Isaiah 55:6: Seek the Lord while you can find Him. Call on Him now while He is near.
Isaiah 55:8-9: “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.
The Lord gave Isaiah a powerful insight into the repercussions that occur when we choose to forsake God. He reveals to us that sin separates our minds from His mind and our hearts from His heart. When Adam and Eve chose to break fellowship by sinning against the Lord, it caused all of mankind to become carnally minded. Our understanding and consciousness of God had become darkened. This spiritual ignorance which was the result of a hardened heart of unbelief caused all humans to go astray in their hearts. Spiritual blindness led us astray.
As long as a person chooses to walk in rebellion, they will walk in spiritual ignorance and not be able to see the invisible God. The writer of Hebrews instructs us to pursue peace and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Now that we have discussed the causes of spiritual blindness and have learned that it keeps us from seeing the invisible God and knowing His ways, let’s discuss what we can do to become enlightened on how we can rectify this problem.
When I use the term “see the invisible God,” I’m speaking about knowing Him and His ways through divine revelation. It’s not that we will begin to see God with our natural eyes (once we are born again), but rather we can have the mind of Christ to understand God’s ways. This will cause us to recognize God in any situation. The Holy Spirit will renew our minds with the understanding of God and empower us to know what to do whenever a problem arises in our lives. Here’s the key to receiving sight (or understanding) in order to walk in the ways of God. You must trust in the Lord with your entire heart and don’t look to your own wisdom, but in all your decisions acknowledge Him, and He will direct your steps through His Spirit within you (Proverbs 3:5-6).
Ephesians 1:15-18: Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope He has given to those He called—His holy people who are His rich and glorious inheritance. —submitted by Asa Dockery, US
mike wittmer on May 19, 2011 at 9:59 am
Asa, you are right that spiritual ignorance is not merely a matter of the intellect but is motivated from deeper, more sinister issues–our rebellion.