Spiritual understanding – Part 2

Luke 24:32-45 “And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?" … (45) And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.”

The scripture quoted above, clearly illustrates the point that our spirits are only fed with what our minds understand. The context of this portion of scripture, is that our Lord Jesus had appeared to two of His disciples after He was raised from the dead and walked with them on the road to Emmaus, and while He walked with them, He had taught them the word of God. When the disciples said that He opened the scriptures to them, they were referring to our Lord opening their understanding to God’s word. For later that evening when our Lord appeared to the disciples in the inner room, that’s exactly what He did. The very important point that I want you to see though, is that their spirits only began to burn, when they began to understand God’s word. In other words, it was the word of God which they understood with their minds, that went down into their spirits and affected their spirits. And so, we see clearly from scripture, that our spiritual growth is directly linked to the renewing of our minds as we transition from carnal thinking to spiritual thinking.

Colossians 1:9 “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”

So how do we get spiritual understanding? In the passage of scripture quoted above, the apostle Paul prayed for the church at Colossi, to be filled with spiritual understanding. As we saw earlier, it is only God who gives us spiritual understanding of His word. And so, when it comes to the renewing of our minds to the word of God, the very first thing that we are to do, is to pray as Paul prayed, and ask the Lord to give us spiritual understanding of His word.

Ephesians 1:15-18 “Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, (16) do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: (17) that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, (18) the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”

In the passage of scripture quoted above, we see once again that the apostle Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus, to have spiritual understanding of God’s word, for he prayed that the eyes of their understanding would be enlightened. The one apostle who received more revelation knowledge than any other, was the apostle Paul, and clearly the Holy Spirit had taught Paul to pray for that revelation. If the Lord’s anointed apostle could only receive revelation knowledge of the word of God through prayer, then we are no different. We too will have to pray and ask the Lord to give us spiritual understanding of His word, for it is only when we receive spiritual understanding of the word of God, that our spirits will begin to grow to reach the full potential that God always intended. For our spirits can only be fed with that which our minds understand.

Michael E.B. Maher