Abiding Fellowship, part 4

Smiley continues; “To apprehend them, requires a certain measure of spiritual capacity and habitual exercise in the things of God.” To understand the Scriptures, one must have a certain spiritual capacity. One must have the ability to house spiritual truth. And that ability comes through habitual exercise in the things of God. 
 

Habitual exercise in the things of God is what is what seems to be missing in our lives today. How are we ever going to come to the place of great spiritual capacity without the daily exercise of prayer and spending time reading the Word of God? 
 

Hebrews 5:11-12 “Concerning Him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. (that’s a reference to spiritual intelligence) 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.” Solid food is for the mature, who, because of habitual exercise in the things of God, have their senses trained, or you could say, have come into a spiritual enlightenment. The writer of Hebrews begins by, in essence, saying, “Look, I’ve got some deep, meaty, things to say to you but it’s very hard for me to explain these things to you because you don’t have any spiritual capacity.”  (Another way of saying “dull-of-hearing” could be, “no spiritual enlightenment.”)
 

In his book, The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer wrote the following

“Sound Bible exposition is an imperative and a must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. 

But exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth. 
 

The Bible is not an end in itself, but, a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know that inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.”

Continued tomorrow