A Little Scary; A Lot Exciting

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up.  I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ (Gal.1:11).

 

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which you have been called, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe (Eph. 1:17-18).

 

Almost everyone today has a cell phone with an incredible 'receiving cell' embedded in it.  It blows my mind to consider how words, paragraphs, even entire books and movies, can be delivered across the air to a tiny receiver, and then somehow 'unpacked' to deliver the message in a way we can comprehend it.

 

Deep within each one of us, there is also a tiny receiving station, one that can receive messages from the Spirit of God -- Spirit-to-spirit.  If our hearts are pure and ready to hear what God wants to say to us, His Spirit writes a message on our hearts.  Sometimes, the mind is a little slower to grasp and understand what the heart knows; the message has to be 'unpacked' in a way we can comprehend it.  But those who want to hear God speaking will hear Him.

 

Books like God Calling, God Calling 2, and Jesus Calling contain powerful messages of love; and encouragement that are "received by revelation," and not "made up by man."  Perhaps not everyone will believe or accept that God speaks directly to our hearts; maybe they will choose to believe instead that these books are written by clever men.  Some people even believe the Gospels were written by clever men -- but how uneducated fishermen could have been this clever is beyond me!  And how the Gospels could contain so much agreement so long after the events is an even greater mystery.

 

There is such a remarkable congruence and similarity among those who know Jesus Christ -- their stories differ in detail, but not in overall pattern.  Almost any testimony we hear, or any book we read has the same theme, the same revelation, as the Gospel:  I was hard -pressed and was falling, but the Lord reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me (Ps. 18: 16-17).

 

When I teach, or even when I speak, I just want so much to open up the hearts and minds of my class or of my friends and pour into them all the love, all the wisdom and knowledge, all the treasures that the Lord has given to me over the years.  I ache to impart to others what words cannot tell.  But I know who is the Lord, the Spirit of Truth -- and it is not me.  Jesus promised to send the Spirit of Truth to those who love Him.  It is the Spirit in us who reveals to us the Truth that sets us free from condemnation, from fear, from clinging to the world around us.  And only Jesus can reveal what it is we need to hear and to know at this moment; only He knows what we are ready to receive.

 

It is a lot scary to sit down to receive a message from God, a message for today, like manna in the wilderness.   But if we have the faith to believe that He wants to reveal Himself and His Truth to us, if we are willing to pick up a notebook to record what we hear from Him, we find find the most exciting adventure of our lives.