When one-year-old Ayla Esler was able to hear for the very first time, she burst into a big smile, putting her hand to her ear and wiggling with glee.
She was born deaf, but a device called a cochlear implant, which stimulates the auditory nerve directly, enabled her to hear.
God still speaks to us today through His written Word, the Bible.
The Holy Spirit illuminates our understanding into the mind of Christ.
We read this in 1 Corinthians 2:9-16:
“but just as it is written, ‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.’ For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
God has prepared wonderful things for us who belong to Christ. All is revealed to us in His Word.
Only those who are saved have the Holy Spirit living in their human spirit.
He is there to teach and illuminate God’s Word to us.
He then empowers us to live His Word in our daily lives.
According to vs. 9, God has prepared wonderful things for us, but we cannot understand any of it through human means.
In vs. 10, we see the Holy Spirit alone is the one who has revealed them in His Word.
In vss. 12-13, we see that it is Holy Spirit that is also the one to teach us the Word.
The Spirit of God alone can grasp divine truths, and alone can interpret to us, whom He indwells, by illuminating our understanding of the things God has freely given to us through Christ.
Unbelievers do not have the ability to understand God’s Word because they are not indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
What a privilege we have!
The Word of God is actually the “mind of Christ.”
As we mature as believers, we learn to view life as Christ did, since we understand things from His perspective and have His attitude and viewpoint in all of life.
French scientists have succeeded in causing chickens to sound like quail.
Nancy Ross-Flannigan, writing for the Detroit Free Press, reports that researchers took tissue from parts of the Japanese quail brain thought to control the bird’s call and implanted it in the brains of five chicken embryos.
The experiment worked. Researchers say the hatched chicks sounded like quail rather than chickens.
When we were born again the mind of Christ was “implanted” in us through the Holy Spirit’s taking up residence in us.
We now have a capacity for divine wisdom that no Ph.D. degree or natural experience could ever provide.
Having the mind of Christ enables us to see life increasingly from God’s perspective.
May we allow the Holy Spirit to do this in our daily lives.