After the resurrection, and just prior to when He returned to the Father, Jesus met with the remaining eleven disciples and saw that they were unsettled, and He asked them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” (vs. 38). Then He showed them His hands and feet, and the wounds in them left by the crucifixion. He then explained to them that all the things written about Him in the Law of Moses and the Prophets had to be fulfilled. He reviewed with them His suffering and resurrection and that “repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations” (vs. 46-47). He remined them that they were “witness of these things” and that He was going to send upon them “the promise of the Father” and they would be “clothed with power from on high” (vs. 48), to enable them to accomplish the mission given to them.
In all these things, Luke says that Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (vs. 45). I think we really do need to hear these editorial words from Luke. Spiritual things are spiritually appraised, and the natural mind simply can’t understand them.
Jesus makes no sense to those who minds are not yet opened to His reality. This is why we can’t afford to attempt to tell the story of Jesus in our own strength and abilities. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to do the work of God in the world. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to live faithfully for God and to experience all that God might have for us.
He opened their minds. I need to hear this for my own life. Spiritual things don’t come naturally to me, and I’m still amazed that God loves me and is working in my life.
What God has done for all of us in Jesus is absolutely breathtaking and marvelous. However, if Jesus doesn’t open a persons’ mind to understand and grasp the meaning of it all, it simply remains as an unopened gift.
I am learning that it isn’t about what may or may not be natural to me. It is about the grace of God, and what God is seeking to do in human experience. God is with us in Jesus, and will reveal Himself to us if we will allow it. He will soften our hearts to hear the truth and to accept it. He will work the works of His grace and love and truth and mercy into us, and we will stand amazed at how good God is.
On this day in Lent, I pray that God will open my mind to His word. I have friends whose minds, I pray, will be opened by Jesus. We dare not trust our own insights and viewpoints. We need the mind of the Lord, and in ways I can’t even begin to understand, “we have the mind of Christ” (I Corinthian s 2:16). I just pray I will be a good listener, an honest seeker after God’s truth, and an open, fully engaged, Believer in whom God may do whatever He wants to do.
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