“The mind, governed by the flesh, is hostile to God…” Romans 8:7
How could Moses part the Red Sea? Why did marching around Jericho bring the walls crashing down?
How did Jesus cure blindness by spitting on the eyes of a blind man?
“God is a Spirit…” John 4:24.
Still, we try figuring out God with our thinker.
But our mind has been corrupted by the things of this world.
So how can we understand God through that polluted filter?
Imagine the crippled man by the pool.
Jesus came to him and told him: “Rise, take up your bed, and walk.”
If the man was logical at all, he would have said: “are you kidding me? Are you dumb? Um, I don’t know if you have eyes, but I’m crippled. I can’t just get up and walk.”
And chances are good, he would have been right. He wouldn’t have been able to get up and walk.
But the man by the pool didn’t say that.
Instead, of course, he responded in that moment and did something ludicrous.
He heard the word of the Lord, and he obeyed. Because he chose to respond, God’s miraculous power was released in his life, and that man walked!
That same battle goes on today.
That wasn’t just an old story in an ancient book that they talk about in church.
Can you hear what God is speaking today?
We are often too carnally minded, too earthly minded, too temporarily minded, that we often can’t hear what God says.
Our brain has a bad habit of canceling God.
That’s because our brain responds to the “sense” realm.
But in that sense realm, satan quietly tried convincing Naaman, the Syrian dying from cancer, to refuse the word of the Lord. It made no sense to wash in the muddy Jordan River.
Many times in the Bible and today, people missed God by leaning to their own understanding.
It’s a major problem when it comes to finding God.
One of our biggest issues is between our own ears.
I have these testimonies of encountering God.
Ten years old, waiting for Dad to bid on a woodstove at local auction.
Mom had us younger kids wait in the van.
Mom led us in prayer as we waited for Dad, praying to get the wood stove.
“It’ll be between $70 and $80,” I prophesied after lifting my head from that prayer. Dad later bought it for $75.
Seventeen years old, asking God to tell me which fair to sell my wares at. I had to sign up months in advance.
God responded, and I had a clear direction. So I sold at the 150th anniversary of the one fair with beautiful weather and my best sales ever.
The other fair?
It got wiped off the face of the earth by leftover high winds that marched up from Hurricane Katrina down south. (This is back east, where I grew up.)
32 years old, God told me to wash the feet of a fellow Christian. I obeyed, and it changed his life–and mine.
Do you know what all three of those things had in common?
NONE of them came from my natural mind.
Don’t get me wrong, the brain is useful in its proper place. It’s helped me navigate a busy street, understand algebra, and beat a friend in Scrabble.
Well and good.
But when I start to understand God with my unrenewed mind, I’ve got a mess on my hands.
That unrenewed mind hesitates, stammers, doubts, second-guesses itself, and questions God.
Zacharias in the temple, was visited by an angel.
An angel! Think of that! A totally supernatural being!
The angel tells Zacharias: “Fear not, your prayers is heard. Your wife Elisabeth shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you shall have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth.
“For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.
“And he shall go forth in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the father to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make a people prepared for the Lord.”
Zacharias yearned for a child. In short: best news ever.
But what did Zacharias do?
He thought about it.
He used that part of him that was carnal, focused on the temporal, not focused on God.
So he asked this supernatural being: “Are you sure? I mean, I’m no spring chicken. My wife is over the hill, too.”
So the angel told him:
“I’m Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God. I was sent to speak to you and to show you these glad tidings…
“You shall not be able to speak until that day these things shall be performed, because you don’t believe my words.”
That’s been mildly paraphrased from Luke 1:13-20.
Zacharias, in the presence of the divine, used his carnal.
I’ve done the same thing many times.
Years ago, I had a dream.
A group of preteens came to me, excited to tell me about a race of men who could fly with the eagles.
They convinced me to try it out, climbing to top of a garage to offer myself up to these supernaturally giant birds.
I was merely humoring their child-like request. That is, until a huge golden eagle appeared above me, nearly blotting out the sky.
In my mind’s eye, I can still see the thousands of tiny feathers on the underside of his wings.
I freaked out.
I nearly leapt off the roof to get away.
When I woke up from the dream, God spoke to me:
“You do the same thing with Me.
“I want to come, to take you away, to carry you to places you cannot go on your own. But when you come to that place of surrender, you think about it instead of responding. And My Spirit cannot abide with you. You won’t let it.”
Like doubting Thomas, I question it.
It’s a major stumbling-block in the human race.
Is God really real? Does He actually move? Shouldn’t we sort this out?
But the Bible says you must believe. (Hebrew 11:6)
Not think. Not wonder.
Believe.
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