As believers in Christ, we are born of God to be children of God, we grow in life and are led by the Spirit of God to be sons of God, and we mature in life and suffer with Christ to be heirs of God, partaking of all that God is as our rich inheritance.
Lord Jesus, thank You for making us children of God, those who are born of God! Hallelujah, the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God, and we are! Amen, Lord, grow in us today. Grow in us unto maturity. Lead us as the Spirit so that we may be sons of God, those who are grown in life. Bring us all the way to maturity and grant us the grace to suffer with Christ so that we may also be glorified with Him and be heirs of God! Amen, Lord, we want to be heirs of God, so we are willing to suffer with Christ and arrive at maturity! Amen!
The Bible tells us that we are children of God, sons of God, and heirs of God; our relationship wth God is very intimate, one of life, for we are not adopted by Him to be His adopted children, but we are born of God to be His children! Hallelujah!
However, just as a father cannot entrust his riches and his estate to a six-year-old child, so God cannot grant all that He is to us for our enjoyment and inheritance in full if we are not mature; we need to grow in life unto maturity and arrive to maturity, even suffer with Christ so that we may become heirs of God, fully grown in life, to inherit what God is.
Today we can have a foretaste of God, a taste that we enjoy so much; however, one day we will have the full taste, being in God’s presence and partaking of what God is with no hindrance. Our destiny as believers in Christ is to be heirs of God.
We are destined to inherit God; God is our inheritance, and as we enjoy God as our inheritance, we become God’s inheritance.
It is a mutual enjoyment for eternity: we enjoy and partake of God and all that He is, and He enjoys us as His inheritance and treasure.
May we cooperate with the Lord today so that we may enter into this sooner. This is what is needed today: our cooperation, our growth in life in a faster way.
We need to come to the Lord and enjoy Him daily, even open the depths of our being to Him so that He may spread from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will, and He may grow in us.
He is arranging the circumstances, people, things, and matters around us to bring in a certain amount of suffering; on our side, we simply need to grow in life and cooperate with Him so that He may make us not only sons of God but also heirs of God.
As Children of God, we Grow and are Led to be Sons of God, and we Suffer with Christ and Arrive to Maturity to be Heirs of God
In Romans 8:14-17 we see that we believers in Christ are children of God, sons of God, and heirs of God.
Through regeneration, we are born of God to be children of God; God gives us the authority to be children of God if we receive Him, that is, believe into the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:12-13).
This is a miracle, for a human being can be born of God! Hallelujah! Being children of God is our primary or initial relationship with God. We are so happy we are children of God, having God’s life and nature in us!
But we need to grow to be sons of God. Romans 8:4 says that as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
A certain amount of growth in life is needed for a child to become a son; we need to grow in life and be led by the Spirit of God to be sons of God. Day by day we need to grow in life; we need to decrease, and the Lord needs to increase.
Finally, the final stage is that we become heirs of God, those who are fully mature in the divine life and who suffer with Christ so that they are also glorified with Christ. Growth unto maturity is needed in order for us to be heirs of God.
We see these three significant terms related to us as believers in Christ: children, sons, and heirs.
God’s life comes into us to work in us in three stages to make us sons of God.
First, God’s life comes into our spirit to regenerate us; through regeneration, we become children of God. Then, the life of God spreads into our soul to transform our soul, and through transformation, we become sons of God. Regeneration makes us children of God and transformation makes us sons of God.
Finally, transfiguration or glorification makes us heirs of God, for as a result of being glorified, we become like Christ, we are matured, and we are qualified to inherit all that God is. Hallelujah, we are becoming heirs of God! Amen!
The first stage of sonship we are children of God; in this stage, the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.
We all can testify that we are children of God; we have the life of God in us, and we are children of God.
Then, as we grow in life and are led by the Spirit of God, we are sons of God; in our daily living, as the Spirit leads us and we are led by the Spirit, we become sons of God (Gal. 3:26; 4:7).
When we’re capable of being led by the Spirit, it means we have arrived at a certain growth in life; we have grown from being children of God into sons who are able to take the leading of the Spirit.
This is the stage of transformation, when we are changed in a metabolic way by the inner operation of the Spirit. Eventually, we will be glorified, fully transfigured in our body, to be heirs of God.
Through regeneration, we become children of God; through transformation, we become sons of God, and through glorification, we become heirs of God.
Thank the Lord that we are born as children of God, we are growing in life and are led by the Spirit of God to be sons of God, and we will one day be fully matured to be legally declared the rightful heirs of God!
God wants us to obtain the full sonship; He doesn’t want to have immature, infantile children who never grow, but fully mature sons who grow in life unto maturity to inherit all that God is.
So He comes in His organic salvation to save us from the lowest to the uttermost; first, He justifies us and regenerates us to make us children of God, then He sanctifies and transforms us to enable us to grow into sons of God, and finally, He glorifies us to make legal heirs of the divine inheritance.
May we cooperate with the Lord today. May we grow in life in a normal way today. May we allow the Lord to grow in us and may we follow the Spirit’s leading so that we may be brought on to maturity.
Lord Jesus, thank You for coming into us as life to make us children of God. Praise the Lord, the Spirit of God witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God. Amen, Lord, we are so thankful that we have Your divine life in us. Grow in us. May Your life grow and spread in our being. We want to go on with You from being children of God to being sons of God. Lead us as the Spirit in the things of our daily living. Sanctify us and transform us from within so that we may be sons of God. Amen, Lord, we want to cooperate with You to the best of our ability today. We allow You to grow, spread, and increase in us. May we grow up to be sons of God and may we arrive to maturity to be legal and rightful heirs of God! Hallelujah, God will one day transfigure us to glorify us and make us His heirs, the heirs of God who enjoy in full all that God is and has! Praise the Lord for the divine sonship! Lord, we open to Your sanctification, transformation, and glorification for You to gain what You are after: the heirs of God! Amen!
As we Suffer with Christ and are being Matured, we will be Glorified with Him and become Co-heirs with Christ
Romans 8:17 is a wonderful verse telling us how we can become heirs of God; if we are children of God, we are becoming heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
The condition for us to be heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, joint heirs wth Christ, is that we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
We do not like suffering; however, in God’s view, suffering is the incarnation of grace. When we suffer, we can come to the Lord to enjoy Him as grace as never before, for His grace is sufficient for us, and His power is perfected in our weakness in all our suffering.
The Lord is like a gardener or a farmer, who tills the ground, does the weeding, adds nutrients, and takes care of the seeds for them to grow and bear fruit. On our side, we need to cooperate with Him.
Our heart may be either like soil by the wayside (hardened soil), the earth by rocky places, the soil with thorns, or the good soil. There may be worldly traffic that hardens our heart.
There may be some hidden sins, desires, and pleasures that hinder the growth in life. There may be some anxieties of life and roots of bitterness that grow in us alongside Christ.
We need to deal with our heart to make it the good soil for the Lord to grow in us.
Especially we as believers in Christ who grow up in the church life, enjoying the Lord and partaking of His riches, we need to realise that things happen; people may leave the church life, and some may have their heart hardened.
It is not that they are negative or evil, but there may be some things, some situations, some feelings, some offenses, that they allowed to grow alongside the Lord Jesus, and those things choked the growth of Christ in them.
May we be careful what we allow to grow in us; when we have a certain feeling, an offense, or an evil thought, we need to come to the Lord immediately and open to Him about it.
May we not nurture these negative feelings, thoughts, or ideas, trying to dig deeper and find out more or bring reasons for them; may we allow the Lord to shine on them and infuse us with Himself more.
Growth is gradual; we need to grow in life gradually.
The grain of wheat grows very slowly, but the weeds may grow very fast; we need to deal with our heart for the seed to grow unto maturity, and we need to be aware of anything that grows alongside so that we may remove any obstacles to the growth in life.
We need to ask the Lord to make His home in our heart, including in these feelings, thoughts, ideas, concepts, and negative things that we see or think.
He will come in to prune anything that hinders the growth in life, and He will add the nutrients for the growth.
Thank the Lord that He is a Father to the orphans; He will never leave us or abandon us, for He is always with us. He pours His love into our hearts. His heart is always good for us.
Even though we may be going through suffering, the Lord is still with us. When we struggle with something, when we have some negative feelings toward the Lord or the saints, we can come to the Lord and allow Him to make His home in our heart.
When we feel that our heart is getting a little hard, when we see that the Lord may not answer our fervent prayer and things don’t go our way, may we still open to the Lord and come to Him to let Him make His home in our heart.
He wants to bring us to maturity for us to be heirs of God. After being born as children of God, we must grow in life to become sons of God, and then we must pass through suffering to be glorified and become heirs of God. We suffer with the Lord.
It was fitting for Him, in leading many sons into glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings (Heb. 2:10).
He took the lead to go through suffering, and when we suffer with Him, He still takes the lead in us. He lived a suffering life in His family life, in His service, and in His ministry.
He grew up as a man of sorrows and was well acquainted with grief. He took the lead, and now we follow. The more suffering we pass through, the more our glory will be intensified.
Suffering with the Lord intensifies and increases the glory.
In 1 Corinthians 15:41 Paul said that one star differs from another in glory; we are the shining ones, but our shining is more intense if we pass through more suffering.
We will all shine, and we will all be glorified, but the intensity of our glory will depend on the amount of suffering that we’re willing to take.
For example, the apostle Paul suffered very much, so he will one day shine brighter than us. May we consider the things of this present time not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed upon us (Rom. 8:18).
Amen, the present suffering means nothing compared to the coming glory. If we suffer with the Lord, we will also be glorified with Him and we will be heirs of God!
Lord Jesus, grow in us a little more today. We open to You. We turn our heart to You. You see what is in our heart. You see our anxious thoughts, our negative feelings, our offenses, and all the things in us. We just simply open to You: make Your home in our heart. Grow in us. May there be no root of bitterness in us. We want to cooperate with You to deal with any worldly traffic that hardens our heart, any hidden sins and pleasures that hinder the growth in life, and any anxieties of life and desire for riches that choke the growth. Amen, Lord, grow in us. Make Your home deep down in our heart. Bring us on to maturity so that we may be heirs of God, inheriting all that God is! May we see that the sufferings we go through are the incarnation of grace. May we take grace and go on with the Lord in suffering, even suffering with the Lord so that we may also be glorified with Him! Amen, Lord, may we consider that the suffering of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed upon us! Hallelujah, if we suffer with Christ, we will also be glorified with Him and we will become heirs of God! Amen!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ricky Acosta on this topic, and portions from, Life-study of Romans, msg. 19, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Believers (1) (2026 July Semi-Annual Training), week 4, “Heirs of God” – day 2.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Even we ourselves are groaning, / Till we reach maturity; / We are growing into sonship, / With Christ in conformity… God will bring us into glory, / We will then be glorified; / Fully saturated with Him, / We’ll be wholly sanctified. (Hymns #970 stanzas 3 and 5)
– Heirs of God! Joint-heirs with our Lord Jesus! / What a hope of glory this for us! / Though the suff’rings presently seem grievous, / Greater far the glory then for us! / Yea, in all these things we more than conquer, / Through the One whose love has us possessed; / Soon the day for which waits all creation, / When the sons of God are manifest! (Hymns #1210 stanza 5)
– As we’re daily in this process / And by life are sanctified, / How we thank Him for the blessing / Of the church life He’s supplied. / Here God is our full enjoyment, / Practical and real to us; / Sons we are, and heirs together, / In the church life, glorious! (Hymns #1203 stanza 8)
