Steps to Becoming Word of God Ruled

Romans 12:1-2 (NKJV) ¹  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. ²  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

In our last post we talked about what it takes to be in a position to receive and rightly discern revealed knowledge .  We must become Word of God Ruled.  We have spent time pointing out the role that the written Word of God has in our ability to hear the voice of God and thereby, revealed knowledge.  We then looked at this scripture likening what Paul is talking about to the operating system of a computer.  The operating system, or OS, is how the computer thinks.  It rules how it accesses and uses all of the information available to it.  It also determines how the user must access the same information and make it useful in the real world.

To a degree, this is what Romans 12:1 is talking about.  We are changed inwardly at salvation.  Our past is washed away, our sins are forgiven, and we literally become a “new creation.”  All that is old passes away and everything in us becomes new.  We are born again as children of God.  All of the original potential that God placed in us is made available in a new way.  What does not change completely is how we were raised or the society that raised us.  We know things are new inside, but outwardly we still think and relate according to our “old sense and sin centered OS.”  That is why so many people who are born again have a difficult time living this new life.  They cannot access it because they are still ruled by the old OS.  Paul tells us here that if we change what rules our minds, we will be able to access a whole world of information and power we never knew existed. 

To renew the mind is to change how we think, not just what we think.  We all have two levels in our thinking.  There are things that we think on the surface.  We respond to stimuli; we assimilate information and points of view.  We process and use the education we have both formally and informally received.  However, all of this runs through a subconscious level made up of everything we have ever heard or experienced.  Everything that we learn from the Bible or from teaching of any kind must filter through all of that to get past our soul and connect with the new creation we are in our spirit, the innermost part of our being.  Anything, such as revealed knowledge that God communicates to our spirit must filter through our soul to become useful in our outward life.  The more our subconscious mind, what I believe the Bible calls the heart, is renewed by the Word of God, the more clear will be the flow from our senses through our minds to our spirit and vice versa. 

What can we do to cause the renewing of our minds?  The Bible gives us some steps that we can take to help us install our new OS.  First, Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.  We must hear the word.  We must take time to read the word.  We must receive teaching from the Word.  One of the 5-fold ministry gifts in Ephesians 5 is teacher.  God gives us teachers who can help open up the Bible to us in a way we can understand and use.  We must also meditate on the Word.  That is part of the process of really hearing.  There are many entries you can find from past posts on this blog that go into detail about meditation in the Word of God.  God told Joshua how to do that in Joshua 1:8.

Joshua 1:8 (NKJV) ⁸  This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Here we see that meditation in the word contains 3 basic elements.  We speak it to ourselves.  One of the definitions of meditate is to mutter.  We also think about it.  We dwell on what the words say.  We should include study in the process, so we understand the language used.  However, to meditate on it means to keep it in our hearts, picturing the action and asking ourselves how this truth could change our lives.  The final step is that we will do what the Word says.  The meditation will lead naturally to the doing.

Second, James 1:21 says we must receive the implanted word with meekness.  What is meekness?  Here the word means humility.  If we are going to become Word of God ruled, we must be willing to accept and acknowledge that the Word of God is always right and if we tend to want to rebel against it in any way, we must repent of that and simply believe what the Word of God says over what we may think.  This is especially important when we do not want to agree with what the Bible says.  Pride is when we are “I” centered.  We want to become Word of God centered so that we can both receive and understand the revealed knowledge God wants to make available to us.

Third, Hebrews 4:2 says we must believe the Word.  We must believe the truth of the Word even in the light of contradictory circumstances.  God created the physical realm through the Word of God, and it will respond to to that same Word.  We must often wait as the Word does what it needs to do in the natural, but we must accept that it is true even before we see it.  This does not just apply to contradictory circumstances but also to traditional thinking.  This saying has helped me when faced with the temptation to believe that the Word of God is not the highest truth in the universe.  “I am not moved by what I see, what I hear or what I feel.  I am moved by what I believe, and I believe the Word of God.

Fourth, James 1:22-25 says we must be doers of the Word.  There comes a point where we must be willing to do what the Word of God is telling us to do.  He uses the illustration of a person looking into a mirror.  If someone observes in a mirror that their hair is a mess, they need a shave or makeup and do nothing about it, the mirror does no good.  If we look into what James calls the perfect law of liberty and do not act on what we see, we deceive ourselves.  The perfect law of liberty is the Word of God revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

Finally, Psalm 119:89 says that God’s Word is forever settled in Heaven.  That is a fact.  There is a saying that says, “God said it, I believe it and that settles it!”  Some point out that God’s Word is settled whether we believe it or not.  That is very true.  Nevertheless, if I do not believe the Word above all other evidence, it will not be settled in me.  The word settle is akin to the word rest.  Faith is a rest, but that rest comes when the truth of the Word is settled in our hearts because we choose to believe it above everything else.

This is just a quick start guide, if you will, to becoming ruled by the Word of God.  Search the scriptures associated with what I am talking about beginning with the ones listed.  The more we hear the Word, receive the Word with humility, believe the Word as the highest truth, act on what the Word shows us and allow the word to be settled in our heart, the more we will become a channel for God’s revealed knowledge to flow into us.  That is the kind of knowledge we need to negotiate this complicated world.  That is also the knowledge our friends, family and community need to help them through.  When we begin to allow that knowledge to flow through us to them, we are going to find that we have something to tell them that will help in ways that nothing else can.  This is only part of the equation we need to change our world, but it is where we must begin. 

For Audio Messages Visit: https://anchor.fm/bill-kiefer or search Practical Wisdom from the Word of God or Bill Kiefer on Spotify or where you listen to podcasts.

A Word Ruled Christian Walks in Revealed Knowledge

Romans 12:1-2 (NKJV) ¹  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. ²  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

In our last post we studied the importance of the written Word of God as it pertains to receiving revealed knowledge.  We looked at the fact that the Bible never changes.  As such it is the standard by which anything we feel we may have heard from God is judged.  We also talked about the fact that the Bible is God’s voice.  The more we fill our hearts with his Word, the more clearly we will be able to hear his voice. 

If I am filled with God’s written Word, I become a channel for his revealed knowledge.  I will be far less likely to be deceived into thinking something is from God when it is not.  I will be more likely to correctly judge and interpret what God speaks to me, because I know what he would and would not say.  I will be better able to judge what I hear by the principles contained in the Bible because I have spent the time in it to understand them.  One way to look at this is that we must become Word of God ruled.

Today’s scripture is one of the most important we can learn as believers.  Paul is giving us insight into what it means to be Word of God ruled and the kind of life it will produce.  Paul says that we must be transformed from conformity to this world into conformity with the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.  2 Corinthians 5 tells us that when we are born again, we are a new creature.  Paul says that old things pass away, and all things become new.  This is true in our spirit.  At that moment we are changed inwardly.  However, we remain in the same body.  We still have a soul consisting of our intellect, will and emotions which has been trained by the world around us and everything that has happened to us in it.  For complete transformation on every level of our being, we need something more. 

What produces this transformation?  Paul reveals two things here.  We must be willing to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God.  Let me point out that dead sacrifices are no use to him.  To fulfill this scripture, we must be living sacrifices.  We must be in the world, interacting with the world, ministering to people as both the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  To me this sounds very much like what Jesus prayed in John 17.  We must be willing to be supernatural people in the natural world.  We must commit to present our bodies, our physical life if you will, to that end.  Second, we must renew our minds.  Today we might say it this way.  We need to reprogram our minds. 

There are two main computer operating systems in the world today.  One is the Apple operating system, and the other is the Microsoft system run on PC style computers.  They both do the same basic job.  They allow the information stored on a computer or the internet to be accessed and manipulated so that it can be used in myriad ways.  Without one of these operating systems, the information and power available through computing would be useless. 

In the same way, there are two operating systems by which we can access and interact with the world around us.  One is based in the world.  It is influenced by the nature of Satan that gained control in the fall of man.  Everything that we access with that operating system, or OS, is influenced by that system.  When we use this OS, we will interpret everything according to the one who created it.  In a very real way, a computer is ruled by its operating system.

The second OS is based in God.  Everything that we access through that OS will be influenced by his grace, faith and love.  We will see things as God intends us to see them.  We will interpret what we experience as God intended us to, and we will access the power that he has made available to us instead of the limited understanding offered by the worldly OS created by the fall of man in the garden of Eden. 

In the computer world the Apple OS and the Microsoft OS are not compatible.  They do not speak the same language.  They both do the same job but in different ways.  There is no way for and Apple computer and a PC to relate to one another.  If you decide you want to switch, you have to buy a different computer with different programming.  You must learn how the new system works.  The commands are different.  The layout is different.  How they access information and how their programs work are different on the new system.  If you try to use an Apple computer like it is a PC, you will be confused and vice versa.  The same is true once we are born again.  We become a new creature.  It is as though we became a different type of computer, but we still try to use the old OS.  It will never work correctly.

If we are born again, we became something different.  Unlike the computers in the illustration, our minds and our bodies can still use the old OS.  However, if we do, we will not be able to access the fullness of what the New Creation in Christ has to offer.  The old OS cannot handle how the New Creation is supposed to work.  What must we do?  We must reprogram our OS to reflect what we become in Christ.  We must renew our minds so that it will be in sync with what happened to us.  When that happens, we will not be conformed any longer to this world, but we will be transformed so that we will be able to walk in the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.

How can we renew our minds?  We must fill our old computer with the new OS.  We must reprogram it so that it responds according to what we are in Christ, not what we were before.  We must change how we think, not just what we think.  The OS of the computer is how it thinks.  We must renew, reprogram, our minds to think like God thinks and not like the satanically influenced world thinks.  We can begin to understand this if we look at how Jesus thought verses how the world of his day thought

Jesus did not look at disease as incurable.  He saw disease through the eyes of the creator.  When confronted with it, he healed it.  Can we even picture Jesus with a cold.  I cannot.  His OS did not work that way.  In Mathew 6, Jesus spoke about the necessities of life.  He did not see them as something that we had to strive for and worry about.  He saw them as something that our heavenly Father knows we need and, to him, it was obvious that he would take care of them.  He did not see sin as pleasure but as a toxic infection that produced bad things in people’s lives.  He did not see holiness as some kind of legal restriction on life but as a channel for the power, purity and goodness of God to flow through us.  He saw through a different OS and he automatically lived accordingly.

How can we reprogram our OS?  We do it by the written Word of God.  That is what it means in Hebrews 4:12 when it says the Word of God is a living thing.  It has the ability to reprogram our default thinking to conform to the OS that was made available to us in the new birth.  We become “Word ruled” people instead of world ruled people.  Just as the OS of a computer is what rules it and determines how it sees and uses information, our OS will determine if we are limited to what the world has to offer or enable us to  reach beyond that to what God has made available to us.  We live in a world ruled by the worldly OS.  To be transformed, we must allow the Word ruled OS to take control.  When that happens, revealed knowledge becomes one of the defaults that we will be able to live by as we relate to and work within this world.  We will unlock the supernatural within us to both live in victory and to rescue others from a sin dominated world.

For Audio Messages Visit: https://anchor.fm/bill-kiefer or search Practical Wisdom from the Word of God or Bill Kiefer on Spotify or where you listen to podcasts.

The Written Word of God and Revealed Knowledge

2 Peter 1:19 (KJV) ¹⁹  We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

We have been looking at the process called revelation or revealed knowledge.  This is knowledge that can come to a believer independent of his or her senses.  Active relationship is how we  receive this kind of knowledge.  Paul had more of it than anyone who lived outside of Jesus himself.  We looked at the keys in his life that produces the kind of relationship that lent itself to the ready flow of revealed knowledge.  We find them in Philippians 3:8-16. 

I have said in past posts that there are two things God has given us to make this whole process possible.  Ephesians 1:17 tells us that God has given us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.  Jesus said in the end of John’s Gospel that he was sending a “comforter” or helper who would lead us into understanding of all Jesus taught.  The Holy Spirit has been given to lead us into revealed knowledge.  Without his active participation in our lives, we will never really be able to discern the knowledge that God wants to show us.  However, the process does not begin with the Holy Spirit.  It must begin with the written Word of God.

In today’s verse, Peter speaks of a more sure word of prophecy.  I chose the King James version because I like this term.  Although we do not really use it anymore, I feel it best states what Peter is saying.  The thing he is talking about is the written Word of God.  It is more sure than any other revealed knowledge that we can receive.  This is because it is written down for us.  We do not have to discern between the voice of our own mind and the voice of God.  We do not have to rely on others interpretation of what it says.  That does not mean we do not need teachers to help us understand, but the written Bible says what it says.  We need to be sure of the translation we are reading, I think it is safer to use translations that have been accepted over a long period of time as our primary Bible.  Nevertheless, the fact that we have a written account which does not change makes the Bible our “more sure” standard for everything we believe to be revealed to us by God.

Even with all the different translations, the Bible stays essentially the same.  There can be issues in translations from language to language, but the Bible is still the Bible.  It has been the Bible for thousands of years.  It says the same thing today as it did when I was a 14-year-old boy who had just received Jesus as Lord.  It says the same thing in the United States as it does in Kenya, India, Greece or any of the other 40 plus countries to which I have traveled.  Paul tells timothy that he must through study “rightly divide” the Word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15.)  That tells us that the inaccuracies in Bible teaching are primarily due to interpretation and understanding.  The Bible itself says what it has always said.  In this way it is “more sure” than any other form of revelation. 

Since the Bible is revealed knowledge that never changes and that we can read at any time no matter where we are in life, it becomes the standard by which all other forms of revelation must be judged.  I may give or receive a word of Prophecy.  I may believe it comes from God, but I must judge it against the written Word.  If it should in any way be contrary to the principles of the written code, I must reject it as being from God.  No revealed knowledge goes against the Biblical standard.  I may believe I have heard information from God about something in my life or the life of another.  If it cannot pass the Bible test, I must not accept it as revealed knowledge.  That is why God will only speak to us in proportion to how much we know the written Word of God.  The more full our hearts are with the Bible, the less likely we are to make the mistake of thinking we have heard from God when we have not.

The first reason this is true is the simple test of biblical principle to determine God’s voice.  For a somewhat silly example, there was a church I have heard about in which it seemed that many of the couples decided they had married the wrong person.  They said that God told them to divorce their husband or wife so they could marry the “right” one.  They were not operating in revealed knowledge because the Bible consistently shows divorce as a negative thing.  According to Jesus, it was allowed because of the hardness of their hearts.  In Genesis God says that a man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.  In Matthew 19:6, Jesus said what God had joined, no man can separate.  What these misguided people heard was not “revealed to them” by our Father in heaven (Matthew 16:17.)

The second reason the written Word of God is so important is related to my experience with my wife.  I have pointed out how I grew to know her voice.  I know the sound of it, but I also know the way she speaks and the nature of her character.  I know how she thinks and what she will or will not say.  By extension, I know what she will or will not do.  All of this is tied to the fact that I have spent so many hours over 55 years listening to her, observing her and talking to her.  If I could do the same with the Lord, I would have the same intimate knowledge of his voice that I do with my wife’s.  There is a problem with that though.  He is not physically here.  I cannot sit and speak with him like I do with my wife.  When I do hear his voice, it comes through my own mind.  How can I begin to bridge that gap?  The answer begins with the written Word of God.

I do believe that God speaks to believers through his Spirit.  The question is how do I become familiar enough with his voice that I can separate it from my own inner voice.  In the written Word he has given us the principles by which we are to live.  Anything we may hear that does not agree in principle with the Bible is not the voice of God.  However, he has given us much more than just the information we find in the Word.  He has filled it with his voice.  The more I read and meditate on the Word of God, the more I am spending time with his voice.  Just as the hours spent in fellowship and communication with my wife has produced a level of understanding that I have with no one else, the hours and fellowship I have spent reading God’s thoughts have revealed to me something deeper than principles.  They have enabled me to become familiar with his voice.

I talked about this in previous posts, but I want to emphasize the role that the Bible has in this process.  If I never read his Word, I will never clearly recognize his voice.  The written Bible is the link between my natural life and the supernatural God I serve.  If I know the Word intimately, I know God’s voice intimately.  I have heard it.  I have heard how he speaks.  I have grown intimate with his character.  I have grown intimate with what he will and will not say.  I know how he expresses his pleasure with me, and I know how he chastens me.  I have grown intimate with how he says what he wants to say.  Let me share a scripture from the Amplified Bible that I believe clearly shows what the Word of God is and how it enables us to know God’s voice more fully

Hebrews 4:12 (AMP) ¹²  For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.

If the written word is all those things and can do all those things, we can see why it is so important for us to become intimate with the Bible if I want to become intimate with God’s voice.

The more I fill my heart and mind with his written Word, the better I know Him.  The better I know Him, the more clearly I can discern his voice.  The more clearly I can discern his voice, the more he can trust me to understand what he is saying to me and the channel for him to convey revealed knowledge becomes clearer and more sure.  It is not just the written Word that is important, but it is there that process must begin. 

For Audio Messages Visit: https://anchor.fm/bill-kiefer or search Practical Wisdom from the Word of God or Bill Kiefer on Spotify or where you listen to podcasts.

What Will We do for Revealed Knowledge

Philippians 3:8-11 (NKJV) ⁸  Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹  and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; ¹⁰  that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, ¹¹  if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

We have been studying the two kinds of knowledge or information available to the believer.  One type comes through our senses.  The second is knowledge that is revealed to us by God.  As we grow in our Christian life it is vital that we understand and access the knowledge God wants to reveal to us.  This knowledge can be a deeper understanding of the Word of God.  It can be knowledge about who God is and who we are in Christ.  These are many areas in which  revealed knowledge from God will help us. 

In our last post we talked about developing our ability to receive and walk in this “inside out” knowledge.  The most important key to this whole process is quite simply relationship.  The deeper our relationship with God, the more freely revealed knowledge will flow in our lives.  I illustrated this by using my marriage as an example.  Between the 5 years we “went steady” and were engaged and the 50 years of marriage we will celebrate in August of this year, we have gone from complete strangers to people who know each other completely.  That is what you and I need to have with the Lord.

How did I develop that with my wife?  I made a commitment to her first.  We backed up our commitment with effort.  We did go through some times of misunderstanding early on.  We worked at finding out why and corrected the problem.  Each time we did, it strengthened our commitment and our relationship.  It also took spending time together.  I know couples who have been married many years but they both had jobs and developed separate interests.  They never spent time together, so they really did not know one another.  Such a marriage will not last. 

If we are going to know God well enough to discern the knowledge he wants to share with us, we must understand that we need this kind of relationship with him as well.  That comes in the same way my relationship with my wife did.  It comes through commitment, time together and communication.  It is by committing to cultivate this kind of relationship that you will be able to hear and see what God wants to show you.  The amount and level of revealed knowledge you walk in will be directly proportionate to how well you know him.  Paul walked in more revelation knowledge than anyone since Jesus.  In 2 Corinthain 12 he says that there was one who was taken to the third heaven and shown things he was not allowed to speak about.  Todays scripture shows Paul’s heart of commitment to know God.

First, he says that he counts all things as loss compared to knowing Christ Jesus.  The New Living Translation says that “everything else is worthless compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ.”  That speaks of the commitment Paul had to his relationship with knowing his Lord.  What value do you and I place on this relationship?  Do not allow the devil to cause you to look at Paul or anyone else and condemn you.  You are who you are and you are where you are in your life and commitment to relationship with Jesus.  However, do not be afraid of God’s conviction either.  He is only letting you know that there is more for you, and He will help you along the way. 

If we are not willing to admit our need, how can we ever grow?  The Spirit of God is within you and his Word is available to you.  You may not feel a driving commitment to relationship with the Lord but ask him to help you develop one.  I am not talking about our commitment to serve God.  I am not talking about our commitment to continue to live as Christians or attend church.  I am talking about our commitment to grow and develop our active relationship with Jesus. 

The first thing Paul says is that he had decided to make developing this relationship the most important thing in life.  I know that our lives are complicated.  We have families, work and many other responsibilities.  We are inundated with the availability and perceived need of recreation and distraction.  This is something we must do by faith and not feeling.  We must believe that God is there, and he will bring us along.  That cannot happen if we do not make a commitment based on decision and faith instead of feeling. 

Paul’s next statement is extreme to our ears.  The NLT says this in a way we can relate to.  “For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.”  I doubt many of us have discarded everything in our lives so we can better know Jesus.  I know I have not.  Nevertheless, we can use this as a gage to determine where we are and what we might need to do to improve. 

There are necessities of life that cannot be avoided.  There are also things we want to do and like to do that are optional.  Paul chose to eliminate all of those things.  If we try to do that, we will fail.  We cannot go from being consumed with the “stuff” of modern life to what Paul is talking about immediately.  The truth is we will likely never get there.  What we can do is say, “Lord, I see what Paul says and I want to know you like he did.  I just don’t think I can do that.  I ask you to help me see what I can do.”  As you start from where you are, take steps to minimize the unnecessary entanglements of the world and replace them with more time with the Lord.

The point of this is that we may “gain Christ.”  The NLT says that “I might become one with him.”  That must be our goal.  Paul adds something in verse 9 that can make all the difference if we let it.  Paul is not right with God by doing anything in himself.  He is  right with God because of what Jesus did and because of his relationship with him.  We often try to do the right things for the wrong reasons.  I am talking about building relationship.  You cannot do that if you do not have relationship.  I married by wife on August 5, 1972.  At that moment, I was her husband, and she was my wife.  For the last 50 years we have been building that relationship.  If we were not married, we could not do that.  If you do not already have relationship with Jesus, you cannot build and strengthen it. 

You are righteous, right with God, already if you are born again.  You do not have to spend time in the Word, in prayer and in fellowship with him to obtain relationship.  You already have one because of what Jesus did to provide redemption.  Nevertheless, doing those things will deepen and strengthen that relationship.  Just as building life together does not make you married, building your relationship with the Lord does not make you saved.  It does, however, make the benefits of relationship, including revealed knowledge, more accessible, powerful and just better in every way.  .

Finally, verse 10 tells us that Paul wanted to experience the power that was released in Jesus’ resurrection.  That power is not limited to raising dead bodies.  It is available to raise us up to a better life.  It is available to help us extend the relationship we have in Christ to those around us.  We must be willing to enter into his suffering.  That is not the suffering of his death burial and resurrection.  We cannot experience that, nor should we try.  It is to enter into the suffering of his rejection by the world.  It is to enter into the suffering of laying down our flesh so we may give more priority to knowing him.  The result is that we will experience the power of this “resurrection” life now and in the endless future.  Part of that package is to know things that we cannot know by our senses as we live in harmony with God and his ways.

For Audio Messages Visit: https://anchor.fm/bill-kiefer or search Practical Wisdom from the Word of God or Bill Kiefer on Spotify or where you listen to podcasts.