Have you ever been assigned a task but not given the resources you needed to do it? It’s a frustrating predicament that likely won’t make anyone happy.
Well, God has given us a big task—taking the good news of Jesus to the whole world. Sometimes it may seem overwhelming. But he hasn’t left us without the resources we need to finish the job. God has given us super powers to use in accomplishing the mission!
Don’t believe me that you have super powers? Check back each month this summer as we look at four different super powers Christ has given us.
The first super power we’ve been given is super understanding. Paul wrote something really cool to the Corinthians: “But people who aren’t Christians can’t understand these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means. We who have the Spirit understand these things, but others can’t understand us at all. How could they? For, “Who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who can give him counsel?” But we can understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:12-16, NLT).
That’s kind of a crazy thought, isn’t it? We have the mind of Christ. We can learn to think like him.
How is that possible?
First of all, we have his Word. The Bible is basically a collection of everything God thought it was super important for us to know. So there’s a ton of wisdom wrapped up in that one book! And the more we read it, the more we start to think like Jesus. We understand his heart and his priorities, and we know what he wants us to do. But it doesn’t do any good on your shelf! If we want the mind of Christ, we have to start getting regularly into His Word!
Secondly (and this is a really great thing), we have his Spirit. Honestly, God’s mind is a lot bigger than my mind. There’s a lot that he understands that I don’t. There’s a lot that he tries to tell me that I don’t even understand sometimes. But he’s given us the Holy Spirit as kind of a personal translator: he takes the words of God and makes them understandable to our human ears!
Have you ever read the Bible felt like God was explaining the passage to you? That’s the Holy Spirit at work! He speaks through our lives, too, as we look at our experiences and those of the people around us and start to interpret them through the lens of God’s understanding.
How has God shaped your understanding since you’ve come to know Him? In what ways have you been gaining the mind of Christ? And what can you do to continue thinking more like Jesus?
want more? click here for your second shot of spiritual caffeine:
7 days of growing your super understanding
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
discovering your super powers (part 1): super understanding
We have the mind of Christ.
– 1 Corinthians 2:16
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by jennifer m. kvamme