There is a kind of faith that rides on imagination. You see, the highest purpose of the mind, is to aid the spirit. A renewed mind accepts the logic of the impossible because it has been induced by God’s Word to raise antennas which can transmit and receive heavenly signals. That acceptance is called Faith.
This is the value of education and scholarship: to expand the mind such that one drop of divine electricity in the spirit can give God a real opportunity to make a difference in this world. There is a world of the spirit, and there is the world of the mind. Just like a step down transformer would take the ultra-high electric tension and make it just right for household appliances.
So also is the renewed mind. Like a transformer.
Take for instance the centurion, he was able to understand that Jesus could speak a word of healing from anywhere, and did not need to come to his house personally. This he knew because he was a man under authority, a man who had a hundred soldiers under him. Although there are a lot of faithless centurions, someone who has never led a disciplined unit or formation wouldn’t have known it like that. Most required a physical touch from the physically present Lord. This man by virtue of his expanded mind from his operational experiences, said ‘You could speak from there, and my servant would be healed.’
Leadership, scholarship, and life experiences are to open us up to divine possibilities. The mind is to aid the spirit. Even though it is not by itself enough; education is not opposed to faith. This is why Moses had to be raised in the palace so that his mind would be unencumbered by the crushing blow slavery inflicts on self esteem. He learned history, and leadership, and politics, but He had not heard God’s Word.
At the age of 40, he went about with his liberated understanding to accomplish a political salvation, but the greater deliverance to be accomplished was not from the prism shaped pyramids of the Pharaoh; but from the ignoble ignorance of the Immortal, and the Invisible God. Heaven might have said something like ‘this chap is not getting it, let us give him another kind of training’, It took another 40 years. Political without spiritual freedom is a superficial freedom. It does not at all touch the capacity of the incarcerated soul to perish, or the tendency of any human civilisation to inevitably self destruct.
By the time he was 80, Moses was ready. The anointing set to work, all yokes were broken, and all burdens lifted for a long time. A great deliverance was accomplished.
It is one thing to take the centurion’s understanding and invent systems like the PO Box, the facsimile, and instant messaging; achieving commendable feats on this earth realm. It is quite another thing to receive a divine word that heals a sick person, a sick economy, a sick nation- to place the Word upon your education; not as its antithesis, but as its superlative; to be spiritually minded; to employ an earthly system farther than the earthly plane alone by downloading heavenly graces into corporeal systems.
Therefore, this man Moses wrote the first five books of the bible, and so we are not lost today. We are not confused as are the propagators of the big bangs and the ape theories. It is the same for the other man, the apostle Paul; who wrote about two thirds of the New Testament. He was learned, erudite, and was trained under the best. Therefore, when his word came, he was persuaded strongly persuaded concerning the plan of God, having discovered the true purpose of earthly knowledge, which is to lay down its comparatively pale brilliance as the bulb through which true light might shine, and as the wires and transistors through which heavenly voltage may give power to both Jews and Gentiles, enunciating clearly from Romans through Ephesians to Titus…
The manifold wisdom of God.
And this is our reasonable service of life, our spiritual act of worship in all areas of human endeavor- to take our everyday living, and learning, working, and earnings ….reading all books of science, literature and art, researching and studying, exploring and discovering the wonders of the world; advancing in careers and businesses and other things…for no other reason than presenting it to God, neither as a something sufficient for anything, nor as a curriculum vitae; but as parchment for the writing of His Word; a substrate for the combustion of the Spirit; for the diverse expression of an eternal God on this temporal sphere. That is, using the visible as a launch pad, as an Enter key to download…what eyes have not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of men, to prove that good, acceptable and perfect will of God
And this is the meaning of Romans 12:1; presenting your body
A living sacrifice.
Wisdom is therefore the principal thing, therefore folks, get wisdom. Read books. Get an education. Train yourself. Learn everyday… but with all your getting, make doubly sure you as well get understanding from the Word.
It will put all your life’s talents and strengths into proper perspective so that we may be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it, and have dominion…without wars and murders, slavery and racism, crime and environmental destruction, having the capacity to destroy the works of darkness, and to prove the will of God.
Ebele UzoPeters
KOINONIA ART 