An excerpt of the Apostle Paul praying for the church at Ephesus:
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as
you come to know him...”
— Ephesians 1:17
(NRSV)
This verse above is part of a much longer sentence. For our purposes, however, I wanted to
isolate the part of Spiritual discernment here; the role of receiving God’s
holy revelation — the indwelling of holy wisdom for our going out and coming
home, in life.
The pervasiveness of Spiritual revelation is like a wind —
indeed, the Spirit is otherwise a wind.
It blows silently through the hearts and minds of genuine
believers. It’s beyond good conscience.
It’s hardly even a whisper and may not be viscerally felt. Yet,
the wind of the Spirit is ushered into our thoughts and feelings – it
transforms how we experience things and see things.
This wind is known in the moment of obedience. The Holy Spirit blesses us with knowledge of the Presence of God out of
compliance with the moral imperative of holiness. We
can only connect with God when we connect with our obedience of faith.
As we obey, we’re actively choosing for the wind of Holy Revelation.
Knowledge of it, as discerned by us, is made in the event of it, and
afterwards as we reflect, never beforehand.
In that is the execution of our faith — to trust this hushed wind.
This is truly what living is all about. There’s no God-blessed purpose to life without
it, though God frees us far beyond it because of love.
As Elijah heard God in the silence (1 Kings 19:11-18) so are we hearing the Lord in the realms of holy obedience.
If we should choose for it, the Spirit will lead us there; into
God’s Word and through prayer, prevailing and constant.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.
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