I will give attention to proper spiritual education. I will realize that a liberal arts education, while fine in itself, is of no value to me in seeking the secret things of the Most High. Man by his reason did not find God, says Paul. The gospel is foolish to the learned man; spiritual things are so much spinach also. Only God can teach spiritual lessons to His children, and those lessons are learned by the inner working of the Holy Spirit. To depend upon such things as reason, investigation, research, analysis, and comparison to learn God’s ways is folly. A moment of the Holy Spirit’s illumination will reveal what man can never discover by the natural tools of learning.
Reading the Bible, therefore, is a spiritual exercise, as much a part of the heart as the head; as much to do with character as brain. Bible study is the total person coming into alignment with the Holy Spirit, not a separatistc brain figuring out the problems of the text. Man cries for understanding, but there is no understanding apart from illumination, and no illumination apart from the Spirit. When He reveals truth, the Bible becomes amazingly relevant, not distant and historic. He makes the Bible a now thing, its message as pertinent as if my problem just now came to heaven’s attention. I see myself there in that Book, my problem as clearly identified as if God wrote it purposely into the Bible for my benefit, and the answer as personal as a direct word from Him.
Jeremiah saw the spiritual meaning of God’s word: “Thy words were found and I ate them, and Thy words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16). When the Bible is my food, joy, and delight, it means I have gone past the intellectual to the spiritual comprehension of the Bible and have encountered a living Person.
“For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
Daily with the King 