Sometimes we look to preachers, teachers and fellow believers to mature
us in the faith. And then there are those seasons in our life when we take
responsibility for our own growth and education in the Word. I think there is
another origin of understanding that we often fail to recognize and that is the
insight which comes directly from the Spirit. We normally look to one another and to
ourselves for answers, but few of actually recognize when the Spirit reveals
things to us. Peter declared Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God,
and Jesus replied, “Blessed
are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my
Father in heaven.” (Matt
16:17 NIV)
2 comments:
Gail;
-----In 1990, one of my clients stepped into my office and immediately took a posture for pronouncement. She put the palms of her hands together in front of her face then lowered them slowly together as she announced, “Steve! Last night the Holy Spirit told me that you have a great rift down the middle of you.”
-----”OK.” I thought. “That’s very perceptive!” It had only been seven years since I had come to fully understand and overcome a very serious manic-depressive state (it’s now called bipolar.) I’ve always pondered her insight, whether the Holy Spirit really did reveal this to her, or whether she was merely able to sub-consciously pick up on the subtle aftereffects in me of that traumatic mental condition, thus mistaking a sub-consciously provided insight as the speaking of the Holy Spirit.
-----I had not persevered with the professional help I had sought; they wanted to push drugs at me. And their very approach to the problem was mentally unhealthy. The approach I had chosen was one of commitment to discernable truth in every thought, feeling, and memory, hard work applied towards a selected career objective, and a thorough analysis of the interplay between my physical sensation, pure thought, pure emotion, and the ever elusive spirit. That the grace of Christ made His Spirit available to mine and His Word available to my mind were my confidence for being able to sift myself and mentally adjust back to psychological health.
-----What I learned from several years of introspectively studying myself like a lab rat has profoundly effected the way I think about how body, mind, and spirit creates consciousness, perception, and will. Bodily sensations, emotions, intellectual thought, and spirit are sharply independent elements which submit to a high degree of interdependence in their functioning. By engaging your routines with some highly disciplined and complicated processes and acute awareness, you can gain good and useable understanding of how the body, emotions, and intellect interplay. But only some basic insight about the interplay of the spirit and The Spirit can be understood. This slice of bread is truly elusive because we are not given acute senses like hearing, smell, etc. for mental contact with the spiritual realms like we have with the physical.
-----Most people think such mental gymnastics are a useless waste of time. For those who are set upon simply obeying the Word of God with humble submission to the Spirit, they are useless. And I admit, you can’t go wrong with that simplicity if indeed Christ has you and takes you more than you have Him and go. But even Jesus being physically present to verbally tell Peter the Father had revealed this to Him was to effect a confirmation that Peter was on the right course. For we all know how prone Peter was to just grabbing and going. We’ve seen sad tragedies in the church when leaders have presumed the Holy Spirit was directing them when indeed they were merely grabbing and going. I am sure from within, Gail, you are true in saying, “...few of us actually recognize when the Spirit reveals things to us.” The coming of a profound and new insight balances us on a tightrope between great precaution concerning you know who’s ability to masquerade as an angel of light and the obvious relevance in a revelation from the Holy Spirit.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
-----“This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that He has borne witness to His Son. He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.” (I John 5:6-10a)
-----Jesus insisted to John the Baptist that He be baptized, even though He had no sin to be cleared from His conscience. He came by the water. But we do have sin to be cleared from our consciences. Therefore we are baptized in the water as an appeal to God for a clear conscience. A clear conscience is very close to the spirit’s interdependence with the other elements making up the human soul. Spirit is not tied to time like our plans of the past tie to our doings of today and generate our tendencies for the upcoming moment - tendencies not merely of action, but of thought and feeling as well. The consistency between plan, doing, and tendency are the essence of conscience, and the quality of conscience is in the purity of the tendencies. The Spirit is the witness because the Spirit is the truth. So conscience effects a linkage for the interplay of our spirit joined with the Spirit upon the subtleties of our mental being. For the Holy Spirit to interplay, cleanliness of conscience is paramount. ”Let God be true though every man be false.” (Rom 3:4b) It is truly not possible for any man to build and maintain a clear conscience. For this he can only appeal to God. Thus the water is a vital witness measured into our consciences.
-----God’s mercy is through the blood of Christ, you all know. It is only through Christ’s righteousness in spilling that blood that we have any righteousness at all. Conscience is the measurement of doing against plans - the measurement of doing right against having planned right. The strength to tend right in the next moment therefore depends highly upon the perception of having been right in the last moment. But we are not right in ourselves to even near the degree needed for associating with God. The only way we can then gain that strength of conscience is by His righteousness effecting these measurements through our desires to be righteous. Thus the blood is also a witness measured into our consciences.
-----Therefore the appeal through the water of baptism, the being covered by His blood, and the reception of His Spirit are in us God’s testimony not only that we are borne of Him, but that we also can do the next thought, feeling, or action right. By that confidence through a clear conscience the Holy Spirit can play into the tendencies of our developing thoughts, feelings, and actions as subtly or profoundly as He chooses. It all starts with our desire for it and proceeds into His likeness from one degree of glory to another as our hearts and minds are transform.
Post a Comment