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The Ephesian Connection
For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
Without revelation from God, we have only head knowledge. And Christianity is about much more than the mere accumulation of religious facts. Our Lord has determined to make Himself known to us. In other words, spiritual revelation lies at the heart of our relationship with Him as our Father.
And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
This verse in no way negates our need for Bible teachers. Indeed, we need all of the five ministries that Jesus has given for the equipping of His Church (Ephesians 4:11 - 13). But at the heart of their teaching must be revelation from the Holy Spirit. Church leaders are not simply custodians of a defined repository of knowledge that they then dispense to the saints. They must hear from God. And if those who feed the sheep are not themselves spending time in His presence, hearing His voice, and then sharing what He is revealing to them, the Church will be hindered instead of helped to grow in the knowledge of God. We will stagnate.
Knowing God is a fresh, ongoing, daily experience. The minute my spiritual life becomes stale, I should immediately ask myself if I have stopped drinking from Heaven’s river. Nothing gets stale there. The river of life flowing from God’s throne is always fresh. Because of Adam’s sin, we all age; we all grow old. But our walk with God, our relationship with Him has an eternal source.
Through the LORD’S mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.
(Lamentations 3:22 - 23 NKJV)
The Lord’s ongoing expression of His mercy to the Church is a consistent revelation of His character and love for us that never grows old. Our lives should reflect the freshness of the river of God, not a stale intellectualism where definition and information have been substituted for the water of life.
When we consistently experience spiritual drought in our gatherings, it is not because God has deserted us. Perhaps our problem is that we have lost our thirst for Him. Then, if we rely on our own natural abilities, we actually come to not expect His dynamic presence in our midst. Our meetings may then be formally correct but radically missing the mark. The yardstick of spiritual orthodoxy is not primarily a matter of the mind, but of the heart. Spiritual indifference in individual hearts is the root cause of drought in Christian gatherings. If even just one believer would return to the Lord with all of his/her heart as individuals, the river of life would begin springing up within them and flowing out to others.
Of course, such a scenario makes some nervous. Why? When God arises afresh in the midst of His people, the status quo does not survive. Change has now come. New courses of direction must be faced. But those who have not fully responded to God’s call may not quickly appreciate what is happening. And tensions will surface. At this point, everyone faces decisions. Some who are newly excited about the Lord’s manifest presence will want to make sure they do not compromise what He is saying. On the other hand, others may be hearing truths they do not fully understand and simply do not know what action to take. The solution to this potentially explosive situation is God’s Spirit of wisdom.
So often when we gain new revelatory insight, we fail to wait for God’s wisdom concerning what to do. We tend to race forward with our new truth because it is so obvious to us. Should we not just share it with everyone? We forget that what is so obvious to us now was not that clear a short time ago. Consider the patience God had in bringing us to the point where we could even hear what was in His heart, much less commit ourselves to walk in it. When we forget how long it took God to get through to us, we tend to be impatient with others. To extend God’s kingdom, we must learn how to handle with wisdom the insights He gives to us.
To begin with, we need to know His timing for sharing with others. Notice Jesus’ words to His disciples.
I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
Jesus had a vast amount of truth to share with His followers, but the Father’s timing for Him to do so had not yet come. Nor were the disciples ready to hear. But when the day of Pentecost came, God filled them with the Spirit of truth and began to open His heart to them. Even Jesus (who was truth personified) had to submit to the Father’s discipline as to when to reveal Heaven’s truths. And Jesus used the same approach in training His followers.
As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.”
If our desire is to simply make our insights known to others, we will have no qualms about speaking whenever we want to. On the other hand, if our desire is to make Him known, then we will wait for His timing. Our primary goal is not to expound what we know but to do our Father’s will.
A second factor in how to speak is our heart attitude. We may possess truth and yet hurt people because we speak out of a wrong attitude such as malice, anger, or jealousy. Jesus not only expressed accurately what the Father wanted Him to say, He spoke in such a way that He revealed the Father’s heart.
And I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.
If judgment was the context of His Father’s words, Jesus conveyed that accurately. If the Father was expressing sorrow or compassion, our Lord wept as He spoke. Sometimes He wept as He delivered words of judgment as well (Luke 19:41 - 46). In Jesus, we find not only the truth of God, but wisdom and truth operating together. Jesus expressed the Father’s heart. Here is why He could say that the Kingdom of God was in their midst.
A third and final factor in our speaking concerns those to whom we are speaking. Correct timing and proper heart attitudes are irrelevant if we address the wrong people. Jesus was sent specifically to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Paul was sent as an apostle to the Gentiles. Peter, James, and John recognized Paul’s sphere yet saw themselves as sent to the Jews (Galatians 2:9). Today, we must know our sphere of service. The best of intentions will fail if we are not serving in the proper place.
May God’s Spirit of wisdom and revelation be poured upon us as we seek to know when and to whom we are to speak. And may we do so with a proper heart attitude.
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