Enlightened Understanding
Dearly beloved, God reveals Himself to us through His written Word, the Scriptures. The Scriptures are His revelation, His revealing of Himself; they make known His will to us and they provide us with enlightened understanding.
“For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when you received the word of God which you heard of us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually works also in you that believe.” I Thessalonians 2:13
We must receive the truth of the Word of God from God if we are to know His will. If we are to know Him and what He makes available to us, we must know the Word of God from God.
Who gets the results the Word of God speaks of, effectual results? Those who take God at His Word as the Thessalonians did; it effectually works in people that believe it.
If we have the Word of God from God, we are standing in the presence of the One True and Living God. The Word of God from the Living God is the Living Word. One line from its pages can literally change your life forever as you believe it.
You need not perfect your life to gain a presence before the Living God; you need to receive His Word and believe it.
The Word of God from God is the ultimate authority concerning spiritual matters.
God does not want us to ignorant about spiritual matters. In the field of spiritual knowledge, the Word of God is the Will of God.
We ought to be vitally concerned with gaining enlightened understanding from the Word of God as the Living God revealed it. Enlightened understanding comes from God, not from our way of thinking, nor from our ideas about God, nor from our experiences.
From Genesis 3 forward, the old serpent, the devil, has attempted to convince man that his ideas, his reasonings, and his experiences are of greater value than God’s Word. He promised Eve enlightened understanding if she would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of obeying God’s voice. He said that her eyes would be opened, and they would be as gods, knowing good and evil. He was able to deceive her with his lies when she forsook the ultimate authority of the God’s Word; calamity resulted.
Dearly beloved, the Word of God will effectually work in us as we believe it, the same as it did for those in Thessalonica. God’s Word is from the Living God and He is able and willing to bring it to pass; He only asks that we believe that He will.
We cannot become adept at walking by the spirit of God by neglecting God’s instruction about it in the Word of God. The two go hand in hand; God did not set them at cross purposes. The profit of the one leads us to the profit of the other.
God has given us the measure of what we are to believe. He revealed the joyful message concerning Christ; He gave that revelation as the ground, the foundation for our believing with the intent that we might walk in the reality of his accomplishments.
Right believing comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. The believing that Romans 10:17 speaks of is the right believing concerning Christ and his accomplishments. The joyful message concerning Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes it.
Every word of God’s Word is profitable, and God will perform all of it. It will not return void; it will accomplish what He sent it to do. The enlightened understanding of one of His promises can literally change your life forever as you believe it, dearly beloved of God. You can stake your life on it; Christ did.