"
"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit
of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make him of quick
understanding in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight
of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears…” Isaiah 11:2
“The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that
I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary; he wakened
morning by morning, he wakened mine ear to hear as the learned.” Isaiah 52:4
This morning I was again thinking about the two different
ways of knowing. The first way is through the fallen mind that reasons and
concludes based on our five senses-this type of thinking is also rooted in
doubt of God’s word. Eve looked at the fruit and decided it was good to eat
because it “seemed” to be good, no mind what the Lord God had said about it.
The second way that we learn and know is the same way that Jesus came to know things, and that was by hearing
the Lord’s word. Isaiah 50 is such a beautiful peek into the obedient prayer life of Jesus. “He wakened mine ear to hear as the learned.” Jesus often
rebuked the people for reasoning in their hearts, yet we never read about Jesus reasoning through things. Jesus always "perceived" by the Holy Spirit. (At least in the KJV that is the word that is used.)
To sum it up, I think that we could say that we hear in order to learn wisdom, and then we think on what we have heard. What we don't do is reason our way to wisdom because reasoning is based upon our five senses and human rationale. While it could be argued that truth and wisdom are supremely reasonable and rational, it remains true that human reasoning will never get us there. The reasoning that Jesus rebuked the people for means to consider and "go back and forth" with the mind to reach a conclusion, and it always led to judgments that Jesus said were just plum wrong. Often he told the religious leaders that "You are judging wrongly!"
I have come to see that I do this much more than I had imagined!
A few years ago I was having lunch with a friend and every time I asked her, "What do you think about that?" She would exclaim, "I don't think!" She was a bit of a character, so you have to imagine her saying it in a very colorful manner; think Blanche from the Golden Girls and you are getting the idea. I found her declaration, no matter how charming, to be very annoying. I just couldn't understand how one could just not think. I thought about everything from every angle, and the idea that I could just not think was like saying to not breathe. It seemed ridiculous. But the Lord began to invade my little thinking sprees with a soft tap on the shoulder and a gentle question..."Michelle...what are you doing?" I felt I had been caught with my hand in the cognitive cookie jar. and I began to see that all of my intense thinking rarely led me to greater wisdom and understanding.
Since that day I have begun to glimmer what she meant, and I am slowly learning to abandon my reasoning, and instead of parsing through every spiritual matter with a fine-toothed brain comb, I am asking, "Lord, what do you say about that?" It's amazing the lightbulbs that go off when I ask Him instead of fumbling around in the dark corners of my own puny brain.
Desires dictate what we can hear:
Isaiah says that Jesus was of “quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.” He didn’t reason by what he saw and heard in the natural, but only what the Father said to him. Jesus lived on every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God! Morning by morning he arose long before sunrise and the Lord taught him.
Here is an exciting idea: I believe that
Jesus learned about God, and about himself, through reading the scriptures. He was constantly speaking about himself from the scriptures, and I can almost see him alone on some mountain top reading Psalm 22 and slowly coming to see what he would have to suffer. In the same way we are learning who we are in Christ as the Holy Spirit reveals the word to us! That’s why it is imperative that we keep the word ever before our eyes and in our hearts...bound on our hands and as frontlets between our eyes.
We all know that people tend to hear what they want to hear,
see what they want to see, and believe what they want to believe.
Neuroscientists have even shown that the brain twits and bends reality so that
it will conform to our wishes. But when we desire to know the truth, we are
quick to hear from the Lord, just like an eager student listens attentively to
her teachers. Alternatively, when we have other desires that have a hold on our hearts, we
are much slower to hear the Lord because deep down we just want what we want. To the extent that we “fear” or love other
things, we will be slow to hear and understand. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
That’s all for today.
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