WHERE DID THE FEAR COME FROM?
Have you ever wished you had a superpower? Maybe when you were younger you dreamed about having superhuman strength or reading people’s minds. Marvel movies may have romanticized superheroes, but I’d propose the Lord created superheroes before movies were ever thought of. Whether it was the four fireproof, lion-taming wise men of Babylon or the lion-killing, bear-stomping, giant-slaying boy from the backside of the wilderness, God has always had His superheroes. There are men and women who are given incredible powers, then are dispatched into what may seem initially like suicide missions and impossible situations, with almost no chance of success. But, at the end of the day when the light fades the adolescent boy returns home with the stone in his hand and the giant's head underfoot. It simply doesn’t make sense….
But, bear with me for a second as we consider the life of Daniel and his God-given superpower. Daniel possessed divine wisdom, and supernatural knowledge, and understood the meanings of dreams and visions. In fact, Daniel could tell you your dream, give you the interpretation, and tell you what to do about it. If that isn’t a superpower, I am not sure what is (Daniel 2:27-29). But, before you clock this in your mind as a historically inspiring story and deem it simply “biblical”, what if I told you that God still empowers superheroes?
MORE THAN NICE THOUGHTS
What if renewing your mind is more than just simply thinking nice thoughts, but is divine thinking? Have you ever considered the divine advantage you have over the young boy, David who conquered Goliath? Not to say that what he accomplished wasn’t anything short of miraculous. But, by the power of the Cross, this divine insight lives inside of you. Think of how much more is available to you if you tapped into the “spirit of your mind.” (Ephesians 4:23)
But, why if as Believers who have access to the wisdom of the age to come do we not tap into it? I’d propose it’s because we settle for the wisdom of the age we live in. In order to tap into spiritual intelligence you have to exit the freeway of IQ/EQ thinking and take the onramp to the SQ highway (metaphorically speaking).
It might feel common or usual to approach solving life’s problems with practical and logical solutions. For example, you may have found that you have been hit with a large unexpected expense, and you don’t have the money to pay for it. So you begin game planning on how you might need a second job or if you should refinance your house and before you know it you have the whole thing sorted with a ten-step plan. You may even base the solution on Biblical core values. This might be a reasonable way to approach the problem, yet it could rob you of God’s supernatural solution.
THE SQ APPROACH
The SQ approach to this same problem would look like this: instead of doing the reasonable thing, you press into prayer and ask God to give you His perspective. You might begin to receive spiritual insight that you couldn’t see when you were searching for a logical solution. What I am getting at is that the reason we don’t develop “the spirit of our minds” is simply because we solve our challenges with lower-level, natural thinking that can be based on biblical principles, but may not actually be Spirit-led.
You might be asking yourself if I am suggesting that we not base our thinking on biblical principles. The answer is no!
Biblical thinking is life-transforming because it teaches us how God thinks
. But the only way to know what God is thinking is to have a connection
through the Holy Spirit to God’s mind. I understand the difference here might be a little difficult to grasp at first, but it will make a profound difference in your life when you understand it.
Let’s look at a few verses and dig a little deeper into their application. The apostle Paul wrote, “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.” 1 Corinthians 2:11–13.
Paul is pointing out that we have received God’s Spirit, and we, therefore, have access to His thoughts. The apostle goes on to say that the Spirit is teaching us how to have God’s thoughts (i.e., His imagination, visions, and dreams) and His spiritual words. In this case, we are not just thinking like God; instead, we are thinking His actual thoughts planted in us by the Holy Spirit, knowing His mind in whatever situations we face, and mirroring His imagination about the solutions and outcomes in real-time!
It is the Holy Spirit inside of us that gives us the superhero abilities to usher in solutions from Heaven to serve society around us today!
Are you currently facing a situation or problem that you could seek a Spirit-led answer for? I want to encourage you to carve out time in your day to ask the Lord what He thinks it is you should do. What are some practical Spirit-led steps you could take to solve the problem?
