From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.
But then -- we might want to ask -- how do we know the Spirit is working within us at all? Like many "how do you know?" questions, this turns out to be a very modern obsession, which often results in our searching our own hearts instead of searching the Scriptures. The biblical answer to questions about how we know God keeps coming back to God's word and especially his promise. There is a promise of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures (Gal. 3:14; see also Acts 2:38). If we think that's not good enough, then we'll end up having to look to ourselves for an answer. So the more anxious we are, the less we trust God's word, and the more likely we are to try looking into our own hearts to find the Holy Spirit.
But honestly, God's word is good enough. It is hard for us sinners to trust it -- we would much rather see things for ourselves than trust what God has to say, even about himself -- but trusting God's word is what faith does, and faith is how we know who God really is.
Heh, this is a bit unrelated, but I remember some family friends kept giving us Christian books and telling us kids to read them. So I tried doing that and the books weren't making any sense (I was 9 or 10 at the time) and then my big brother told me to read the bible first before reading supplemental books. And that was such a relief.
ReplyDeleteIn a lot of situations, God's word is more than enough :)