God's Voice #3

Knowing God's love did a whole lot for my emotional stability, but very little for my Christian character. Growing up, I was always zealous and argumentative, but my zeal and personal Bible study seemed to have no effect against my arrogant, lustful nature. It was a constant point of frustration for me, especially after my experience on the mountain. My first year after college, I was reading a science fiction novel by C.S. Lewis called Perelandra. The book was set on Venus, but it was really about Adam and Eve. In one particular scene, the Devil character was having a conversation with the Eve character, playing on her naive, childish sensibilities to create a sense of bitterness and confusion between her and the God character. The problem was, I actually found myself agreeing with the Devil character. However, when I saw the inevitable result of his arguments, I realized the error of my thinking. It was then that God spoke to me. The message came just as clear and as moving as it had in High School. Wrong function comes from wrong beliefs. The reason you sin is not for lack of effort, but for lack of truth. In other words, I had weeds in the garden of my belief system, and I thought they were flowers. To settle this new dilemma, I decided to go through the entire Bible with a blue highlighter, marking every verse that had any meaning for me. Then I wrote those verses on 3X5 cards and stored them in plastic containers to be memorized. When it was time to start memorizing, I just grabbed a box. The first cards in the box started with I Corinthians 2, so that's where I started. For the next week or so, as my brain marinated in scripture, I found myself being directed in my understanding. The mental process went something like this (verses in italics): I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Wait . . . Paul came to Corinth in weakness, fear, and trembling? That’s not how I imagined him. Not in persuasive words of wisdom? Isn’t that what preaching is? Is Paul saying that if I persuade someone to faith with logic that their faith would rest on my wisdom and not on the power of God? Could our current method of preaching actually harm believers, making them dependent on the preachers? Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. What is this wisdom that Paul is referring to? Apparently it is something that mature believers understand and speak to one another. It is spoken in a mystery. It is hidden. It is predestined for the glory of believers—whatever that means. It is something that the world does not understand. Do I? But just as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him.” For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. I always thought these verses were about heaven, but apparently these “things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard” were revealed—past tense—by the Holy Spirit. Maybe these are the mysteries that Paul was talking about. Prepared for those who love him? That must be church, or certain people in the church. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. Man knows man. God knows God. If we want to know God, we have to learn about Him from the Spirit of God. He is given to us so that we might know God and acquire the things freely given to us by God. These “things” are what “eye has not seen and ear has not heard.” The hidden wisdom. Combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words? What is a spiritual thought? One that originates from the Spirit. What is a spiritual word? A spiritual thought released. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. People that do not have the Spirit of God will resist the hidden wisdom that the mature believers speak. It will sound like foolishness to them. They can’t even understand it. That would also make sense of the next few verses. First Paul quotes an Old Testament question: “Who has known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct him?” Exactly. Man does not know God. Then he answers the question with a powerful phrase: “But we have the mind of Christ.” Not we might have the mind of Christ. Not, with a little growth, we will develop a mind like Christ’s. No, we have the mind of Christ. Present tense. Through the Holy Spirit. Spiritual men are beyond reproof because their words and actions originate in God himself, therefore a natural man cannot judge them. Do we even believe this as a church? After so many false prophets and corrupt leaders, do we still believe that God can make us into people that are beyond reproach? I think that we have become like an abused woman that no longer believes in love, or a lawyer that has lost his belief in justice. Look at the current trends in our "emerging" church. Has our dependance on our minds and human leaders severed our spiritual spinal cord, causing us to lose our belief in absolute truth?