08-08-24-DAILY READING-ENG.

EXPERIENCING THE SPIRIT

                             REVEALING THE UNKNOWABLE 

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. — 1 CORINTHIANS 2:9–10  

The person who does not know the Holy Spirit of God does not know God. It's that simple. It's true that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to provide eternal salvation and that, through His death and resurrection, we have victory over sin and new life in Christ. But apart from the Holy Spirit, God's great salvation is of no relevance to us. Apart from the active work of the Spirit in our lives, we would neither know God nor have the ability to respond to Him. Divine truth is not something we “discover;” it is revealed by the Holy Spirit of God. As such, no other reality in the Christian life is as important as being filled with the Spirit. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is distinctive to the Christian faith.

 No other religion has anything like it. What believers in Jesus Christ have come to know and experience through His gift of the Spirit brings them into a relationship with God that's inaccessible in all other religions of the world. For just as God did not create the world and then step back and watch it spin, but chose to enter time and space and interact with His people, so also God did not just deliver a set of laws for us to follow in the hope of earning our way to heaven. Instead He chose to enter a relationship with His people on earth through His indwelling Spirit. 

TRAPPED IN ATTIC DARKNESS
When I (Mel) was sixteen years old, I had a summer job as a laborer on a construction crew. My boss was a small contractor who built homes, but he also renovated older homes. One day he sent me to an old house to install pink Fiberglass insulation in the attic. The outdoor temperature that day reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit, so you can imagine how hot it was in that dusty old attic. I felt like I was working in a convection oven. It was a nasty job. As I shone my flashlight around the attic, I saw a cloud of Fiberglass particles floating through the air. All day long I worked in that dark and dusty deathtrap. It was one of those labor jobs that encouraged me to later go back to school and get an education. That night I was exhausted when my head hit the pillow.

I guess the day's work had had an impact on me, because I had a nightmare about being trapped in the attic. I got up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat—yet I wasn't fully awake. I started to panic, thinking I was still in the attic and couldn't find my way out. I scrambled frantically around the room looking for the attic's crawl-out door and nearly destroyed my room in the process. I threw my dresser across the room and pulled down bookshelves. I was lost in the closet when suddenly a light shone through the crack under my door. “Mel?” It was my mother's voice. “Is everything okay?” Seeing the light, I got my bearings and knew exactly where I was and the reality of my situation. It was just a dream!

My mom opened the door and saw my demolition work. “What's going on?” she questioned. “Oh, it's nothing… Just got a little disoriented.” I'd been in a nightmare I couldn't escape—trapped in darkness and unable to perceive reality—until the light was turned on. Only when a little light shone under the door did my situation become clear to me. In the same way, unless the Holy Spirit turns the light on, your life will be kept in complete darkness, disoriented to the things of God. There's absolutely nothing you can do to find the light; you're at the complete mercy of God to reveal it. All you can perceive is what you see and experience in the physical world, but there's a spiritual reality to which you're blind.