In Knowing part 1
I always say "knowing and believing" is the Divine Order of things. Because you can't believe something you don't know. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word (which is Jesus, which is love) of God. You have to hear it before you can have faith in it. You have to see someone sit in a chair before you believe it will support your weight. Its like how the Bible speaks about first in the natural, then in the Spiritual. First we have to know something is true, then we can believe it it is true. And that's important because the truth HAS set us free and made us free. But its knowing and believing the truth that equips and empowers us to experience that freedom. Truth that you don't know doesn't do you a whole lot of good. And that, by the way, is why preaching the gospel is so important. But don't forget the old saying, "Preach the gospel at all times... and if you have to, use words." Preaching the gospel--the good news that God is love and He loves you--is all about SHOWING not telling. Showing people who God is by loving them. Letting what you know and believe is inside come out BY knowing it and believing it. Look at Colossians 3:9-10, "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. The Spirit of God (of love) that leads and guides us into all truth. Again, the ultimate truth of the universe that says God is love and He loves you. So the opposite of lying to one another is telling the truth. Preaching the gospel. And I love how this is written in the past tense. Because putting off the old man with his deeds is not something we need to do. Its something "we" (Jesus) did on the cross. Or when the old man died in the watery grave of baptism. Which, in reality, is just us accepting the truth OF the cross. Point being--its not something that needs to happen. Its something that already happened. "And have put on the new man." Past tense. Not something we need to do. Something we've (Jesus) already done. Jesus IS the new man. If anything, we need to be renewed once in a while. Because sometimes we forget who we are. Look at James 1:23-24, "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." Knowing and believing go hand in hand. You have to know who you are before you can BE who you are by believing who you are. If you hear it but don't do it, you forget who you really are. But if you see who you really are--Jesus, God in the flesh, love in a body--you can BE who you really are. If you know... in knowing, you are renewed. Knowing Jesus is knowing yourself. God's beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Our true identity--Jesus--is what its all about. Letting God love us, and loving Him back by loving each other with that same love that He loves us with!