Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. (1st John 4:13)
Sounds simple to me. You know you’re really saved when you can feel the Spirit of God.
Maybe because I had to learn the hard way that all the complicated stuff serves only to get you all twisted up in knots. God had to take me to the ol’ woodshed quite a few times to knock the stupid notion out of me that somehow I was smart because I had learned a few things.
Well, maybe it was more than just a few times.
The reason it took me so long was because I didn’t want to give up the idea that if I just read a few more books, or listened to a few more seminars by other guys that thought they were so smart, that I would become wise. It seemed like a good plan at the time, but it sure didn’t hold any water with God.
Pride has got to be the most invisible sin there is because you can see it in everybody else but yourself. It is also the most painful one to get rid of – or shall I say, it is the most painful one to have the Lord rip out of you. He has to run you through a threshing floor where you are trampled, beaten, knocked around, and crushed under a great stone wheel that runs over you until the chaff in your heart is loosened up so it can be blown away.
I did not go willing to that threshing floor – or so I thought. I do remember, however, praying for God to give me wisdom and to take the pride out of me, and a few other things. Had I known what I was really praying for, I might have been a little less zealous.
I can just picture God hearing those prayers, and with a beaming grin saying, “OK. You asked for it!”, as He commences to roll up His sleeves and start to work on me. It’s funny now, but it’s not all that funny when you’re going through the fire that you just called down on yourself.
But if you really want to serve the Lord, you have to be willing to go through the fire.
After a while, it seemed like the more I learned, the less I understood. While that may seem like a contradiction, it is actually the first requirement to getting wisdom. When you get to the point where you realize that you don’t know anything, then you’re entering into an level that boasts of some world-class heavyweights in God.
But it takes time. It took Moses 40 years in the backside of the desert. I can remember an old warrior in God telling me that when you reach 10 years in the Lord how you begin to think that you’ve arrived – and then it takes another 10 or 20 years to realize how stupid you are. And then another 10 years or so until you no longer care … and that is when God can finally use you.
There’s a price to pay for it also. It cost Paul all his years of theological education, followed by years of persecution to reach the place where he stated that he knew nothing but Christ Jesus, and him crucified. The road to wisdom leads downward first to the valley floor before it ever leads to the mountaintop.
Salvation is not predicated on religious status, knowledge, or position. Neither is wisdom determined by how much you have obtained or learned. Rather they are determined by how much of your ego that you have allowed to be stripped away until you have nothing to rely upon but God.
We know we are saved because we can feel His Spirit dwelling in us. It is not what we have made of ourselves, but what He has taken out of us so that He can refashion us in the image of His Son. It is not how we view ourselves, but how we see Him.
“But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? … Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” Job 28:12, 28
