In a tract written by Bible
scholar E.W. Bullinger (1837-1913), he reasons that the greatest need of a
Christian—one most aren’t aware they’re lacking in—is to know God:
who He is, how He thinks, what His plans are, what does He want in our
relationship to Him, etc.
The
need to internalize more and more of Him—His essence, His being, His character,
on and on—is an inexhaustibly deep process that can ONLY be done through
faithful study of His Word, applying it to life in the sincere believing of its
truth.
As Bullinger points
out, “Unbelievers and Christians who don’t know God’s Word can rely only
on their imaginations and thoughts to tell them who God is. God is therefore
based on their own tastes. How boring and useless is that!”
*****
Errant preachers will tell you that
if you want to know God and His will for your life, you must carefully
scrutinize your circumstances and listen for Him to interpret events and give
directives through an “inner spiritual voice.”
Jordan argues, “If
circumstances or inner impressions were the means of divine revelation, then what is the Bible?
Chopped liver?! You say, ‘Well, the Bible’s the primary means, but. .
.’ No, it’s the only means! Because anything God is communicating and revealing
to you outside of the Bible is extra-biblical.”
*****
Paul
says in I Corinthians 2:9, “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him.”
“In
other words, left to yourself you’re never going to find out things on your own. God reveals them to you. It’s revealed truth. He reveals them through
His Spirit speaking through His Word.
“I got
a real wicked email from a person this past week, and they just went on and on
and on, calling me all kinds of terrible invectives, telling me what kind of a
heretic I am because I tell people (they’d heard me on the TV program) that the
Spirit of God speaks through His Word, and that He doesn’t speak outside of His
Word; He’s not communicating to any of us through circumstances, inner
impressions, events, physical things, etc. He uses words.
“Oh,
this man was just as mad as could be. He said, ‘You’re limiting God! God speaks
into your heart and He doesn’t just speak with the cold letter of His Word; He
talks to you and He leads you.’
“I simply wrote back, ‘This just isn’t how God says He communicates, and every
contact you have with Jesus Christ outside of the Word of God is on an inner
subjective level inside of you, so how do you know that communication—that
feeling, that impression, that thought, that word—you get in your spirit is
from the God of the Bible and not from the devil?’
“
‘Well, I just feel’. . . Listen, every Mormon who
ever lived, the way he got converted was he got the ‘burning in the bosom’ and
he feels that way. Every Muslim you know, they went and got
the feeling.
“I had
plenty of feelings about God talking to me before I ever
got saved. Religion does that. That’s what it’s based on! Religion is designed
to satisfy the lusts of your flesh and your flesh lusts for feeling.
*****
“So
how do you know that the contact you have is the God who created all things and
not some evil spirit? Well, you need some objective standard outside of your
own intuition to know that.
“That’s
why Paul writes, ‘Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things
with spiritual.’ (I Cor. 2:13)
“Where do you find the words
that the Holy Ghost teaches? That’s what the Book is! ‘Holy men of old spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’ ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of
God.’ ‘The Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David.’ ‘The Holy Ghost spoke by the
prophet Esaias.’ The Bible’s full of that!
“So
when the Holy Spirit wants to speak, He speaks through WORDS and those words
are recorded on the pages of God’s Word. I Corinthians 2:10 says, ‘But God hath
revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea,
the deep things of God.’
“When it says ‘for the Spirit
searcheth the deep things,’ God the Holy Spirt knows the mind of the Godhead.
Verse 11 says, ‘For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of
man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit
of God.’
“That’s
a verse you don’t want to read over too quickly. ‘What man knoweth the things
of a man.’ You have a spirit that gives you a capacity to know things beyond
simply the physical world around you. You have a spirit of man within you. I’ve
got the spirit of man within me.
“And
when I speak words, those words come out of my mouth. They tell you what’s
inside of me in my spirit. Those words are a spiritual medium of
communication that go into your ear and are translated . . . somewhere in the
mystery of your makeup it’s translated into words that your spirit hears. And
words—the communication we engage in—is really a spiritual thing.
“When
we talk back and forth (as Believers), there’s a spiritual ministry going on.
Now, when what we’re speaking is the Word of God, there’s more than a spiritual
medium being transpired as with when we’re just communicating human viewpoint.
We’re really communicating the things of God!
*****
“If
you read verse 12, it says, ‘Now we have received, not the spirit of the
world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are
freely given to us of God.’
“As the teaching ministry communicates godly
edifying to you, there’s a spiritual ministry that’s developed inside of you,
and you literally store up the capacity in your inner man and are built up.
“In
Galatians 4:19, Paul talks about Christ being ‘formed in you.’ There’s a form
of sound doctrine built up in your inner man.
“The
preacher’s purpose is to take some godly edification—some sound doctrine based
on our identity as members of the Body of Christ in the dispensation of
grace—and impart that information into your inner man so that it builds up that
edifice of sound doctrine inside of you, and your frame of reference (your
thinking, your conscience, your inner man, all of the processes that go on
inside of you) is renewed.
“The
shorthand terminology in Romans 12 is the ‘renewing of your mind,’ that you
might be ‘transformed by the spirit of God from glory to glory.’
“II
Corinthians 3:18 says, ‘But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the
glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as
by the Spirit of the Lord.’ There’s this inner-man transformation and it’s the
Spirit.”
*****
In worldwide evangelist Oscar
Woodall’s 1993 book, My Journey from Law to Grace, he tells of how
when he’d frequently ask the question, “What’s most important to God?”,
individual responses typically included, "souls, love, family, truth,
justice, righteousness."
Woodall writes, "Most
important to God is His inspired, preserved Word(s) written on pages of a book
we can hold in our hand.”
*****
In her expository book on the
Song of Solomon, Christ and His Bride,
Cora Harris MacIlravy writes, “As she yields to His voice, He points out all
that must be done, and deeper thoughts and yearnings are planted in her heart;
new plants of adoration toward Him, of obedience and separation.
“As she abides with Him,
submissive and yielded to every dealing, no matter how keen the pain, or how
low she is brought, she finds that the pomegranate (a symbol of humility) is in
flower and giving promise of abundance of fruit. It is for this that the Lord
has chosen us to go out and bear fruit, and that our fruit should abide, and
that it may be treasured and preserved for our Beloved.
“With the individual soul, there is the cry in
the heart, that the Lord shall go forth and make manifest the true condition of
the life; that He will stir us up to greater zeal in carrying out His will, and
give greater strength to live for His glory alone.”
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