11/26/2018
Have you met Jesus Christ, and become determined to study and understand the truths of God? Do you say to yourself that you want Jesus to abide in you, and yet you are not really certain that He has done so? Well when you ask Him, He will anoint and enter you, but in the beginning you may feel only His peace and joy, but little more... this is the first day of school, and from here you will begin your education by being taught how to learn.
“But 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.”
1 John 2:27 ESV
Man studies the world around himself and learns by his own reasoning and deduction. We go to school and are taught by repetition and memorization those things that man already knows... we learn the basic facts of grammar, mathematics, and science as they are known to us. Then after years of study and mastery we begin to employ those things to develop new ideas, and apply what we have mastered to the realization of new truths. Jesus teaches us much differently.
This morning it was dark and there was a strong wind blowing. In the midst of some of the more intense gusts I heard a strange tapping sound, so I stopped writing and went to where I had heard it. In a few minutes the wind gusted again and I heard the tapping again... this led me closer to the source, and finally after several more gusts I reasoned that it was a branch tapping against an outdoor light fixture. This is how men learn about their world, but it is not how God reveals Himself to us.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
Proverbs 3:5 ESV
The major truths and other things about God are not revealed to our minds by study, but are taught to our hearts, then suddenly, as if by intuition, we begin to realize an inkling of what we have found with our conscious minds. I didn’t understand what giving was until the Lord called me to give myself in service to my aged in-laws. Then, when the fullness of giving came to me, and walked up into my consciousness, I found that I was unable to communicate the lesson in its entirety to anyone else. The truths of God begin and end in our heart, and are shared there, and there alone, with Him. Oh, we can attempt to describe them, once we consciously understand, but the real meat of them is beyond words, and our ability to communicate... they are taught to our very spirit and soul, and then bubble up to our conscious mind. It is like looking at the surface of a raging sea and saying that we understand what is occurring in its depths.
“He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" Jesus answered him, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand." Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no share with me."”
John 13:6-8 ESV
Peter was about to learn a lesson that couldn’t be taught in its entirety to his mind alone. Jesus knee that when the lesson became mature in Peter his mind would begin to understand what his spirit had learned.
We don’t understand what it means to be taught by Jesus as He abides in us until we have experienced a lesson. If you want to learn the mystery behind giving... then give! If you want to understand the depth of God’s love... then love. If you want to understand righteousness... then do righteous things. Andrew Murray wrote about the fallacy in our trying to understand God by reasoning; listen to his words:
“Thoughts like these come from an error that is very common among believers. They imagine that the Spirit, in teaching them, must reveal the mysteries of the spiritual life first to their intellect, and afterward to their experience. And God’s way is just the opposite of this. What holds true of all spiritual truth is especially true of abiding in Christ: We must live and experience truth in order to know it. Life-fellowship with Jesus is the only school for the science of heavenly things.” - Andrew Murray
So if you have asked Jesus to abide in you, and you are wanting to understand that He is there, then begin to live as if He does, and as you do He will teach your heart what that means.
Prayer:
Thank you Father for sending your Son to abide in us, and your Holy Spirit to help us in our understanding of what that means. Thank you for every lesson you teach us, and how your tutelage begins in the heart, from the depths of our souls, and percolates into our consciousness. Thank you for allowing the waves on the surface of our understanding to be guided by our lives with you that lay still beneath, and your depths to bubble to the surface where they enrich our earthly experience. Great are you Holy Father, and wonderful are the mysteries of your truths. I seek you with fear and trembling, but not with the fear of my mind, but the deeper and more profound trembling of my soul. Teach me Merciful Father, and transform me by not only those things my mind comes to know, but my spirit and soul as well. Let the living water of Christ bubble up from deep within, and then flow from me into the world I see. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you who teaches us to learn, and then reveals to us the most incredible and profound truths. By your grace we are saved, but by sitting at your feet we come to know what that means in the depths of our souls. Praised be your name Father, and boundless is the glory of who you are.
Rich Forbes