The Scriptures were
given to us to understand God and to discern truth and are essential to
navigate in this life, for there are many antichrists and counterfeit
experiences. God elevates His Word, even higher than His name and we are to
study to show ourselves approved, rightly dividing the Word of God. There have
been many good teaching helps for those who desire to know God in a deeper and
more intimate way. These are helpful as is a map would be on any journey, but
these can only but lead a believer to the threshold of a deeper walk. To know the Lord intimately, is not to find
Him in a book, or a method, but by “Faith".
I first address this to the skeptic and wandering soul who struggles
with the stronghold of intellectual supremacy.
We do not taste with intellect, but with an organ designed
to interpret the stimulus, which is translated somewhere in our mind, but not
until having communicated something to the soul. We find the taste pleasant or
noxious, uplifting and sweet, or repulsive and bitter or a combination of
either. What business does intellect play but to put into works the
interpretation of our decision as to whether this is a taste we decide is good
and something to be repeated or not good and to be avoided. Even the memory of the taste has greater
prominence than intellect itself. We can never, by intellect, share what that
taste is. We can merely describe our
personal interpretation of it. We hardly
think about it until we have tasted it.
We love not with our minds, but our hearts. We do not
completely reject all thinking, but our best description of attraction to
another human being is “chemistry”, an unseen but well understood
phenomena. This chemistry cannot be
generated, it merely is acknowledged to be present or lacking. We can, using
our intellect, talk ourselves out of investing in a relationship, but that is
not until there is a consideration of the factors involved. We become aware
that there is a power of our heart that draws us into a controversy within
ourselves. Until that phenomenon is experienced, it can hardly be explained.
We see with our eyes, but it is not until we see a thing, that
we engage the intellect to interpret for us what we are looking at. We touch,
and again if we had never touched, we would not have the experience to engage
the intellect to interpret the sensation of the touch. Our memory dictates to the
intellect, and intellect makes a determination, a determination which may not
be accurate. Something such as fur may appear to be soft and decided upon by
the intellect to be soft by prior experience and sensation, but in reality, it
may have been sprayed with shellac and is quite stiff to the touch. The
intellect needs additional information if it is to be trusted.
We may hear a sound, but until we hear it, our intellect has
nothing to interpret. The same can be said about the sense of smell. Odors are
amazing triggers to memory, and yet our intellect is not yet engaged until that
memory is medicated upon.
All that is in the world that is perceptible to the senses
demonstrates what a small role “intellect” plays in the experience. Yet, many depend upon intellect to play a
major role in the unseen spiritual realm.
Without any input whatsoever, many gamble away their souls to eternal
damnation by relying entirely upon the limited ability of the intellect. They
thrust the intellect to the forefront without any input and decide that “there
is no God”. They do this without ever having taken the time to seek Him. It is like saying a fully charged battery is
dead, simply because it does nothing when you set it on a table. Until that battery is placed in a circuit of
some kind, what makes it any different from a fully expired battery?
The problem with the intellectual is that they think a true
Christian’s faith is in the thinking and consideration of imaginations and
stories. They do not consider that a
true Christian experiences God. They do not understand that there is an
imparted divine life within him, communicating with his soul and spirit that
grows stronger in time, much like the life that is hidden within a seed. One
small seed can remain lifeless and inert for years…but plant it in soul,
nurture and water it, and the hidden life becomes a tree. It is not that a Christian forsakes intellect,
but rather that he does not engage it to experience God, but only to interpret
that experience, just as all men engage intellect only following their
experiences of their five senses. The spiritual sense is just as real, but
people are born into this life spiritually dead. It is not until one is “quickened” by the
Holy Spirit of God, that he can experience anything of God.
The Scriptures declare that there is placed in the soul of
man, a glimmer of light revealing God and that experiences in our lives may
generate an inner sense of the reality of God.
In response to this revelation, those who seek God, find Him. Those who do not seek Him do not find
Him. People talk themselves out of
seeking God using an intellect that is void of any divine light. It is ironic that we cannot engage the
intellect without a sensory input in the temporal world and yet many engage the
intellect and fully trust their intellect when it comes to the world of the
unseen. That really doesn’t make much
sense.
