Skip to main content

Spirit to Spirit

The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, “Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?” has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.  (I Corinthians 2:14)

I have had those moments when everything I want to understand just didn't make sense no matter how hard I try to make my brain focus on the matter. There are probably a whole lot of spiritual forces at work behind the matter - good ones, not just bad ones - making it a bit harder for me to fully get to the place of really understanding the matter at hand. Spirit can only be known by spirit - my spirit connecting with the Spirit of God brings clarity - maybe not to the fullest degree I might desire, but it is clarity nonetheless. I would like to know the end from the beginning, but it is the journey that makes the ending that much more meaningful. If I understood all it would take to get to the end of the journey, chances are I would throw up my hands and announce a loud, "Not going there!" 

As new creatures in Christ, we have access to the mind of Christ - to really tap into a deeper understanding of both the good and the bad spiritual forces working behind the scenes. That may frighten some of us a bit because knowing which good ones are at work isn't all that scary, but realizing there are actually opposing forces at work can cause us more than a little trepidation. There is something quite common amongst believers everywhere - we try to 'understand' God with our minds, not through the mind of Christ - spirit to Spirit. God is known in the spirit of man - that knowledge making its way to our minds eventually, but it doesn't begin in our minds!

Our mind actually doesn't have the capacity for the spiritual understanding God wants to give us - we need to receive it in our spirit first, allowing it to grow in us until it begins to affect our soul (mind, will and emotions). The place where God communes with us is not in our minds - it is in our spirit. His Spirit entering our spirit and therein beginning to share the treasures of heaven, opening scripture to us, and giving us grace to embrace it openly and willingly. It took me a while to understand I could read every translation of the Bible and still not get what it said. It took the Spirit of God making it a living thing within me - breathing his breath into it. That takes place in our spirit - God's breath of life takes hold there first, making its way into our emotions, leaving us more than a little moved at times.

We can spend a whole lot of time spinning our wheels reading good devotions and even reading a whole lot of scripture on our own, but it is just time spent. We aren't connecting with God in our spirit and that leaves our time with him devoid of purpose - we aren't really gaining spiritual understanding, just head knowledge 'about' God. I did a whole lot of this when I went through Bible College - gaining lots and lots of head knowledge, but never really connecting it at the spirit level. It was some time after Bible College that God began to work on me in that area - asking me to stop being so 'educated' and allowing him to actually begin to impart his understanding. As I began to lay down the 'knowledge', he replaced it with 'understanding'. It is understanding that helps grace grow - not knowledge. Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,