The Bible College of Wales, 1979 — Norman Grubb

Our speaker this evening is Mr. Norman Grubb, known to very many of you here. And he brought with him Mr. Dan Stone and Miss Audrey? Laurie Hill. They'll each have a turn. Not tonight. Mr. Grubb will speak tonight and I think Dan and Laurie will take it up tomorrow morning and they'll have another chair later on.

Just before coming into the meeting we were reminiscing a little bit with Mr. Grubb. And I remember an incident where many of you will remember here. The wrecks were praying for 10 as a memorial to C .C. Studd.

My brother Ivor was number 10 here. And I was telling Mr. Grubb what a big adventure it was for Ivor to leave Wales because he was a village boy and going to London cities. He had quite a big adventure and he got to London, Highland Road, spent the night there.

And the next morning of prayers Mr. Grubb was speaking and he took Gideon, the 32 ,000, whittled down to 10 ,000, whittled down to 300. And he turned to them and he said, if any of you want to go home you can go home now.

Having prayed for 10 and had the 10 and then he could tell them you can go home if you like. I'm sure he got it there. He said, oh well I'm quite all right. Because through the truth of God I've only seen his life a year ago.

From Spiritual Hunger to Total Adequacy

Well that struck me and concerned me. I said something more here I don't know and therefore I'm not talking to even my fellow Africans. I had this search in me. And very briefly God has made open my eyes to two radical facts.

I was hungry and thirsty. I was hungry and thirsty. I was a searcher. He didn't want me to be that. What did you want me to do? Ask a seeker and finder. Leave me a finder. I don't feel a lack of need.

I lack a lack of fulfillment. In a way the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to these two facts. I was very shocked when it came back to me. But because I had this conscience in that time of this kind of need.

I considered my Saviour. I considered my Lord. I thought I was on par with Christ. I thought I was an African. I think Jesus was an African. But the Holy Spirit had a need about me. Now this is not a lack of need.

It's a lack of adequacy. I hadn't got that. It's a lack of total adequacy. When Paul said all, all, all, he meant all, all, all. He didn't mean some, some, some. He meant Christ. He meant he had all he needed.

Total adequacy. I hadn't got that. Total imperfection. A total development. A total deficiency. I'm talking about total perfection. And so of course I had no need. And very briefly at that time my very great need.

I thought I was in need of my living out of my mortality. I thought I needed a body of love. That would make me a true brother to my daughter. So I needed some. I thought I needed power. To what I was giving should take effect.

That's what the Holy Spirit said. It could take effect. So I had no need, no special need of love. Need of my own personal life. Significance of my mission and so on. Personal need. Personal temptation and so on.

So I went away and there was literally no need for food. I went to get the book of God. I was going to go and talk. I started in those days. And the Lord spent the first two hours alone with God. So it was like a nap at the side of the street.

You've got the Lord and a talk of course. So that's what happened. When I brought those things to Him. Now the answer became to me. The Lord sent me back. Put me into a new dimension. And I felt love.

Christ as the Person Who Is Love and Power

He suddenly said to me, God is love. We all know that. But when the Holy Spirit speaks, He doesn't get afraid. He said to Himself. It's like something which says it means. And the Lord said to me, We walk with God all night and we leave.

God is love. Do you know what I said to myself? God is love, not the person. I knew He was. I knew He was. I knew He was a good person. Especially His love. Didn't I like that then? I knew He was God for Him.

Or for me. Not the person. Now the effect that had on me was that I think in my little part time, when I sat there and it's this, I said to this, God said to me, Love is a thing. Love is not a power. I am the love.

I said to Him, God, not me. If you just say, You are the love, isn't that for me? God said to me, I thought it was a coincidence for me, like it was on the first Christmas too, He says this, first Christmas, first chapter.

Now Christ is the power. And I need the power. I gave the power. I had it. The day I sat back, I got power. I thought things came out through the Lord. I didn't understand. It was all a person expressing himself.

I didn't know that. I didn't know one unique person expressing himself through the universe, through people, Christ formed in me. I didn't know that. And so again I sit back, Christ is the power, and I said, power of the person.

If Christ is the power, power of the thing is the person. It was again a bit, as it were, Christ couldn't help me. He said, power of the thing I did to you, isn't it? So I am that power. What I didn't say was, I believe.

I got the answer two days later, in another simple description, which came to me, based on a Gospel scene, in the last passage of 1st chapter, of 2nd chapter, it says in the scene, there is a man called Christ.

He is all. He is Christ, but in all and in all, it is Christ. And Christ is all. We say Christ has come. He is all. He is all. He is the love. It isn't the power at all, it's the person. He is the power.

It isn't the thing. The power of the thing is the person. So I began to use me. He is the one person. But how does it relate to me? And here is another line. He is the all. How does it relate to me? Then it was a second phrase.

That's all. Christ is all. And do you know, do you know, again, how do you get a flash of light? And the first bishop, oh, I see. It isn't my normal love becomes something. I can claim someone with that.

But it never can be, as I have learned. It can't be. What man knows of things, oh man, but you operate from it. You operate from your know-how. Another being, not you. You are just a being. I can live, I can live settled.

When I know, when I consume, I think it's you. Well, they live similar. Here, here, I can talk to you now as long as I wish I could. Because it's got me. I live with the thing. When I start to live a language, it seems to go here, it seems, it becomes as easy as me now.

It's all because of my know-how. And you always live life while you are in know-how. And as I say, if you really learn, learn constantly. It isn't, you know, practicing by tools out there. It's all I know.

I do it from inside. You know, have been operating, you know, have some practical problems from inside. Or you're cooking, you know, you're taking meals. Soon, it was, it was happening. When, when, when, when it becomes the reality to you, you are not you.

You are just like the deity. Because Paul said, go on, because John says, go on, do what you do. You don't think, you know, you don't get it. You know, it's a strange thing. I have a sickness, if you do, because nature's human.

The Indwelling Life of Christ

I have a nature. Humans don't have a nature. And that's still more foolish thinking very much that humans have two natures. Humans have no nature. A nature is that, which, which motivates your personality.

Humans exist. That God is a person comes through our makeup. And every human being above says, that's not God. That's not mercy. That's not mercy means that you can tell that God not alone loves humans.

That's not mercy means you can tell that God is not alone to love humans. And I find that the Bible says that God is in the vine. That's very clear. In the vine. Because the vine is in the nature. The nature of the vine stretches through the vine.

It's one. The vine is the nature of the vine and the nature. And Jesus, our true vine, that made the kinds of gods and He stretched himself what, He stretched, He stretched himself through me. I find the Bible called a temple, the temple to the living God.

And God has heard, well, God has never walked in there. O, the Bible says that and he says, do you think the temple is an idol? No, a temple is not the character, it's the character of the God in a temple.

It's a means by which he makes presence of his presence. A temple is a building, it means that he's got some sense. It's not that the temple isn't something, it's a means by which the God is supposed to be something.

So then, what about the slaves? I struck first with all that, with all the snakes. He said, don't you know every human being is a slave? A slave always has a boss. He said, every human being to whom you give yourself a servant, that you are a slave, that you are a slave to him.

You are either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. Sin, of course, is a special case of Satan is spent through me. Righteousness is a special case of the Lord Jesus Christ who is spent through me.

In every case, a human is never independent. Now, I can't remember being this patient. A human would have independence if he was always motivated by the deeds of Satan. So it's true. What tends us to the false, of course, is the actual cause.

To real people, to be real people, we have a life order. It is this or that. Therefore, I know my life order. There are negative and positive, sweet and bitter. Therefore, I know my opposite. And I depend on the operating relationship with my opposite.

Now, that's the supreme of the divine. To be a conscious person, I must love myself. I must be myself. I must be myself. That's what you're here for. I must be myself. Be a selfless self to hell with you.

Or shall be a self to you and I shall be hell for you. Which kind of self am I? A self which is self-seeking, self-presentation, self-seeking, and that's the end of my life? Or is a self which exists as a truth to truth?

Humanity, Selfhood, and Divine Purpose

And I saw this tremendous, extraordinary, amazing. The world's made of these images, precious. We're not one single one of us. Only we've been mischievous. Satan's mischievous. He didn't make us. Only mischievous us.

And Jesus Christ has been wiped to use in the past for the black man again. We're beautifully made. And the end of our being is we're throwing ourselves in the universe. So we have to advise what Christ says of the universe.

All things. And what you say is your own and you manage. And our destiny is in the hands of the universe. So you have the love of God behind it. The God behind the universe is self-respect. He can't be a liar and self-giving self.

He can't be that. He's sick. God can only exist by perfect love. He doesn't need you. He judges only from the love. And so we move in. And when you go to heaven, I see it now. You move in, coming, perfecting the universe.

Because the being, this God here, he exists to bring his people into perfection. Now you see, if it's his eternal purpose to operate by his son, it's not the universe can only operate by a particular form.

Electricity can't operate except by a lamp or a light or power or something. And yet the universe must have some form which operates. The atom is useless if it has people who manage it itself. The living Lord himself, eternally mortal and invisible.

It's meaning that he can't manage itself because he has a son by him, as a person who faces his person. And our destiny is to, as the meaning of this question is, we did not know Satan didn't. He's a God that's God because he's a God of self-seeking, self-loving self.

It's good shortage. Because it's just another way of me worshiping the Lord. Of the way he's expressed himself. I stand with Norman, and I know that as I stand with Norman, I'm standing with many of you in saying that I find no shortage.

Therefore I find no shortage here. Because Christ is. 36 years ago that became a fact. And there was 31 years there when it wasn't a fact. There was no shortage. Because Jesus Christ lived. But all those 31 years were filled with Christian studies.

With four years at what I would say was the best Christian college in the world. I'm sure you would have another college that you would say was the best Christian college. But God's time for me was 15 years ago.

Self-Righteousness and the School of Tribulation

Knowing that there was no shortage. He had a very wonderful way to prepare me to know that. I had become a pretty self-righteous person during those 31 years of Christian training and Christian parents and Christian friends and Christian churches and Christian work.

And the attitude that I lived by was that to whom much is given, from him much shall be required. Now that's a good verse. You are thinking of the requirement being out of your flesh. That's the way it results.

It produces rank, which it has produced in me. I go to a course with my children outside my own family because people outside my own family didn't know me as well as they did. And I was able to fool a lot of people outside my family.

I think I was anyway. Maybe I wasn't. But they were all pretty nice to me. I had Bible study groups and I would study. My husband and I were youth leaders. And it seemed as if everybody thought that I was great.

And I lived on that. That was great food for my flesh that needed. I was a neat person in my youth. And I needed to have that adulation. All those 32 years, trying harder to try harder. At the time, one of my maids talked as if I don't have a husband.

I do have a husband, a marvelous husband. He's 60. Who said that? He doesn't really look fat. Don't take that. Not to me. He actually is a big man. And he's holding down a big job at home. And I just got a letter from him this morning saying that he was logging up the days that I was away and telling everybody that by the time I got back he would have legal grounds for separation.

We had worked very hard to raise our three children. They are Hope and Sutterly Bell at 17. Well, I couldn't take that. You know when I told you about myself that I couldn't take that. My first response when I found out about the awful thing she had done was that I went to my husband and said, you just take her over.

You raise her. I can't stand self-righteous pranks. Fortunately, he didn't do that. But all my reactions at that time were I was thinking that I was somehow a trinity in myself. Now, I didn't think of it that way.

I knew about the trinity. But the trinity at that time was outside me. I thought God is up there and the Holy Spirit is someplace here. And as Jesus Christ, I saw him as walking. I didn't know he was in me.

And the trinity that I really experienced was one right here. It was me and evil and good. I thought of myself as being the one who had to try to control the evil and the good. The good was here. I knew that because I accepted Jesus Christ.

I knew a lot about Jesus Christ, about God. But it was all out here. I didn't know very much about the Holy Spirit. So the good was there. I knew it. But I also believed that he would need my job to control these two.

Well, you see, when this daughter had the audacity to rebel, I could see that my trinity hadn't worked at all. I had not been able to maximize good and minimize evil. My first child, I took all the blame on myself.

I was disappointed with God. I was disappointed with me. I had very little hope left for the future because I had just about decided that I was the best person I knew up until that time. I worked harder than anybody else.

I studied the Bible more than anybody else that I knew. I seemed to be more willing to work than anybody else I knew. So I had come to the strange conclusion that I was the best. God treated me that way.

It seemed like a rank unfairness. I was very disappointed. I didn't hear what he said about all the tribulations or that I even looked at as a tribulation. I had managed to escape everything that looked like it might be suffering up until that time, not knowing that I was suffering all the time inside.

But this was something I called a tribulation. About six months later, a daughter attempted suicide. That was the second tribulation. During those six months, or maybe four months at that time, I'd been listening to Norm.

I listened to him through his book. I got a chance to. He doesn't live too far from where I lived then and from where I live now. I listened to him through his letters. That went flying back and forth, thick and fast, because I found somebody that spoke truth to my heart.

Listening to that established not the whole truth, but two facts, and they were that God is love and he is sovereign. I knew those things before in my head. Now they were established in me. I know that when the attempt at suicide came, my reactions were quite different.

Therefore, what's happening is love. When he'd come and speak to me about it and feel sorry for me, I found myself saying, no, this is God's love. I might be the mean, but that's what I found myself saying.

Serious was the wholeness of it. It was acting on me. It wasn't acting on our daughter, Hope. She was continuing on. Her rebellion continued on. But it wasn't for me at that time. It plowed up. I was ready.

I was ready to hear the truth about God's purpose. Therefore, being justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we had access by faith into the grace where it went in, we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

And not only so, but with glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulations work as patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. And hope makes us not ashamed because the love of God is shed upon our hearts by the Holy Ghost.

Since I was nine, I hadn't had any particular problems with thinking that I wasn't going to be in heaven. When I died before I was forgiven, all I did have a problem with was forgiven sin. But I knew I did have the peace of wisdom and the ability to stand in truth, and I did not glory in tribulations.

First tribulation I told you about, didn't glory in that. Because at that time I saw it all as my fault, something that I had done wrong, and something that I had to take the responsibility for, something that I had the guilt for which I had the guilt.

I did work patience since 11. And as I saw God, He asked me what I used to have. He had done this. And I found myself feeling myself that I was the doer, the lover, and the lover, and the doer was me.

And now living out service, I was recognized with myself. The biggest problem, and I think it came from that, was jealousy. I was tricked into jealousy in a very simple way. Jealous of everybody who had brothers and sisters.

Now they all told me I was crazy, but they liked me. I was jealous. And my jealousy just became competitive, jealous of anybody who performed better than I did. Again, I covered it up, but it wasn't covered up for me.

Well, it's there, and I don't mind watching him do what he wants to do. The Lord yelled, you're a jealous woman. And I said, well, Lord.

Love's divine, all love's excelling. Joy of heaven to us, come down. Fix in us thy humble dwelling. All thy faithful mercies crown. Jesus, thou art all compassion. Pure, unbounded love thou art. Visit us with thy salvation.

Enter every trembling heart. 362. In 1933, I came to this college. I had the joy of driving him up and chatting to him about the whole days. Tonight, I've got the joy of opening the museum for him. So I'm not going to take up any more time, but give him the maximum time.

We'll sing, he wanted two hymns, so we'll sing another hymn. And I would like a better translation of this hymn. They've altered it. You know, Bunyan didn't write these words. But he wrote words with a bite and a snap in them.

However, these are the words we have of Bunyan's great hymn. Number 522. 5 -2 -2. As we have them here. He who would value thee against all disaster. Let him inconstantly follow the master. There's no discouragement.

So make him once relent his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim. Whoso beset him round with dismal stories. To but themselves confound. His strength the more is. No foes shall stay his might. Though he with giants fight.

He will make good his right to be a pilgrim. 522. That's a fact. Paul said, I know whom I have believed. He had to believe first. And the knowing of the prophets and the believers. He didn't say, I believe, I believe.

I know, I know, I know. The most striking thing to me in the scriptures is the kind of rooftop of the letters of the scriptures of 1 John. It's the top, top letter. We walk as he walks. In the light as he is in the light.

We know as he knows. We love as he knows. As he is so are we. Isn't that something? That's 1 John 4, 17. As he is so are we. Not ought to be, shall be, one day, and are not. Am I? I'm an ammer. Not that we'll cook, we'll beer.

If he's an ammer in me, I'm an ammer also. If I'm in union with him, am I? You know, pictures. As he is so are we. In this world, not this world. And I'm going to say the interesting thing is the last phase he takes you through, 1 John, is we believe as he believes.

But you find he turns it to no. And you find that our last two things, we know who we are, we know who he is, we know we're known. No, no, no, no. Knowing isn't believing. Knowing is when believing is evolved and has become knowing.

Affirmation becomes confirmation. It must be funny if I've got a totally victorious Jesus Christ in me. How could it be else? Because he always conquers everything, including the devil. So I don't worry about fighting the devil.

I only bother about him a little bit much. I see him conquered all the time. And the only time I don't see him conquered is when I'm foolish, foolish enough to see him as he's not conquered. Which is a lie.

He has been conquered. He has been conquered. Foolish is when I see him as if he isn't conquered. Then I'm down low level. I don't believe in low level. I believe in top level. If he's sitting in heaven's gates, I'm down.

I'm telling you. I didn't seek his help there. He put me there. It's his fault. He shouldn't have done it. No. So why shouldn't I live my way? He put me. And therefore when the devil comes up, I say, Devil, I'm not seeing you any longer.

You were finished 2 ,000 years ago when I said you were finished. I'm watching you get out now. That's why I keep trying to unsave souls. I say, that person, I say, Jesus Christ saved that person 2 ,000 years ago.

And I say, devil, you've got the right type of person. I'm hereby saying in faith, I'm saying by faith, you've got him, Jesus Christ, and I watch him become yours. So I turn my praying into praising. It makes quite a good release, too.

Living by Impartation Rather Than Imitation

I've lived for years on the statement that I first caught these things through Miss Howells here. I first caught it through these G .G. Tubbs ensembles. These are the two Holy Ghost men I knew. It's good to know Holy Ghost men so long as the Holy Ghost isn't in getting you too, that's all.

You don't live by imitation, by impartation, that's all. I live with two Holy Ghost men. Slightly uncomfortable for the time being, but it might be comfortable a little later on. And the same person operating them operating me.

I was going to say, the scripture I got, the word I got when I had to largely through the Holy Spirit had to come on me to take the place of C .G. I believe in the first name, you see. If Paul only had one name, why should I have more?

I'd like you to be Norman. I'd like you to go back to scripture, you see. Mr. Reverend Supperthorpe. I believe in brotherhood. When you're in brotherhood with a person, if he's respected, you respect him.

You don't respect because of the title, you respect because of the appreciation that's created in people. I'm very glad the man you had down here from West just recently. He's a man God's seen lately.

He's had to come through, that's new world. He's taken on the work, ladies from the work down here, he has been seen. So only 30 years ago he said, I've seen finally, it isn't I. It's Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit God in me.

He's seen it. And we talked about authority because they brought the word in. I never allowed the word director in the work. We stuck to the word secretary. And now in this last generation they put the word back director, so forth and so forth.

He makes it out to just be a title. It may be a title for you, it may be a title for everybody. He said, I have no power and all power. I have no power and all power. Because he doesn't pretend to have power.

And all praise Jesus. But above all in Christ he has all power. I still haven't given you the scriptures that came to me at that time. It was that sentence statement. It was made to those who entered the first rest.

Entering Christ's Rest and Sharing His Yoke

Come unto me, O ye that labor in every day, and I will give you rest. Move you to the second rest, take my yoke upon you. Be a co-winner, a co-savior, a co-worker with me. Share the power with me. Take my yoke upon me, and learn of me.

For meek and lowly are powerless. Meek and nothing is yourself. It may be that he said the person would be meek and lowly. A perfectly meek person, a notorious person. Jesus Christ said nothing in me.

It's the Father in me. I am the child of God. Humility isn't being this. It's not being there at all. To be humble is just to be proud. It's still self. Humility and pride is no self. That's only Jesus Christ.

Otherwise it's self. That's why he couldn't see Jesus Christ. He only saw the Father through him. And when he said that, that's when he said, Learn of me, for meek and lowly are powerless. Rest of your souls on my yoke is easy.

And the burden is light. Well, of course, the word yoke is hard to put. It's the equivalent of putting a plough. Hard work. Well, it's easy to put a plough. And the burden is heavy, doesn't it? The so-called poetry says, Whenever you feed your plough, Hard to put your feet.

Whenever you feed your burden, Heavy to carry your feet. Because when you're on me, I'm the plough puller. You're just the old ass along with the big bull. That's all. You're the only donkey going along with him.

That's all. And the burden... Who carries the burden? The government? The government upon your shoulders? I'm sorry. The government's on your shoulders. The government's on his shoulders. He's got good, strong, square shoulders.

Operating even through my crooked shoulders. So I've had that for 40 years. I've had that. If ever I feel that burden heavy to carry, Or that plough hard to put, It's not in the beam. I don't mind being open when you know where the beam is.

It took me a year or two to find the beam. When the beam's upon me, I know where to find the beam. I don't mind that aversion. I know where to come back. I don't mind going to the side if I know where the main road is.

That highway, Holden's... Holden's here. It's a whole quiet city. Holden's is a whole quiet city. That's Holden's. If you do a T, a whole quiet city. That's Holden's. When you know where the whole road is, I don't mind aversion because it's good practice to go back.

And I'm going to say, isn't that what we're here for? You're here to know who you are. You should only be, of course, when the preacher told you who you are. And when the preacher told you who you are, he says, you're out and I'm in.

That's what he tells you. The chiefs. There is a day you don't repeat, you know. There is a day you do repeat. For other people. That's what we're here for. There, of course, for other people. That's what we're here for.

And the day you don't repeat, that's the one he did for you and you move into when it's finished. You remember the Bible for that, didn't you? They went through a period where they died and God replaced them.

That was chiefs. And from there they operate on, operate from that basis. They don't operate to that basis. They operate from that basis. I say, I can see that in the two main events. Much to me either.

I can see the death of the Holy Ghost operating in my mind. Behind that was a death. Certainly, you'll get no better, I never know in history, in the history, any better description of how the Holy Ghost does settle itself finally.

Any better description you get in Mr. Lee's house like when the Holy Ghost settled in. Well, he does it in his own way in all of us. If he discipleship, it means you're finished, doesn't it? We're not to be disciples, we're to be apostles.

From Discipleship to Apostolic Commission

A disciple of a learner, an apostle, a person having learned is doing the stuff. We're to be the stuff doers, not the learners. So, part two, I don't know of those phrases in these houses from school of faith to love of faith.

If you want a school of faith, look for it in a school of faith where you've got to cut off everything. And instead of cutting, take your head, your father and your mother and your wife, your children, your house, your land, your old life also, and let's just say all you have to accomplish is discipleship.

The funny thing is when you do forsake all you get, you get all that you get on another level. You see, until I forsake them, they're there for me. After I get it back, I'm for them. So you get the whole world back because it used to be the old life, the world for me.

When that's gone, it's new to the world. There's fun. So Paul says, the whole world is yours. Paul says, the whole world is ours. Because when God's in you, you're surely, when God's in you, you're only these, you're for them.

You're the other lover. God's the other lover, not the self-lover. And you're that, and this is the drive of your life, that's the Holy Spirit's drive. And then you have another kind of course, but the course of the glory.

That course, a lack of friction, which is, Dr. Rumble, goes before me, the arm or the knee, that's the course of all the people. The course of sectarianism, that's the course of sectarianism, that's the course of all the people.

The course of relations across the you. You can crucify with him, and dead to the world, and death behind you, cross some relations into crossings, and you'll reach up in the feet and you'll sit down.

Thanks very much. So, you see, I thought to say a little about that last night. The course of, this is the, the subject, the learning to be settled in. To reach this, you know who you are and you're going to reach.

The apostle is a central. The disciple is a, is a person in preparation to be settled. The apostle, a quick person, and now, the course is all taken by you. So we talked a little bit last night about that learning process.

I quoted what I did last night. Verses, I am crucified with Christ, and thus I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. Life, I now live in the place, I live in the place of the Lord who loved me and saved me, and gave to me.

That's kid stuff, I believe, behind it. So the Bible puts us in three, in three grades, doesn't it? The Bible preaches that little children, young men are fathers. Little children are kids, they're starting.

Young men are secret. Fathers are operating it. Little children, young men are, for myself to know, are fathers of other people. Crucifixion, resurrection, it's set me in. Essentially it's told you to go down from me and buy me dollars.

Christ is Moses, Christ is Joshua, it's the issue inwardly related. Christ is Melchizedek, and you are called Melchizedek, and that's why the High Priest follows that interfaith. What he's saying, you can't really in the third level, up to the first two levels, settle and get behind.

Spiritual Maturity as Competence and Fatherhood

Like in life, you can't take up for a person until you've graduated. Or whatever level you had to grade, which means you're supposedly competent. At least you've begun that you know how to handle your stuff.