A Renewed Spiritual Intellect

You can have a developed intellect, but not a renewed mind. The opposite is also true.

I have talked with kind and wonderful people in the Church who have never allowed their intellect to be developed. They parked on the first step of revelation thinking it was a destination. Some rally around this misunderstanding thinking it is somehow spiritual and that anyone outside their limited understanding is suspect. 

I have met highly developed intellects possessed by notable academics who think their accumulated and shared data is the final destination of developed thinking.  This narrow understanding limits them from receiving instruction from those they see as living on a lower rung of intellectual development.

We actually need both ends of the spectrum. This is not an either-or scenario. This is why Paul used the phrase, “the renewing of your mind” when he wrote to the Romans. Paul linked the renewing of our minds to our ability to be transformed while living in a world that demands conformity in thought and lifestyle. No matter where one falls on the intellectual graph, we need our minds renewed and our intellects developed.

This is why I think God chose Paul to write so much of the New Testament. In Paul, God gave us the extreme bookends in the issue. Paul was highly educated – the equivalent of a modern day Ph.D. On the road to Damascus, he was taken past the limits of his intellect when he experienced a supernatural encounter with Jesus. In that encounter, Paul's intellect was temporarily blinded so he could see Jesus. He would later write about things not available to the limited line of sight of his advanced education. These were the experiences where he described the Third Heaven, strange manifestations of the miraculous like placing handkerchiefs on sick and demon possessed people who were suddenly healed and set free or when he shook a poisonous snake from his hand on the island of Malta and lived to tell about it.

While all of this was going on with Paul a band of early disciples stood before the well-educated class of their day. When the elites interrogated the band of rag-tag disciples they commented, “ Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.” Both Paul and the disciples had an encounter with Jesus. That was a mutually shared starting point for the renewal of their minds and the process of personal transformation.

The coming revival, reformation or visitation – no matter how you chose to define it – will begin like it did throughout Scripture and history. An encounter with Jesus will take place that will cause us to think differently about our assumptions.  Our assumptions are created by either our misunderstanding of what it means to have a renewed mind or by an over-estimated value of education without the renewing presence of God’s Spirit. We need both if we are going to move forward as the Church.

Incite or Insight

As tension grows in our culture unresolved issues will incite people to greater levels of dishonor and violence. At the same time, God will give insight to His people releasing greater levels of revelation that offer solutions and direction not available to those controlled by fear and a lack of self-control. 

Allow God to speak through you fresh insight sourced in His truth and you will be positioned to act as an agent of change in a process of Spirit-empowered cultural transformation. This is an insightful moment in our history. Those who see will lead.

"Words That Gather Life" by Garris Elkins

When a believer prays with the authority and power of Jesus Christ, our prayers have the ability to change the environment into which we are praying. Because we are God's children we carry a creative familial voice that can replicate the sound of our Father's voice.

On the day of Creation God spoke into the void, His voice was the assembly point for the elements to come and form the earth we walk upon. His Word gathers and gives form to what was previously formless.

For example, when we speak a prayer into the life of a child whose life is in disarray, our prayers provide an assembly point for God's Truth to begin to work against the embedded lies of hell. Many parents fail to recognize that none of their prayers for their children pass through the child. Our prayers take up residence in a child's life and begin to work in concert with the Holy Spirit.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue can bring death or life.” What we say or pray will gather the elements of a life or situation around it for either life or death. There are huge consequences to our words and prayers.

In one season of my life I was under tremendous pressure. This pressure was the kind that comes just before supernatural breakthrough. In these times our lives can feel extremely fragmented. Into this fragmentation God whispers truth that we have an opportunity to respond to.

In this particular time of testing I had began to speak words that contained no faith. I was speaking out of my pain and sorrow. I would have been embarrassed for anyone, other than my wife, to hear what I was saying. As this season went on I knew I needed to stand against the words that were coming out of my heart and finding expression through my mouth. I confessed my sin and my lack of faith then the Lord gave me a picture of what He was doing.

In this image I saw the Lord standing behind me. As I began to speak those lifeless words I saw Him swing a large shield around in front of me while He still stood behind me. The shield was placed between my mouth and my circumstance. The words coming out of my mouth struck the back of the Lord's shield and could not go any farther.

While looking at this image I realized what was taking place. The Lord, by an act of great mercy and grace, was shielding my life from the words of death I had spoken. I learned that day that the shield of the Lord has two functions. He was protecting me until I understood fully what I was doing and He was also protecting my future. I realized that God would not do this forever. He was giving me a chance to go to the root of my pain and put it to death through confession and repentance. I thanked Him for His patience with me and began immediately to filter my words to resemble God's heart, not my pain. My words had now become assembly points for the blessing of God instead of a self-created destiny of fear and death.