(quote from RealReality.org/Real_Faith_and_Reason_Vol_2_-_Scientia.pdf)

If faith is divine certainty that comes when God speaks, how can we have better discernment as we mature in Christ? Isn’t faith the absolutely certain proof of what we haven’t yet seen with our physical eyes? And doesn’t faith come to us the moment we first acknowledge God’s voice and hear Him? Wouldn’t that faith be total and complete right from the start?

While faith is absolute right from the start, the human mind is deceitful and desperately wicked. Satan is a deceiver. Deceivers can pretend to be the voice of God. We don’t wrestle with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in the high places.

We walk from one level of faith to a higher level of faith as we mature. We become better acquainted with Christ as we walk with Him in submission and obedience to His leading, teaching, and correcting. The Holy Spirit forms Christ more fully in us and the sinful nature diminishes. That’s what maturity is. With less sinful nature and more of Christ’s nature, maturity helps us discern. It helps us know what comes from our own minds and what comes from God.

“And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” 1 Peter 4:18 King James Bible

(end quote)