The Holy Spirit Helps Me Understand
March 16, 2020
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV
Everyone loved her. She was warm and friendly, and everyone loved to come to her home that usually smelled of something baking. Aunt Dolly was generally quiet, one of the last to speak in a group, but when she did, everyone listened. Her phone rang every day with someone in trouble calling for a word of encouragement and wise counsel. Every now and then someone would prompt a question that led her to share a bit of her history, and she would with laughter and earnestness tell of her “flubs” as a 13-year-old girl who took over being the woman and mother of the house when her father abandoned the family and her mother worked round the clock to keep a roof over their heads. She dropped out of school in 8th grade to meet the needs of her family.
Aunt Dolly is a conundrum to people who walk away from her feeling stronger, wiser, better. As George said, “My aunt Dolly gave me more direction and hope than my counselor I had seen for 18 months. In a few weeks of talking to her regularly, my perspective had changed, and I felt hope and purpose.” Aunt Dolly had an explanation: “Oh, that’s not me. That’s the precious Holy Spirit in me. I wouldn’t have had the wisdom to make it through my own life, let alone help you with yours, if my Sunday school teacher, the summer I was 14, had not shared with me what living filled with the Holy Spirit would do for me. When I surrendered to letting Him live through me, I think my IQ went up!” With a hearty chuckle, she shared that the biggest transformation she saw in her life from that time forward was a willingness and ability to see things from the Father’s perspective. “That’s how I’ve made it. That’s the Source of my strength and wisdom.”
That’s exactly how the spiritual life operates. True wisdom comes from the Spirit of God, not from degrees and education. You can get knowledge in that way. But true, godly wisdom is knowing how to handle knowledge, knowing why it matters, and seeing from a perspective that is beyond any knowledge. You only receive that from the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit gives wisdom you can’t receive any other way. A PhD is inferior in true wisdom to an eighth-grade dropout if that dropout is walking and living in the Spirit.
- Where does your perspective originate?
- Ask the Holy Spirit to help you receive His wisdom.