It takes discipline to receive.

To him who has, more will be given. To him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

The Lord gives extravagantly. And he asks us to do the same. The reality is that He will give more to those who can receive more, and receiving takes discipline. It’s hard to take something you don’t deserve, well, sometimes.

There is a renewal of the mind that needs to occur in order to see the Lord rightly, as He is. There is a shift in our inner man when we come to faith in Christ but that shift continues to happen throughout the process of the Spirit sanctifying us. Some of these shifts comes by free grace and the complete work of God’s mercy on our hearts but some of this transformation is completely up to us; we still have free will when we choose Christ and we still have free will when we receive the baptism in the Holy Ghost. And so, we still have free choice when it comes to sanctification. I believe this is what the apostle Paul meant when he commanded the church to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

It takes discipline to receive because our way of life and our culture is so contrary to the way of Christ and the way of His kingdom. In order to receive supernatural mindsets and paradigms, we must of necessity, discipline ourselves out of our current context of living in the world and being of the world. The Lord initiates and provokes us into this but the response must come from us. Righteous response comes from disciplined habits. The best conditioning for life in the Spirit is to walk in the Spirit, with the Spirit.