Truth is too important for us to neglect any of the guides God has provided.
For several months now, we have been digging into the idea that God leads us into essential truths about himself and salvation through four guides. They are (1) the Scriptures, (2) the Holy Spirit, (3) the church, and (4) prayer. If we follow these four guides with patience, faith, and wisdom, we can be assured of finding the truth—even if we are a new Christian! Through these four guides God will certainly lead us into the truth that assures us of eternal life.
Harmony
Just as a car needs all four wheels, you need all four guides working in harmony. Do not neglect or ignore any of them. Remember the Pharisees, who were radically religious yet profoundly wrong. Jesus corrected them: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39–40, ESV) They examined one of the four guides closely, yet they still went astray.
The Sadducees made the opposite error, failing to give adequate attention to Scripture. Jesus corrected them as well: “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mark 12:24, ESV)
So if we rely exclusively on one of these guides in contradiction with the others, or if we neglect, ignore, or reject one of the guides, we can stray into error.
Examples
For example, although objective Scripture is free of error, we might err when we interpret and apply it. False teachers usually appeal to the same Bible as orthodox Christians, but they misinterpret it. This is why we need the wider, historic church and the fruits of its two-thousand year history of interpreting the Bible together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Over that period the church has thoroughly wrestled through disagreements about the key doctrines necessary for salvation, corrected the errors of particular eras, groups, leaders, and locales, and long ago reached general consensus on the essentials.
Similarly, with regard to the Holy Spirit leading us into all truth through the Scriptures, we may have subjective thoughts and feelings that are not from the Holy Spirit. They may come from personal convictions shaped by our upbringing, for example. This is why we need the objective correction that comes from both Scripture and historic church doctrine.
For instance, some people have grown up in heretical religions such as the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses that do not believe Jesus Christ is the eternal, uncreated, divine Son of God. As a result, their consciences may affirm that what they learned in “church” and from parents is true, even though objective Scripture and the wider, historic church emphatically deny this false teaching. A Mormon might think that his Mormon-shaped conscience is the Holy Spirit leading him.
God is faithful to lead us out of an unhealthy religious group if we commit ourselves to follow the truth even if it contradicts our traditions. Psalm 25:5 gives an essential Scriptural prayer that God will surely answer: “Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.” The Holy Spirit will answer that prayer over time by illumining Scripture as we read. If we are in an unsound group, over time we will see how the Bible contradicts their teaching in significant ways. The Holy Spirit will disturb our conscience over what we hear. We can trust God to lead us into truth and a church marked by sound teaching.
Through prayerful agreement between the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and the true church, God reliably guides everyone who is committed to the truth at all costs and seeks it with prayer, trust, and persistence.
Next week
God is reliable, but we are not. What can make us susceptible to error is the state of our soul. Exhibit A is the Pharisees. So next week we begin an examination of eight soul qualities that make us immune to false teaching.
The Spirit of Truth takes your mind to another level
In the previous post we learned God leads into truth even the newest believer through three divine guides: the inerrant Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and the church. We now look more closely at the guidance given by the Spirit of Truth.
2. The Holy Spirit
The third person of the Trinity has divine ability to lead us into truth. Jesus told his disciples, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). Jesus had complete confidence in the Holy Spirit to do this.
Notice that Jesus called the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth.” We lack the ability to know the truth of the gospel apart from the Spirit of truth. First Corinthians 2:11 says, “…no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
And 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
So the mission of the Holy Spirit is to reveal truth within the human soul, like a lamp within your spirit, not merely a teacher talking externally to you.
We can have confidence in the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit
The apostle John wrote, “His anointing [the Holy Spirit] teaches you about everything—and is true and is no lie” (1 John 2:27).
Even though our inner world of thoughts and feelings is subjective and prone to error, John had supreme confidence in the believer’s ability to find truth with help from the Holy Spirit in tandem with the Old Testament and John’s teaching (and by implication the teaching of the other apostles), which became New Testament Scripture.
John wrote, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” (1 John 4:6 ESV) He could say that as a divinely commissioned apostle of Jesus himself.
The apostle Paul showed the same confidence in the Holy Spirit
Paul showed similar confidence when he instructed Timothy, “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit [the true gospel] entrusted to you” (2 Tim. 1:14).
The Holy Spirit lives within every true believer in Jesus Christ (see Romans 8:1–16), and he is the Spirit of truth who leads us in truth through the Scriptures, which he wrote (see 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20–21).
The Holy Spirit guides us into truth by illumining our minds to understand Scripture and by giving an abiding internal witness to truth. We do not hear a voice talking to us externally or internally (except perhaps in a very extraordinary occurrence), but we do experience his illumination, his witness, and the divine depth and breadth and weight he gives to truth.
Next week we look closely at the third, essential, divine guide into truth—the church—enabling even the newest believer to know the truth with confidence.
When we pray for wisdom with reliance on the Holy Spirit, he imparts wisdom to us normally from within, in a way that seems like our own thoughts or feelings, but with divine clarity and calm.
As you seek wisdom for everything that matters to you, it is helpful to reflect on which member of the Trinity actually illumines your mind with that wisdom.
Jesus said, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26, ESV).
First John 2:20, 27 says, “You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge…. The anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.”
Pray for Wisdom with Reliance on the Holy Spirit
The One who imparts wisdom to you is God the Holy Spirit. His presence on you and in you is called “the anointing,” and thus in one sense his presence resembles oil smeared on your skin.
But his anointing goes deeper. His anointing is not merely on the surface. It “abides in you” (1 John 2:27). First Corinthians 6:19 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?”
1 Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”
So the God who teaches you is not distant, out there somewhere external to you. Rather, he is as near to you as he can possibly be. His Holy Spirit has united with your human spirit. He now indwells you. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. He has anointed you as if smearing you with oil or pouring into you as into an oil jar.
As you seek wisdom for what matters to you, this means the divine person who will reveal that wisdom is as near as your own beating heart. And when you receive that wisdom, it will typically seem as though you conceived it yourself, rather than it coming like a voice from outside.
Your ceiling
Because you as a Christian have the Holy Spirit, your ceiling for wisdom is not your IQ—whatever that is in the physical human brain and immaterial spirit, and whatever it is that determines it. Rather, your ceiling is the divine knowledge of the Holy Spirit, which is unlimited.
First Corinthians 2:11–12 says, “No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”
The Holy Spirit is able to reveal wisdom and knowledge to you in a way that also gives understanding. He is not limited like a human teacher, who can only explain and illustrate and so on, and then it is up to you to comprehend. A human teacher cannot get inside of your mind and actually enable you to understand—actually turn on the lights. But the Holy Spirit can do that.
The Holy Spirit understands the deepest thoughts of God, and he enables us to understand what he wants us to know.
What God is willing to teach you
Moreover, the Holy Spirit does not limit what he will teach about.
First John 2:27 says, “His anointing teaches you about everything.”
John 14:26 says, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
This verse highlights what it means to have inside of you the Holy Spirit himself.
“the Helper” – Do you need help? Do you feel your limitations? Do you lack wisdom? The Holy Spirit lives in you in order to help you. He knows you need help and wants to give it to you. You are not asking him to do something outside of his divine role.
“whom the Father will send in my name” – The Holy Spirit cooperates with the other members of the Trinity to help you. He applies to you all the unlimited resources of the Sovereign Father and his beloved Son.
“he will teach you” – Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit himself will teach you. Trust him and be patient. He is the master teacher, along with the Father and the Son the most competent instructor in the universe. Place yourself in his competent hands as a teachable student.
“all things” – Things like understanding the Bible; overcoming stubborn sin; managing your work, body, emotions, ministry, and finances; organizing your home and possessions; overcoming challenges and problems; and having a healthy marriage, single life, family, and relationships of all kinds.
“bring to your remembrance” – He not only teaches what you do not know, he helps you remember what you have forgotten.
How George Washington Carver learned to help poor farmers
George Washington Carver’s scientific work on behalf of poor farmers is an example of the Holy Spirit’s willingness to help those who depend on him with anything they need to know. A Christian and botanist who lived from 1864 to 1943, Carver taught at the Tuskegee Institute in the years after the emancipation of slaves in America and devoted his work to helping former slaves become self-sustaining farmers.
One significant challenge they faced was poor soil depleted of nitrogen by generations of planting cotton year after year. To address that need Carver taught the necessity of crop rotation. In alternating seasons, farmers needed to plant crops like peanuts and sweet potatoes, which restored nitrogen to the soil. But peanuts were not a profitable crop, and farmers balked. Carver realized he needed to create demand by discovering new uses for them.
So he prayed for God’s understanding, and then he went into his lab, which he called “God’s little laboratory,” and followed God’s leading.
Over time he identified more than 300 uses for the peanut and published 105 food recipes using peanuts.
To demonstrate the value of his discoveries, writes Glenn Clark, “He himself took a plot of land that was 19 acres of the worst land in Alabama to experiment on to find what could be done to improve production. The first year it brought him a net loss of $16.25 an acre. After his first year of scientific treatment and cultivation it showed a profit of $4.00 [an acre]. Within another year the profit was $40.00 an acre and every following year brought better returns.”1
For perspective, at the time, in the South “most of the farmers contrive their best to live on an average cash income of $310 a year per family of five persons.”1
Quotations from George Washington Carver
Carver said:
“As I worked on projects which fulfilled a real human need, forces were working through me which amazed me. I would often go to sleep with an apparently insoluble problem. When I woke, the answer was there.”
“Believe. The promises of God are real. They are as real, as solid, yes infinitely more solid than this table which the materialist so thoroughly believes in. If you would only believe, O ye of little faith.”
“God is going to reveal to us things he never revealed before if we put our hands in his. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way of doing it are revealed to me. I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain I would be helpless.”
“There is no shortcut to achievement.”
“Start where you are, with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied.”
“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also if you love them enough.”
Honors
That Carver helped poor farmers, accomplished extraordinary things, and had enormous positive effects on his fellow Americans both black and white is beyond question.
After Carver died in 1943, “President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 for the George Washington Carver National Monument west-southwest of Diamond, Missouri, the area where Carver had spent time in his childhood. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to honor someone other than a president.”2
Among many more honors and recognitions, “in 1977, Carver was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. In 1990, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1994, Iowa State University awarded Carver a Doctor of Humane Letters. In 2000, Carver was a charter inductee in the USDA Hall of Heroes as the ‘Father of Chemurgy.’ In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed George Washington Carver as one of 100 Greatest African Americans.”2
(Lawrence Elliott’s biography on Carver inspired me: George Washington Carver: The Man Who Overcame. It is probably available at your library.)
Life principle
When seeking God’s wisdom, people often look for external guidance of some sort, such as a voice or a sign, or for dramatic guidance that is unlike their normal experience. But it is God the Holy Spirit who imparts wisdom to you, normally from within your human spirit, in a way that will usually feel like your own thoughts or feelings, but with divine clarity and calm.
God wants to help you if you will persevere. The Holy Spirit is your helper. Like Carver, we can learn to work with him. He will teach us what we need to know.
A Prayer: Lord, teach me how to work with the Holy Spirit. Teach me how to receive wisdom and help from him. Holy Spirit, I need and request your help in ________. In Jesus’ name, amen.
1. Glenn Clark, “The Man Who Talks with the Flowers,” (Kindle location 568 of 638)
2. Wikipedia, “George Washington Carver”
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)
There is good news for anyone who sincerely wants to know and follow the truth. You are not on your own trying to understand Jesus and the Bible. You are not left to your own intelligence and reasoning powers. Finding the truth is not like signing up for an advanced math class in college that may leave you feeling as though you are in over your head, as though you have jumped into the deep end, and now you may drown. No, when you choose to follow Jesus and the Bible, God gives you another helper, the third person of the Trinity, who is the Holy Spirit.
The message of the gospel to a godless person is not that you need to be more religious, or more self-disciplined, but rather that you need to be born again from above.
There is a stark difference between religion and regeneration, between self-improvement and being born again from above by the Holy Spirit.
Consider the man who realizes he has a problem. Perhaps he is addicted to alcohol or drugs. Or he has ruined his marriage and family through selfishness. Maybe he is sinking deeper and deeper into credit card debt. Or he has a lust and pornography habit or is feeling suicidal or depressed or afraid. Whatever—he realizes he must change.
He probably thinks he needs to be more disciplined or religious. He needs to reform his ways, break bad habits and start good ones. And he needs a new set of friends. He should listen to motivational speakers and read self-improvement books or maybe even go to church. He must turn the page and become a better person.
What he does not realize is, all these efforts at self-reformation are like bathing and dressing in clean suit and tie a muddy pig. Once he is cleaned up and turned loose, he will soon or later end up once again in the mud.
Instead, what he needs is a new nature. Someone needs to turn the pig into a prince.
Born again through the gospel
That is the message of the gospel. A sinner does not need religion; rather, he or she needs a new nature. She must literally become a new person.
Jesus told one religious leader, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
To be “born again” is to get a new nature.
It is important to understand that Jesus is not talking figuratively, as though “born again” is merely a metaphor for “change one’s thoughts” or “become a better person.” No, “born again” means literally that our human spirit has a new birth from the Holy Spirit. The third person of the divine Trinity comes to live inside of us. He unites with our human spirit, thereby transforming our desires, attitudes, thoughts, motivations. He transforms a pig into a prince.
Born again by the Holy Spirit
What the gospel teaches us about God is that the Holy Spirit is the giver of life and transformer of the human spirit. He regenerates the human spirit giving us a new nature. He gives believers in Jesus the desire to do things they did not want to do before, such as to love and obey God, to love and do what is right in God’s sight, to deny ourselves and serve others, and to renounce evil pleasures.
2 Corinthians 5:17 say, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Jesus said, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33). You are a tree, either a good tree or a bad tree, a tree with either a good nature or a bad nature.
You cannot change your fruit without first changing the nature of the tree. Jesus said, “Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:17–18).
When the Holy Spirit regenerates our human spirit, we become good trees and by nature produce good fruit. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).
Born again with new desires
What this means to the person who realizes he or she needs to change is, any sort of good and godly behavior that sounds impossible and undesirable now before you become a believer in Jesus becomes entirely possible after you become a Christian.
For example, at this moment the last thing you may want to do is go to church, hang around Christians, worship God, and hear the Bible taught. But after you become a Christian, this becomes your favorite thing to do.
At this moment, partying or clubbing with some wild friends may sound like a great way to spend a Friday night. After you become a Christian, that sounds like a journey into darkness.
How could this be? It is because you have a new nature.
Our way and God’s way
Our way: People without the Holy Spirit cannot live in a way pleasing to God. By nature they follow the flesh. (See Romans 8:5–8)
God’s way: The Lord gives every believer in Jesus the Holy Spirit and through him a new nature.
Life principle: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:13–14).
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)
The reason God is good to us is he is holy. Every good thing we experience and enjoy in life comes from God’s holiness. This is evident in the good works of the Holy Spirit to us.
I resume now the crucial theme that holy means good. We saw two posts back that Jesus was called the Holy One, and he did good to people in his public ministry. Let’s see how that pattern plays out in another member of the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, so he is fully God and fully a person, not just an impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is his name, so the word holy is in his very name. He is holy just as the Father and the Son are holy. Therefore he, too, is the Holy One.
And what sort of effect does the Holy Spirit have on people? He brings good to us, just as Jesus did during his earthly ministry. In fact, it was through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit that Jesus did all his good works of healing, deliverance, and teaching. Every miracle Jesus performed was a miracle from the Holy Spirit.
Good works of the Holy Spirit through Jesus
Jesus made this clear at the beginning, saying, “The Spirit of the Lordis upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19). That’s good!
Jesus said he delivered people from the torment of demons by the Holy Spirit: “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). That is good.
Jesus healed through the power of the Holy Spirit. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). That’s good.
At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, it was the Holy Spirit who descended upon him at his baptism in the form of a dove to empower him for the work (Luke 3:21–23). That was good!
It was the Holy Spirit who brought us the goodness of Jesus in the flesh. When Mary asked how she could conceive a child as a virgin, the angel said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). That was good!
Good works of the Holy Spirit in us
Jesus specifically called the gift of the Holy Spirit to us a good gift from his good Father. “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). That’s good!
All through the Scripture it is the Holy Spirit who reveals divine secrets and directs God’s people in his good ways. For example, the holy man Simeon:
“Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation’” (Luke 2:25–30).
That is good! That is the kind of thing the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit.
Jesus said it would be the Holy Spirit who would help and teach us. “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). That is good.
Good gifts of the Holy Spirit
Scripture says all the gifts Christians have to help each other in ways both natural and supernatural are from the Holy Spirit.
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” (1 Corinthians 12:4–11)
That’s good.
Good character from the Holy Spirit
When we become Christians, it is the Holy Spirit who cleanses us from a bad and evil heart and gives us a good heart and good conduct.
“Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh…. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:16, 22, 23).
“You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).
That’s good!
The Holy Spirit brings goodness of every kind to weak, fallen, broken people. Thus, holy means good.
Our ways versus God’s ways
OUR WAY: We do not typically associate God’s holiness with his goodness to us.
GOD’S WAY: But the reason God is good to us is he is holy. Every good thing we experience and enjoy in life comes from God’s holiness. This is evident in the goodness of the Holy Spirit to us.
LIFE PRINCIPLE: We should yearn for the Holy One and yearn for his holiness, for the more that the Holy Spirit fills and controls our lives, the greater will be the good we experience. Holy means good, for the Holy Spirit always brings good into our lives.
For several weeks I thought about what should be the prime focus of this blog. I settled on this: I realized my great passion is knowing God and his ways.
That has been my pursuit since I surrendered my life to Christ at age 19. I immediately began devouring the Bible. The idea that this book had the ultimate truth, about what mattered most, captured my soul. Since then I have been thinking about this book and the God who wrote it on a daily basis.
The Bible is not a simple book, and God is not a simple person. The more I read, the more I saw the challenge of fitting everything in this sacred book together. For example, sometimes God is the most merciful and forbearing person imaginable and at other times he seems quick to anger and quick to judge. How does this all fit together? Making it all fit is my passion.
Knowing God in an experiential way
Because I want to know God, not just about God. I want to know God like I know a person I spend time with, not like a person I read a systematic theology about. I want to know God relationally, knowing him as someone I communicate with, rely on, follow, and love all throughout the day. I want to know his ways based on experience with him, not just principles. I want to know how to pray in a way that pleases him and receives answers.
I want to know how faith works, the kind of faith that is powerful and effective (see James 5:16), especially because faith and unbelief were the qualities Jesus commented on most often in his interactions with people. Teachings about faith have been abused, but that does not mean we should avoid the subject. Faith matters.
And so I’m persistently trying to learn how faith works because I want to depend completely on God, put all my weight on his words, take his words seriously, and live as though they are true—because they are. This is what it means to know God and his ways.
I have been trying hard for years to practice God’s presence, in the manner described in the book The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence. This is at the core of how I know God. It has helped me enormously.
The Crucial Role of the Holy Spirit in Knowing God
I have been trying hard for many years to learn how to work with the Holy Spirit and his gifts. I have been trying for a long time to learn how to “hear God.”
(I put “hearing God” in parentheses not because I don’t think it is possible to hear God. Rather, normally when we use that phrase we mean something less than hearing God audibly, or even hearing words in our minds that we think are God’s words. I believe that God does guide and give his thoughts, just not very often in a conversational, “he said” “I said,” sort of way. At least that is my experience.).
I believeZechariah 4:6 expresses God’s heart: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts.” God wants kingdom work to be Spirit-powered. As I see it in the Bible, God’s method of church growth and ministry is through the gospel, through the Word, and through the gifts of the Spirit.
I believe this, but I fall a million miles short of seeing that happen the way I think it can. I am on a huge learning curve and have been for many years. I want help on this. So I hope the community of people who read this blog will help me and each other through comments and prayers.
Knowing and walking with God means working with him. I don’t relate to God just so he’ll help me in “the work of the Lord.” I work for God because it’s part of how we walk with him, love him, and know him.
I am enthralled that God is infinitely superior to me in every imaginable way. I am interested in any person who is superior to me in any way, even two steps beyond me. Well, God is infinitely superior to me and in every way! How could I not be interested in him? God is fascinating. He is interesting, creative, strong, intense, passionate, good.
Think about that last adjective. God is good; Jesus said God alone is good. I want to be as near as I can to any good person, and God is perfect goodness, infinite goodness. As Psalm 73:28 says, “It is good to be near God.”
In summary, this blog on Knowing God and His Ways will regularly engage these subjects:
Practicing God’s presence
Walking with and working with the Holy Spirit
Prayer and faith
Walking with God experientially like you relate to a person
Understanding what the Bible reveals about God
God’s infinite superiority
This post is approaching 1,000 words, so it’s time to stop. Normally I plan to write 300 to 600 words.
For more information about this blog and my writing, see the About page.
Knowing God and his ways is the greatest adventure! I invite you to join me every week in the journey. I plan to post weekly on Mondays.
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