Understanding

 

Hello everyone,

Let us press on towards the goal of what God has called us for, the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

When I became a Christian (see 11/22/22 blog), like a newborn child, I knew nothing. Being overwhelmed by my perceived expectations was a daily occurrence. I basically did everything everyone told me I should do. I acted how others acted. I basically walked the walk and talked the talk of those around me. Like a new born, I received all my nourishment from anyone who would feed me. Now, we all know newborns do not ingest all they receive. Most, spit it back up or wear more than they eat. Much like them, I struggled with my new found religion and my old nature. God is patient however and in time I grew. It wasn't long when I became so hungry that I wanted to feed myself. It's funny how situations will rise to push you in the right direction. For example, we lived about 30-45 minutes from work and we had one car to drive. My wife had a 8-5 M-F job and I mostly worked 10-7 with various days off. So, in our commute, we would drop our son off at his school early, then take me to work, then her on to work. In the evening it was more difficult, she would go get our son, which was in the opposite direction from me, then turn around and come get me, then head home. Not all days were like this but a lot of them were. When I arrived at work over two hours early, I filled my time by reading the Bible. I was hungry and needed fed and getting fed by others wasn't cutting it anymore, so I dove head long into the Word. I had a pen, a full notepad and the Bible with me each day. I started reading everything at first, trying to absorb it all. Eventually, I came upon word studies and verse studies. 

Did you know, the Bible does a great job of explaining itself. The Bible I had was a study Bible and it had cross referenced verses in the margins for each verse. When I would come across a verse that I wanted clarification on, I would check those cross referenced verses and more often than not I would cross reference the verses that were cross referenced and so on and so forth. The layers of verses from the original verse would go ten or more deep sometimes and I would write them all down in my pad to see them together and read them all at once to get a full understanding of what that original scripture meant. 

I was hungry and I constantly fed myself when I had time. I eventually got a huge concordance so I could study just one word and its meaning in the original Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic then I moved from verse to verse to see that word in context. I had a bag, just for all my books, pens and paper. People at work started calling me Preacher and others called me not so nice names. 

Here's a whimsical side note for you. The one calling me Preacher was a lesbian woman who actually talked to me frequently and was my friend. The one who hated my guts was a deacon at a local church. Go figure that one out. More on that one for another day maybe.

Anyway, God rewarded my hunger with constant revelations. When I say revelations, I don't mean a look into the future or a vision, I mean the stuff I was ingesting became real to me and not just part of a written word. 

Let's define this a little. There's knowledge and the Bible says, that knowledge can puff you up and make you arrogant. That knowledge is only on the surface and it lives in your head. You can quote it, you can use it on others and it creates a false narrative in you mind making you think you know God and His plan. However, knowledge can be mixed with current feelings, emotions, and other experiences to create a product that is not of God.

If a man wants to build a house, what would he do if he knew nothing about building one. He would hire someone who had the expertise to build him one. Now, the man knows he wants a specific size house with specific things in it but he still doesn't know how to assemble all those pieces and make them work together. So, the builder comes and starts to work. The man watches to learn and reads the plans. He may watch a video or two and by the middle of the construction he fires the builder and tries to complete the house himself thinking he has the knowledge to do so. 

This is the same as a Christian taking knowledge of the Word and using it to build His life around it. He doesn't have the expertise to finish the work yet in His mind he thinks he does. He may build a house but it won't meet inspection standards and will be rejected in the end.

So, there's knowledge and there's revelation where it goes from your head to your heart. It's where God makes all those words come to life within you so you can live it instead of quote it. It's a heart matter. For instance, at that church I went to, I constantly heard, I have to love them but I don't have to like them. Again, they are using words of knowledge to quote but their hearts are not fulfilling those words. 

Revelation creates the understanding we need to see how God sees. Most often, it reveals who you are and what you look like in God's eyes. Being a young Christian, each revelation that came my way was God showing me myself, who I was and what needed to change. This will be explained in a later blog but for now I just wanted to say, don't get knowledge, get understanding. Pray that God will open your eyes to receive understanding. It's the difference between knowing you have to give a poor person money versus having a broken heart for the poor. I could go on and on and on with this but I'll wrap it up here. Just know this one thing, there's a huge difference between head knowledge and heart understanding. 

To God Be All The Glory!