If we aren’t careful, we’ll reverse God’s intended order of things. We give the impression to people that if they could just fully understand the meaning of the gospel, they’d be overwhelmingly convinced they ought to believe in it. Here’s the tightrope we walk, however… the heart is only changed once a person’s mind is convinced, but our spiritual understanding of the gospel can never flourish until we have believed and been filled with the Spirit of God.
The Bible puts it this way, “And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.” (1 Corinthians 2:12 NLT)
Here’s the great relief of this truth. YOU don’t have to do the convincing. You get to represent the gospel with your life and your lips and leave the convincing, the conviction, and the converting to God. And you also don’t have to figure it all out on your own. Those deep, hard-to-grasp words of God are brought into perspective as the Holy Spirit illuminates our understanding like a desk lamp in our hearts.
Spiritual truth is understood by Spirit-guided people. So if you don’t see yet, you need to believe first.
