Word and Spirit

"We are never to be continually looking for errors."

THE GOSPELS WERE written in the Spirit. In other words, not with the mind using man’s recollection and memory. When I write these devotionals, the word structures are mine (except where they aren’t), and the knowledge of writing is mine, from experience, but the content is all Holy Spirit. When I get off and into “what I would say,” I always know it and will stop and go back to where He ended, and I began.

Sometimes, He indulges me and works my thoughts into what I’m writing. Sometimes when it is “those words that aren’t mine” what you read is all Him speaking. I wasn’t thinking of that topic and received revelation of it as I wrote. It doesn’t sound like me speaking. The prophetic words are all from the Spirit as well. They are the Father speaking or Jesus speaking or the Spirit speaking. I know the difference by the anointing upon me at the time. Many times, He speaks things to me that I don’t release, things that are on His heart, then the next day or the next few days, another speaker or writer says the exact thing He said to me. That’s always an amazing thing.

But I say all that because what the four gospels contain is what the Spirit wanted them to write and in the order He wanted it written. That one story is in a different location in one gospel from another or is not even in a third is more than the author having a different point-of-view. Yes, they were different men with different views of situations, but the Spirit wrote the Word of God, and He is who was ordering their words. They create a pattern, many patterns within the chapters and a larger pattern from the gospels themselves.

“And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:” (Ephesians 6:17)

Each gospel is of a different character of the Word. Mark is Jesus and the Holy Spirit, for example, and Luke is Jesus as the Son. John is Jesus and the Father. Matthew is an outline of the story of the gospels, to the point that the center chapter is an outline within an outline. The depth you can learn from them is endless, but it requires the Spirit to see and to have revelation. Revelation is why men couldn’t see Jesus was the Christ, despite knowing the prophecies about Him, and why others saw Him clearly. Peter knew He was the Christ, yet in the same chapter, He forbid Jesus to die on the cross and was rebuked. Other men followed Jesus for a time, then were offended by something He said or did and left Him. When Jesus sent the disciples out by twos to preach the gospel and lay hands on the sick, He gave them instructions on what to do if men rejected them (Matthew 10:5-15).

Many men have translated the Word of God into modern languages over generations. The Spirit of God was with all of them. You heard me. No translation was ever written that God was not involved in it. This does not mean the translator did not use their knowledge and education within their translation, but bottom line, the Spirit is the author of the truth of the Word and He guards it as precious. How men receive it or reject it should be in the way that we are commanded to receive anything written about our Savior and King. Not in religion nor rules and laws, but in the Spirit, through God’s point-of-view, and in love and prayer for the translator. We are never commanded to hate. Nor are we to use the differences in the gospels to create division or to disunify the truths written in them, picking apart the solid foundation they lay. We spend far too much time looking for something to critique in the Bible, in the pulpit, in the pew, and in secular society, and not enough asking God what is the truth.

We are to neither be gullible and to believe all we hear or all we think we understand, nor to be continually looking for errors. The Spirit is our Teacher. We must know Him to trust Him, to walk with Him, being led by Him so that what revelation we receive, we know He gave it. Jesus told His disciples that the Holy Spirit would speak of Him, then He prayed for all who would receive Him through their word. Their word, these gospels and the letters they wrote, are the words we receive, and the Holy Spirit is the reason they read as they do. God saved people in order to work with people because He created people, in His image, in His likeness, to walk with Him, growing in knowledge, for eternity. What a beautiful thing. We should see what unites us across generations and through church teaching and not search for what divides.

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:26)

“But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:” (John 15:26)

“This transformation of heart and mind is brought about by the Holy Spirit who is the first installment of our rich inheritance, and evidence guaranteeing that our inheritance is secure until we take possession of it—so that God may be praised.” (Ephesians 1:13-14, Remedy)

Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com