1 Corinthians 2:19-16 (NIV) - “However, as it is written: ‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’- the things God has prepared for those who love him-these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words…But we have the mind of Christ.”

“The spirit within a person - the deep innermost life where thought, feeling, memory and imagination meet - know best what the person is really all about.  Even so, Paul declares, God’s Spirit is like that with God; and this Spirit is given to all God’s people in the Messiah.

“This is an astonishing claim.  It clearly doesn’t mean that Christians automatically know everything about God, or why would Paul bother to write letters?  It means that they have open access to God’s mind - or, as he says in verse 16, to the ‘mind of the Messiah.’

“This… has many lessons for us, but perhaps the most important is for Christians who have forgotten, or perhaps never known, two truths.

“The first is that there is a wealth of knowledge and …understanding waiting for us to explore… [Christianity] is full of beauty and mystery and power, and as terrifying and wonderful as God himself.  There is always much, much more to learn, to relish, to delight in.

“The second is that the Christian message from the very beginning challenged the world of power… with the message of God’s superior kingdom unveiled in Jesus’ death and resurrection” (N.T. Wright, Paul for Everyone, p. 27-28).

Response : Let’s respond today with thanksgiving for what God has revealed to us by His Spirit, that we may understand what God has freely given us.  And let’s ask for God to reveal more of Himself and His glorious kingdom in our lives, and especially our thoughts and imaginations.

Being found again in the wonder of what God has done for us, let’s worship in song -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EoFESw4iY

-BR