11 Minutes
Sisters, dear sisters...brothers...we say we study the word of God. But do we approach it with the higher mind. We perceive and interpret countless thoughts throughout the day. Many do not realize that we have two distinct levels of our mind. The higher mind, and the lower mind. The lower mind: fear, doubt, and disbelief. The higher mind: pure truth and divine design. The higher mind is the gateway to our soul and intuition. This is the part of our mind that hears the communication of the Holy Spirit. The higher mind surpasses ego, transcends boundaries and holds universal truths. This is the part of the mind that knows no matter how difficult the situation is, we are loved, worthy and continuously protected and guided by the divine God. This is the part inspired by reasoning. The lower mind keeps us in a limited belief cycle coupled with facts based on past limitations. The lower mind is the representation of our wounded or damaged ego. This is the deception part of our mind because it convinces the self we are limited and are separate from universal truth. We have both. But reasoning with God, in the teachings of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit calms the lower mind so that we can receive answers and guidance.
Why we do not understand. We are not reasoning with God. To hear the word is to hear God Himself. And while we distinguish between the word of God written and the living word of God spoken, these two have one thing in common: God. To hear the word written is to hear the word spoken by God. We should be in awe of what God speaks. We should study the word with persuasiveness. With a firm persuasion that the Holy Spirit will enable us to understand and to learn the heart of God towards us and our hearts toward God. Inspiration is true, illumination is necessary.
Psalms 73:26
Proverbs 16:1
Psalms 73:28
Do we recall how Moses spoke with God concerning the waywardness of the people? God was not pleased. Moses encountered experimental knowledge of divine truth, which is absolutely necessary to salvation. Moses heard the word of God and reasoned with Him. This was determined by God in the counsel so as to affect the earnestness of the heart of one who communes with Him by faith. Moses talked with God with desire to know, to believe, and to obey the will of God as revealed in His word. This means that hearing the word is not just understanding with our heads the words on the page, but knowing by the work of the Spirit on our hearts the meaning of those words for me as purposed in Christ by God. It is the word of God that He has chosen to reveal Himself in doctrine and theological argument that offers proof of the persuasion of prayerful reasoning. We do not understand the word without reading it with such diligence and careful inquiry so as to accept it as our savor of life.
We should read the word with personalness: with meditation, application, self-denial, and prayer. In this we learn the words of God, and we are personally to appropriate and to identify ourselves with the Word. It is not some abstract thing "out there." It is to dwell deeply within us. We are to think intently and intensely about it. Studying the word gets God's truth into our heads, then meditating on it gets it into our hearts, and reasoning with it moves the life spiritually. The more we learn about God, the more we should love God. And the more we love God, the more we should become living epistles of His love for the world. This done only with divine understanding.
There’s a reason why we do not understand. Biblical truth cannot be discerned by human intellect alone, but must be spiritually discerned. Many fail to grasp how the words of God go together to form the gospel truth. What keeps some from understanding the truth? They reflect facts, truths, and things that you could prove by experiment. The bible reveals some things we find extraordinarily hard to understand; peculiarly unique things that perplex, confound, and even disturb us. But nature reveals traces of the same designer. Biblical truth is spiritual. We will never understand God exhaustively. The bible is clear that God is ultimately incomprehensible to us. His attributes are far beyond the realm of human experience. Because God can never be fully known, those who seek to know God should be deeply humbled in the process, realizing that they will always have more to learn. The appropriate response to God is a heart of wonder and awe in light of His incomprehensible greatness. Yet, God is knowable. He can be known truly, personally, and sufficiently through personal revelation of Himself.
Why we do not understand. We need Christ to strengthen our faith in his word, every word.
Philippians 4:13
With God all things are possible.... Divine inspiration moved the hearts of the biblical writers to record the truth. It must be divine inspiration that moves the hearts of the faithful to understand and to live the truth. Many of the questions we have concerning scripture must be answered by how God providentially provides knowledge for those who love Him. The bible merely states the truths. Yet our lack of ability to understand truth is not a reason to deny it. There is something about the communication of God’s truth to humanity. That something is that the origin of the written Word of God began in the mind and in the will of the Godhead. Not to cause complexity so as to confuse human logic, but to give to all those who have truly come to know Him things which human understanding alone will never see. Things that are only understood through spiritual illumination. The spirit in man knows him better than himself. In the same way, the one who knows God best is His Holy Spirit. He knows everything in the mind of God. We have received God’s Spirit if we are true followers of Christ, He is in us. Therefore, we have the mind of Christ in us and the capacity to know everything we need to know from God, not of God. Things we could not have understood before we received the Spirit, we can now understand through the Spirit’s help. A man without the Spirit cannot understand these things, because they are “spiritually appraised”. These things are freely given to us by God. He is not trying to withhold them from us. If we cooperate with Him and reason, He will make them known by His Spirit and by His Word. Once we learn these things from God’s Spirit and His Word, we are made able to share them with others through the power of spiritual words. What an incredible truth. God wants us so to understand. We can know the mind of God because He now lives in us! And we can speak the truths of God to others because He can speak through us. God’s interaction with humanity was formulated in the counsel. God does not have to change because what was divinely designed incorporated His apparent intervention in that formulation. God determined the change of His mind to show as a forewarning of a man, while at the same time, it was the words of the Most High God.
Numbers 24:15-17
The authority to write scripture was given under God’s direct control and God decided to reveal certain truths about Himself through the scriptures. The final product was what God intended. Many do not understand because they do not understand the Determinate Counsel, the employment of God’s infinite mind, pursuant to such a purpose for an ultimate end that has a determinate final reference to Himself. It is His will to accomplish, in the dignity of His character, all the means which He would employ in fulfilling this great design.
I Corinthians 2:9-16
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