Photo: Courtesy.
With so many differing beliefs, teachings and doctrines in the church, how can we know that which is true? I can’t develop this in a brief devotional, but I do want to give you one clue to understand if you are hearing spiritual truth.
For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God . . . Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God . . . But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. 2:10-14)
You are either living in the realm of the natural, or the realm of the spiritual. In the realm of the spiritual, the things of God are being revealed to you. You will be learning what has been given to you in Christ. You will be growing more and more amazed at His grace, His generosity and His love. You will gain more and more understanding of your identity, authority and purpose in Christ. The Spirit will be revealing to you the things that have been given freely by the God.
The natural thinking Christian will not approach God in this way. The natural man will usually reject or minimize the knowledge of God’s goodness and instead see God as one who takes from you and makes your life hard for His glory. In the mind of the natural man, God can be good, but He can also test us with sickness and tragedy.
The natural man gravitates toward verses about suffering, loss, and hardship. He doesn’t understand that the only suffering that remains for the Christian is the suffering of persecution, and often it is the “natural” Christians who are persecuting the ones who speak of God’s goodness.
But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. (Galatians 4:29)
If you are walking in the Spirit, you should be seeing more and more of His abundance and grace. Your life should be a demonstration of that grace. We have received the Spirit of God that we might know all that He has freely given us!
Barry Bennett is an instructor- Charis Bible College Colorado. He is a graduate of Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, and has been serving the Lord since 1972. He and his wife, Betty Kay, have served on the mission field in Mexico, Guatemala, and in Chile, where they spent almost 12 years before returning to Texas in 2001.
