SPIRITUAL SECRETS
Walking with God the last 49 years, these spiritual secrets have had a profound impact on my life. They have shaped me, transformed me, strengthened me and empowered my life through all the joys and sorrows of my years serving the Lord. Like Samson’s long hair, they became the source of my strength and vitality. They’ve been the secret to my success and usefulness to God. These are my spiritual secrets. I want to pass them onto you.
Knowing God and the joy of God is everything!! Study God. Delight in who He is. Acquaint yourself with the attributes of God. Cultivate your relationship with Him every single day! Philippians 3:7-10 NLT, Psalms 63:1-6 NLT, Hosea 6:3 NASB1995, Jeremiah 9:22-24 NLT
Love the word of God. Nothing is more powerful than truth understood and applied! Read the word of God. Know the word of God. Think about it. Write it down. Sing it. Talk about it. Believe it. Cling to the promises of God. Determine in your heart to understand His word and obey it! Psalms 19:7-11, Psalms 119:54
Change your mind–change your life. Change your thought patterns. Fix your mind on good things. Train your brain. Most Christians have a lazy mind. Romans 12:2 NIV, Philippians 4:8-9 NIV
Prayer walks–my most important spiritual discipline. Psalms 116:1-2 NLT, Colossians 4:12-13 Berkeley, Luke 18:1-8 NLT. Be the persistent widow! Keep on believing, keep on asking, no matter what. Pray and talk to God about everything in your life. Express to him all your worries, burdens, and troubles. Pour out your heart to God. He is our refuge, our Divine Counselor! Ask God for all you need. God answers our prayers!
Ponder your ways, examine your life, with God’s truth. Get into the habit and practice of godly, honest self-examination. This is true humility. Psalms 119:59-60 Berkeley
Discipline yourself. Understand the power of self-discipline. The hand of the diligent rules. The precious possession of a man is diligence. 2 Timothy 1:7 NLT. Build yourself up in your most holy faith.
Encourage yourself, in the Lord! If you wait around for others to do it, discouragement will always win. 1 Samuel 30:6 AMPLIFIED
An obsessive fixation on the grace and love of Jesus Christ and God the Father. I focus on this, not my sins and failures. I forget what lies behind. Ephesians 3:17-19 NLT
Faithfulness in little things is a very big deal. God notices. He will give you more if you’re faithful. The little things all add up. Luke 16:10 NLT and Berkeley. A simple example. When I started my prayer walks years ago, my goal was to simply pray for one hour, while walking three miles every day. That was all. But now looking back on decades of this practice, I’ve actually prayer-walked the equivalent of over one and a half times around planet earth! Simply by being faithful in a little thing each day.
You reap what you sow, so be very careful what you sow. What habits are you sowing in your life?? Galatians 6:7-9 NLT. “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality!” Be a doer of God’s word, or you will reap terrible things in your life.
Fan into flame the gift of God in you. Keep your zeal, passion and spirit hot. 2 Timothy 1:6 NIV, Romans 12:11 Berkeley and NIV. Never be lacking in zeal, keeping your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
The power of routine—Success comes from doing the right things, over and over again. Get into a rhythm, a schedule and routine. Remember how Jesus would often go to a lonely place to pray. Paul and the apostles doing their evening prayers. Or noontime prayers. Christians meeting on the first day of the week, having meals, breaking bread, etc.
Cut out the bad influences in your life, including media influences, and bad friends. I surround myself with good influences. Walk with the wise and you will be wise, the companion of fools suffers harm. Proverbs 13:20 NASB, 1 Corinthians 15:13 NASB. Bad company corrupts you!
Live a simple, frugal, unentangled life. This helps to ensure the greatest, undistracted devotion to Christ. Proverbs 30:7-9 NLT, Matthew 13:22 LB
Cultivate your hatred of evil. Hate with a passion what is evil, and wicked! Romans 12:9 Berkeley
Be very afraid of complacency. Hunger and thirst for wisdom. Proverbs 1:20-33 NLT. Grasp the power of being desperate, understand your desperate need for Christ! Without Christ, without His help, without God’s wisdom, I would ruin my family’s lives, and my life. This attitude and spirit is true humility!
The power of desire and hunger. Feed your desire for God, your hunger to grow, and your ambition to honor God. You have to want this more than anything else!! Psalms 63
The power of commitment. No turning back, no matter what. I am all in. No turning back. This was Jesus’ call!! Don’t quit. Never quit. You must persevere through hard things. You must be willing to suffer a lot.
Abhor mediocrity! Strive to be the best you can possibly be in all things. The church is full of mediocre Christians.
Live in the state of gratitude, of giving thanks. Count your blessings daily. Start a gratitude journal. Record your God stories, and the blessings God gives you. Review them often. Take time every day to pour out thanksgiving to God for all he has given you and done for you. Everything you have is a gift from God. Everything!! Colossians 1:5 NLT, Psalms 103 Berkeley, Psalms 50:14 NLT
Give yourself in service for others for Christ sake! Those who refresh others, will themselves be refreshed! Proverbs 11:25. This is one of the great secrets to being encouraged! I addicted myself to the service of God’s people. When you lose your life, you find real life.
Trials are God’s master plan for your growth and blessing. Submit to their training. Enduring trials is the only road to greater usefulness to God, to deep spiritual maturity. Trials are preparing you for God’s great plans in your life. James 1:2-4 NIV. Remember the trials of Joseph, David, Moses, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Paul, and how God used them greatly.
Weakness is not an obstacle but a power-potentiator for God’s grace to flow into my life! 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 NLT
Listen, listen, listen to God and other wise, godly people. Proverbs 22:17 NLT
I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of God in the land of the living! God will be good. God will be faithful to you. You can bet your life on it. I tell you now, with God as my witness, if I didn’t believe in spite of all the evil, wretched, vicious, horrible and unjust things that have been done to me, my wife and my family by other people, that God would somehow, in some way bring some good to me, be faithful to me, I would utterly, completely despair, and give up on life. This promise has been a life-line for us all these years. Psalms 27:13-14 NASB1995
Remember what’s coming and why we hope!! Justice is coming! There is a brand new, wonderful, perfect, righteous world coming, made exclusively for God’s people alone. 2 Peter 3:10-13 NLT
For those of you who want to grow even more in your faith, the messages below correspond to each of the spiritual secrets I’ve just shared with you. Listening to them will have a powerful and profound impact on your spiritual life, journey and faith. Many of you will not have heard things quite like them. They provide a tremendous, godly curriculum for your spiritual growth and progress. Please use it. These messages will absolutely help change and transform your life! They will fire your passion, illuminate your mind, stir and inspire your soul and spirit, make you wise, and equip you for godly living and useful service! They are filled with exceptional content.
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This is me singing God’s truth! https://strongdisciple.
Helping you become a Strong Disciple,
Because of Jesus,
Pastor Mark Darling
