SIX
Perception
There are times in all our lives when we simply do not perceive the things around us. For myself, locking a door behind me is a thing I do so automatically that I don’t remember doing it. I have walked halfway to where I was going, then could not recall having locked my front door. I walked all the way back to check and be sure. When non-perception is not the case, preconception often is. I cannot count the times I’ve said to another, “if it had been a snake, it would have bitten you.” The usual answer: “Oh, I didn’t think it would be there.” Sometimes people simply don’t pay attention; other times preconception acts like a blinder. Perhaps we all know someone with a ‘blind spot’. In the currency of spiritual perception, one may either have enough to make a purchase or else one is bankrupt. We are all aware that money in a savings account draws interest. In other words, it takes something to make something. On the other hand, envision a man with a maxed-out credit card. He is sitting on empty, yet the creditors still demand payment.
See Luke 8:18, “Take heed therefore how (not ‘what’) ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.”
Christ called on any of us that have a ‘spiritual’ ear to take heed to spiritual issues. It would seem from the above-cited verse that there are only two processes and they affect spirituality as well as corporeality: they are addition and attrition. These are easy to spot in the physical world. Put a bodybuilder beside a weakling and there will be no mistaking who has what. If you utilize the means to attain knowledge, you increase knowledge. Much more than an ‘addition’ path, we may call this the ‘whosoever hath to him shall be given’ highway.
See Isaiah 50:4, “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.”
There is a way to go about things, evinced in the expression: ‘how ye hear’ (as opposed to ‘what ye hear’). One might at first think it strange that God would give wisdom to the wise: they already have it - give some to those in need! Right? But, that is not how it works. Giving wisdom to the wise is on a par with giving muscles to the bodybuilder. In the ‘what’ category, the same opportunities present themselves to all participants. It is the ‘how’ that counts. The bodybuilder has sought out, has made use of, has practiced whereas the weakling has availed himself of nothing. Weakness breeds weaker-ness. I am going to list six more scripture references that each point to the principle advocated in Luke 8:18.
(1.) Daniel 2:20-22, “Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are His: And He changeth the times and the seasons: He removeth kings, and setteth up kings: He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: He revealeth the deep and secret things: He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him.”
(2.) 2 Corinthians 8:11, “Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have.”
(3.) Matthew 13:11, “He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”
(4.) Ecclesiastes 7:12, “For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.”
(5.) Proverbs 14:6, “A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: but knowledge is easy
unto him that understandeth.”
(6.) Proverbs 24:5, “A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength.”
What exactly is spiritual? We see it everywhere we look. Mankind asked to fly far back in the timeline. In his impatience, he took up feathers. It was only recently that God answered by giving us the Wright brothers. The nature of man begs for the nature of God just as surely as the child can’t wait to grow up. God promised: ask and you shall receive. But, can we work methodically and patiently enough to see that promise of spirituality realized? Our preconceptions take us way off course. We preconceive that what we ask is what we ask; we preconceive that God is far, far away; we preconceive that if an answer does not assuage our impatient nature, it is just not coming. We are wrong on all counts.
See Hebrews 10:35-36, “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.”
I strike the nail again.
God, a spirit, is realizing Himself in a corporeal realm by a process of reverse engineering: He is making man more spiritual.
I strike the nail again.
Those things we call spiritual are things we might also call cognitive. Communication is key.
I strike the nail again.
Christ is the Word; by that, I mean communication. God is communication communicating the nature of the communicator. God delivers, but God is the only source: He only gives of Himself.
See Luke 21:15, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.”
Now, I’ve gone on and on about cognitive abilities. I have much belabored the issue of mentality. I keep hitting the nail, but, when - (when?) - will I drive it home? I am not alone in this, for in a sense, I am only elaborating on themes put forth by the early writers. The mind angle cannot be stressed enough. Spiritual is mental is spiritual.
See Romans 12:2, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
We are not being transformed physically. The transformation, the reverse engineering, is in our minds. To become spiritual, the mind is changed. The mind angle, therefore, cannot be over-stressed. Mental is spiritual is mental. And, of course: communication is key. However, for communication to work, there must, I repeat: ‘must’, be something held in common. God could not communicate His nature to us if we had nothing in common with Him.
See 1 Corinthians 14:11, “Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.”
But, from the beginning, we were something like Him: He made us that way. An upgrade was intended from the get-go. That upgrade will never be comic book superpowers, but the change we will see in ourselves will be that we begin to think and act just like God.
See Colossians 3:10, “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.”
The difference between what you perceive and what I perceive cannot be an issue. Both you and I perceive the same thing. How we each perceive that same thing is very much the issue. A person of limited hearing may only hear the lower notes when you speak. A corrective measure, such as a hearing aid, will allow that person to hear the higher elements of your speech. In the Old Testament, certain individuals received things ‘by the spirit’. Contemporary perception may hold that such occurred only with rare individuals, and by some amorphous means not common to every individual.
How do we perceive the communications of God?
A godly man is known to have a godlike nature. If he is a rare individual, why is he rare? Could it be that he is among the few who care enough about those higher issues to actively seek them out?
How do we perceive the communications of God?
In earlier times, the perception was that God communicated with the Pope, who in turn communicated with man. But then, it was perceived that God communicated with the elders, and preachers, and deacons of the church. Seems perception was perceiving more and more ‘rare’ individuals.
By extension, the ‘means’ is becoming less and less amorphous. We see in our day and age that God does not lift the odd skull and drop in a load of godliness; we see that very many studied individuals become godly through their studies. How do you perceive the communications of God? I see ‘by the spirit’ as ‘by the mind’.
See 1Chronicles 28:12, “And the pattern of all that he had by the spirit.”
God communicates to man’s mind. God communicates His mind into man’s mind. That should raise levels of perception. God communicates to man mentally. Perception is, after all, a mental attribute. What means does God choose to affect our thinking? Sometimes God has spoken directly to an individual: as with Moses, as with Jesus. Sometimes God has used the written word: as with the writing on the wall that made a king’s knees knock, as with the Ten Commandments. A proper perception of this will convince us that the writings of old are not merely the writings of men. If God speaks to men to impart knowledge, and men write what they know, God communicates the same knowledge to different men through the writing of those He has previously instructed.
Now, here is an odd question. Does God communicate to a man through writing that comes neither from His own finger, as in the writing on the wall, nor yet again from the hands of other individuals? In other words, is automatic writing indicated in scripture?
Judge for yourselves when you read 1Chronicles 28:19, “All this, said David, the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern.”
Yes, we are still engaged in the study of cognitive abilities. How do you perceive that any one of us gets anything at all from God? Where does it enter the individual? There is the physical, and there is the nonphysical. If I kicked you under the table, would you get my message? You might smart, but you’d be none the wiser. You would demand to know why to know what I was trying to convey. If my level of communication was no higher than the corporeal, I could only explain by kicking you a second time. Mental is aligned with the nonphysical. Mental belongs under the heading of things spiritual. So, let’s try communicating under the table once more. This time around, spirituality has imparted new perception to my brain. I now understand that while the spiritual uses the physical to communicate, the mouth would be a more effective instrument than the foot. I cannot communicate very well with a kick because God did not impart wisdom and understanding to my toes; He put all that mental stuff in the mind.
See Exodus 36:1, “Every wise hearted (minded) man, in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding.”
The heart, of course, is the organ of thought; what we now perceive to be the brain - and not just the brain, but the brain plus. We understand that our understanding is something more than the throbbing of internal organs. The mind, the ‘inner man’, is an alignment of our physical brain to something of equal value on the spiritual plain. Please recall Proverbs 14:6. The scorner sought wisdom and found it not. Had he sought scorning, he would have found that. The scorner did not have a wise mind; he did not exercise the mind with wisdom. His true quest was not for wisdom, therefore, but he sought fodder for his scorning mind. The one to whom finding wisdom was easy, was the one who exercised his mind for, sought out, and desired wisdom.
See 1Kings 3:9, “Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart (mind) to judge Thy people, that I may discern (discriminate) between good and bad.”
Mental is spiritual is mental. Mentality and cognition are spiritual in nature. God has communicated His nature in these. This nature is an active, forward-moving nature: a purpose-driven nature.
See 1Kings 3:11, “Understanding to discern judgment.”
Now, check all of the four words above against the thesaurus. You will get something like this: “Understanding (savvy) to (for the purpose of) discern (perceive) judgment (reason).” While I go to great lengths to communicate plainly and simply, some people will just not get it. Some other people, however, are receptive to the truth. Got Truth?
Get 1Kings 3:12, “I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart (mind).”
The Bible is filled with individuals to whom God imparted something mental. Some got a little. Some got a lot. What is spiritual? Well, what is perception? To perceive is to have a sense of something. The eye perceives light; the ear perceives sound; the brain perceives chemical/electrical impulses. Using cognitive abilities, I have a sense of the room in which I sit. I have a sense of the community in which I live. I have a sense of the nation and era in which I was born. For me to graduate to a broader sense, to a higher overview, addition takes place. I am ‘added to’. A first grader’s mind will neither receive nor perceive things belonging to the third grade. However, the preparations and practices of the second grade will enlarge the mind sufficiently to graduate to that next level. That largeness does not mean that the kid is second grade smart so much as third grade ready.
See 1Kings 4:29, “God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart (mind), even as the sand that is on the sea shore.”
There is an erroneous tendency to think of intelligence as an end or goal. And yet, Solomon’s largeness of mind was measured by a quality that ‘continued’. The beach goes on and on; just around that distant stand of palms, there is another stretch of sandy shoreline.
Even in the historical placement of a single individual, such as Solomon, God imparts a ‘rightness’ for that day and age. We have an expression: ‘man of the hour’, that is, someone who seems tailor-made for the time he lives in. Did God impart to Isaac Newton the cognitive abilities he needed for his time? Did the apple fall or did God toss it?
Did God communicate a nuclear mind to Von Braun? Is God the ‘E’ in M C squared?
See 1Chronicles 12:32, “Men that had understanding of the times.”
God imparts His mind and nature to those we call men of understanding, but it is for those men to use it, to exercise what they have been given. We have all been given muscles. What is an un-exercised muscle? It is a wattle. God gives what He gives for a purpose. What is an exercised muscle? A bigger muscle.
See 1Chronicles 22:12, “Only the Lord give thee wisdom and understanding . . . that thou mayest keep the law of the Lord thy God.”
If God gave you a hammer, I’d say it was a safe bet He expected you to use it on a nail. First, there is knowledge; second, there is understanding; third, there is wisdom. What is the difference between the three? Nothing. They are levels of the God-mind. What is the continuity between the three? Exercise. The exercise of knowledge brings one to understanding. Likewise, wisdom is understanding in practice. Cognitive abilities, perception, a sense of - and, familiarity through contact.
A heart, a mind; a heart and thought.
See 1Chronicles 28:9, “Know thou the God of thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart (mind) and with a willing mind: for the Lord searcheth (hunts) all hearts (minds), and understandeth (digests) all the imaginations (creativity) of the thoughts (reflections).”
We have, therefore we receive, and we have more. God has, therefore He receives and has more. We draw from each other. We may know the visions of God by a mechanism similar to that of God
understanding the imaginations of our thoughts. There is familiarity in close contact.
See 2 Chronicles 26:5, “Who had understanding (knowledge practiced) in the visions of God.”
He that hath an ear, let him hear but take heed ‘how’ you hear. Certainly, if you have an ear that is predisposed to hearing spiritually, you will be given something spiritual to hear, which will both exercise and enlarge your ability to hear spiritually. You learn; you practice what you know. To
practice receiving the communications of God makes you an active participant in the process.
Read Nehemiah 8:2, “All that could hear with understanding.”
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