Message: In 2 Corinthians 2 Paul continued speaking about wisdom and the difference between the wisdom coming from the Holy Spirit and what comes from man. He explained that those who are not saved and hearing the Holy Spirit are incapable of understanding the wisdom of God. At one point he commented that if man could understand the wisdom of God’s plan, they wouldn’t have crucified Jesus. This statement took me back to when Jesus was telling his disciples that he would have to die. Peter rejected this statement and Jesus instantly corrected him by saying “Get behind me Satan: For you are a stumbling block to me. For your thoughts are not the thoughts of God but the thoughts of men.” At this point in time they did not have the Holy Spirit in them yet. Salvation came after Jesus was crucified and rose, and shortly after they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. This is very important to understand because the Holy Spirit is the one who teaches us and gives us understanding to the mysteries Paul was talking about here. Apart from the Holy Spirit we are unable to understand the significance of what we read in the bible each day. He is our teacher and the revealer of truth. He gives us discernment to understand things on a deeper level. Without Him we are left with our fleshly thoughts that don’t align with God’s plan. Another thing that I thought about while reading this was the importance of laying aside our emotions and asking the Holy Spirit to show us what we need to see. Yesterday I was thinking about how easy it is as Christians to get entangled with our emotions and our own man derived ideas. If we don’t ask God to test and purify every thought, desire and emotion we can actually believe we are speaking the will of God. I have heard Christians prophesy election results and endorse candidates or situations in the name of Jesus, and I wonder to myself how this happens. This happens because we are flesh, and we think fleshly thoughts. If we don’t lay every one of our thoughts and ideas on the altar, we will run away with ideas that we believe God gave us simply because our own reasoning and logic came to that conclusion based on small bits of information or our own personal biases. This is SO dangerous! God’s thoughts are so much bigger than ours and God sees things that are not on our radar. Peter’s thought didn’t seem evil at the time (and honestly even now). He had NO idea that God planned the crucifixion of Jesus in order to save the world. He just didn’t want his friend to die. Doesn’t that sound reasonable? Doesn’t that make sense to the human mind? But he was so wrong that Jesus openly rebuked Satan for the influence of his thoughts. This should cause us all to search our own thoughts and ideas. We ALL have the potential to be like Peter and we need the Holy Spirit to search our thoughts, emotions, reasoning and our personal biases. God will share his wisdom with us if we ask him to, but we have to crucify our pride by laying down our thoughts and asking the Holy Spirit to filter them. This means we have to be open and prepared for Him to tell us where we are wrong. Today, my challenge is to ask God to look at my own ideas, thoughts, emotions and biases and show me what needs to go.
