SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE

It is in dealing (transacting) with a person that the deep elements of his character are revealed to us. We can claim only little knowledge of someone we have not dealt with. This is how important it is to deal with God and to be dealt with by Him. It makes what we have read about Him richer and deeper.

Knowledge obtained from dealing (transacting) with God is always a living and tangible knowledge. It takes Revelation Knowledge to Relational knowledge. The way to it is to deal with God - engage Him on the issues of His word as to see its effect in our lives. And to persist on having His feedback. This is where the work is. It might require that we ask again and again, and that we keep asking until we get God's feedback.

What we will obtain along the way  is a new knowledge of God. For the greatest thing God gives us in answering our prayers is not even the answer to our prayers but a new knowledge of Himself. A man who wants to know God's will, or get God's feedback, or move God to action, will in the process encounter the requirements of God in different matters. And will receive many adjustments in motives and attitudes. In other words, he will be dealt with by God. He dealt with God and will as a result receive the reciprocal dealings of God.

He will begin to know God in the process. Lessons of Faith, lessons of sanctification, lessons of praise, lessons concerning fellowship, lessons of obedience, lessons concerning anxiety, lessons concerning a deep desire, are some of the many lessons learnt. God's thinking pattern is being revealed.

A spiritual man doesn't let his environment (the happenings in and around his life) slide. He seizes the issues and engages God. Paul said:

"Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times..." 2 Cor. 12:8

Concerning a weakness found in his life, he engaged God and learnt a vital lesson (2 Cor. 12:7-10). Some others would have "casualized" it. Not Paul!

But he had to pray three times. And he would have kept praying had God not answered at the time He did. The goal was to get God's feedback. And because he pressed in, he did get a word from God. God's will for him in that situation was that the weakness should remain. The weakness was intended as a platform for the supply of Divine Strength.

On another day, God's will could have been to remove the weakness. There is no way to be sure except to engage God. Otherwise, we would apply scripture with assumptions. God's specific will in situation A might not be His specific will in situation B.

Our Lord too prayed three times in Gethsemane's garden, until His heart was assured about His crucifixion. Concerning the matter of His death, I'm baffled, He didn't merely rest on all the prophecies of scripture. He engaged God to have His actual will. And he kept the heat of prayer on till He got the Father's feedback. It takes persistence of seeking, to have God's feedback many times. "The slothful cannot know God..." Said a mentor.

I read of a mature Christian woman who insisted that nothing happened in her life by chance, and charged others to believe so. She always learnt a lesson from every happening around her. She would seize her circumstances and engage God concerning them, be it even small things like a fever. Once, she charged a brother who had a sickness that was simultaneously running in his family to wake up and engage God concerning it. And the man was truly awakened.

"But he who is Spiritual (spiritually mature) judges (questions, examines and applies) all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one...For who has known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ" 1 Cor. 2:15-16
(Emphasis mine, as deduced from the Amplified version)

A spiritually mature person has the attitude of probing and examining things that he might apply them rightly. This attitude leads him to receive the Light of God concerning issues. And so, he is able to know things for what they truly are. He is able to know, for instance, Sin for what Sin truly is. And he might be said to be so adequate in knowledge as to be able to spot even the appearances of evil (sin).

We will see three things in him:

1. He judges all things (questions and examines). And so knows things for what they truly are, and is not deceived.

2. He judges himself. In other words, his life is constantly under Divine Scrutiny. He knows things for what they truly are and his life is measured by such knowledge. Therefore, he is not only strict with himself, he has high standards concerning spiritual matters.

3. He is judged by no man (natural man). His life is under Divine Scrutiny, and so no natural man can have a correct conclusion about him. They can touch his humanity, but they cannot comprehend the driving force of his life. He cannot be unravelled by the natural man. He has the mind of Christ, and this mind was such that the Pharisees and the natural men of Christ's day couldn't unravel. They kept wondering what manner of man He was.

If natural men can fathom us, we are short of God's ideal......

A spiritual man has "adequate" knowledge of sin.

Sin is so deceitful (Heb.3:13). It goes by various names in our day. And because our standards are not high enough and our knowledge not adequate, we let it slide everyday in its different forms and appearances.

Did you know that Sin actually nauseates God? It is that very thing He cannot look upon. It makes Him feel somehow. We do not know because we have not seen it the way He sees it. We have not stood at his viewpoint. Oh, if He gave us His lense, we too would puke! We would vomit at the offensiveness of sin.

We know somethings are bad. We just do not know how bad they are. Even the things we think are very bad, are worse than how we have seen them, when checked from God's lense. "All things are bare and naked before Him with whom we have to deal..." Heb.4:13. God sees everything about everything. God sees everything for everything that it is.

Pigs smell and are offensive in odour to humans. But from one pig to another, this is not known. They live together happily in their stench, for it takes a creature with a higher order of perfection to sense the stench of pigs. It takes a creature with a higher order of perfection to put sin in its right description. We cannot know the sinfulness of sin until we know the holiness of God. He is so perfect in nature that we are shocked by the scriptures below:

"...Can a man be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker? If He puts no trust in His servants, If He charges His angels with error (charges His angels with folly)...." Job 4:17-18 Parenthesis Mine.

"If God puts no trust in His saints, and the Heavens are not pure in His sight ..." Job 15:15

God is so perfect in nature that the angels are still found faulty before Him, and even the splendour of Heaven is not clean enough for Him. How much more will such a God have to do with sin? He can't cope with it. He can't even look at it.

#Spiritual Knowledge

©Faith Oluwagbesan