“For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught
it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”-Galatians 1:12
The
best lessons are not learned in a classroom.
The best teacher does not stand at a blackboard. We learn about this world, by being in this
world. Experience, others, and the
things around us teach us. The spiritual
world is not always learned in the same fashion. The Spirit can use natural things to show us
spiritual things, did not Jesus do the same?
However, without the Spirit to translate these lessons, it will fall on
deaf ears. To understand spiritual things,
you must have the Spirit. We need Jesus,
the great educator.
It seems as time goes by that we have an
increase in information but not an increase in education. The Western world that we live in does not
lack for information. However,
information does not automatically equal education. Education is an enlightening experience, a personal
realization founded in information received.
It is Nathans parable to David, Jesus’s instruction to his disciples,
and Paul’s time in the wilderness. The
world does not lack for information, nor does the Western church culture. We have sermons preached in church’s, audio
sermons, pod-casts, Bible study groups, articles, blogs, books, movies, radio
shows, and let’s not forget (I say with sarcasm)….the Bible. If you took all the other stuff away, the
Bible would be more than enough. There
is ample provision, and yet we as a society are in a state of spiritual
dehydration; marked by a misplaced moral compass, complacent attitude toward
spiritual matters, and overall disregard of God’s instruction. Logic would tell us that the more information
we obtain about God the closer to him we become, but the scriptures suggest
otherwise. Those that were the most
informed in Jesus’s day had the least amount of faith, and those who were
probably the least informed had the most faith.
“So what then?” You might ask. “Do
we strive to know nothing?” Yes! Exactly! Stop and consider, Paul writes that the
things which were gained unto him he counted but dung that he might win
Christ. All the information he had
amassed about Jewish law, and the education (so it would seem) that he had
received, it meant nothing to him; and he gave diligence to keep it that
way. This is because he understood that
the obtaining of the Spirit, the education of the Spirit, it does not come
through a wealth of information and fact-finding, rather a voluntary
poverty. Willingly impoverishing
yourself to: what you think is right, what you think is just, and what you
think is god; and wholly yielding to the teachings of the Spirit. The Bible is our information source, and the
Spirit our instructor; everything else is a byproduct used at the Spirits
discretion to aid in illuminating spiritual things.
The
Spirit is the educator to the children of God and the divider of the saint and
the sinner. The spirit teaches as no man
can teach and reveals truth that enlightens to change; a change that occurs
both within and without. When the Spirit
teaches, it promotes change in the people, because it teaches absolute truth,
and as it teaches, everything about us continually yields to this
education. God help us to exalt this kind
of education, and facilitate this brand of information.
