Are you fluent in the language of your soul?
“It’s all Greek to me!” is an expression used to mean that one finds something to be totally incomprehensible and meaningless.
That’s the way the Bible was to me for almost forty years. I remember as a twelve-year-old taking Saturday morning confirmation classes that it seemed like a boring weekend edition of my junior high school social studies class. Years later, while traveling on business, I pulled a Bible out of the nightstand in the hotel, tried to read it and soon put it back in the drawer. It made no more sense to me than if it had been in Greek.
I had no faith and was cynical towards religion, but one Sunday, I found myself drawn to go to church by myself, something I had never done before. I drove to a church I’d never been to before. By some strange “coincidence,” the one friend I knew to be a Christian arrived in the parking lot at the same time as I did, though this was not her church either. During the service, I felt a presence that I’d never known before and that I couldn’t explain, but it made me painfully aware of the void of spirituality, and the absence of God, in my life. After the service, I told this friend that the Bible had never made much sense to me, and she offered me hers to take to read. I left and went away by myself, not knowing what I’d find, but somehow feeling I was holding something of great value in my hands. Almost immediately after opening it, I found myself led to words that plunged into my heart like a knife, giving me insights I’d never seen before into human nature, and into my own nature, shortcomings and failings. Thoughts and behaviors I’d learned and held for decades as normal, mature and rational crumbled before higher wisdom and insights into how life was meant to be lived. I felt shame and humility in seeing myself against such a different standard, but it changed me and I felt a peace and direction in my new understanding of what was once all Greek to me.
How does one suddenly find incredible meaning and insight in something that was once incomprehensible? The simple answer is that you have to understand “Greek.” The Bible is written to be understood on a spiritual level, and it is only when you open your heart to the Spirit of God that you can begin to understand it. Spend time with Greeks, show enough humility and interest to want to learn their ways and you will grow in your understanding of Greek. Spend time with God, show enough humility and interest to want to learn His ways and you will grow in your understanding of God.
I thought, ‘Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom.’ But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.
Job 32:7-8
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him– but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
1 Corinthians 2:9-14
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. ”
Words of Jesus Christ in Mat 7:7-8
“If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever– the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ”
Words of Jesus Christ in John 14:15-17
“You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. ”
Words of Jesus Christ in Rev 3:17-20
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
1 Corinthians 1:18
“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. ”
Words of Jesus Christ in John 14:26