Them
And what did Christ teach the disciples during the forty days after the resurrection? He spoke of “the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). That’s what the disciples were doing after the resurrection. Christ was teaching them “the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 13:11). Before they gathered in the upper room, before they were “filled with the Holy Ghost,” before they began “to speak with other languages” to those devout Jews who had come to the feast from at least fourteen countries. They all heard the Spirit speak their languages, through the apostles. It was not “unknown” languages. The Spirit was speaking through them in known, living everyday languages (Acts 2:4-12).
Christ’s lambs and sheep earnestly desire the true experience of the Spirit filling their vessels, but all of us must get our ducks in a row first. We must get an answer to this question: What are these “things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” that Christ, the resurrected Savior, was teaching them? If Christ appeared to us tonight in a vision and asked us, “What are these ‘things’ pertaining to my Kingdom?” How would we answer Him?
Christ was teaching them things about spiritual growth.
Christ speaks no idle words. Christ was teaching “things” to his disciples, as the Spirit of truth directed. It seems like a divine mystery, right? But it shouldn’t be. The disciples wrote down the “things” for us, that Christ had spoken to them about.
I submit to you that these “things” are lessons on how we are to grow spiritually. This gets us ready to be “filled with the Holy Spirit,” like the early apostles experienced.
These “things” are about how we are to go through God’s spiritual life cycle of growth. The parables of Christ teach us about growing from a babe in Christ to apostleship. In the “Parable of the Cast Seed,” the man sows; the seed comes up and grows. “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear” (Mark 4: 26-29). Spiritual growth is also when he likens the Kingdom of God to a grain of mustard seed and how it grows and matures (4:30-32).
“And when they were alone, he expounded all things to His disciples” (4:34). Christ spoke to them “of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” He explained it to them.
And then there is the Parable of the Sower, who sowed the seed, the word, into four different soils. The birds ate up the seed that fell by the wayside. Some seed fell on stony ground and was scorched by the sun. And some seed fell into thorns and was choked out. But some “fell on good ground, and did yield fruit…some thirty, and some sixty, and some one hundred” (Mark 4:3-8).
This great parable is all about spiritual growth. It is so important to understand, for it unlocks the rest of the parables (4:13). Christ explains the Parable of the Sower in Mark 4:14-20. It is all about growing and bearing fruit.
The Spirit is expounding to us His word about how He grows in us. In retrospect, nearly everything published on this site is a connecting dot concerning spiritual growth, from the sprouting of the seed, the word of God, in our hearts to the harvest of that seed.
The last phase of God’s growth in our vessels is what The Abiding is all about. It is about the “things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” The complete abiding will come as we do the new commandments, and add to the faith, and put on the armor of God, and continue in the Apostles’ Doctrine.
Christ’s teachings on the Kingdom of God are lessons on spiritual growth, guiding believers from spiritual infancy to apostleship. Parables like “The Cast Seed” and “The Sower” explain sowing God’s word and nurturing it to yield spiritual fruit. Embracing these teachings allows God’s Spirit to flourish within us, helping us partake of the divine nature.
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Kenneth Wayne Hancock
Immortality Road 