Lessons In Truth - Lesson 12 - Annotation 7
What is the relation between the word we read and the word God speaks to us?
7. The relation between the word we read and the word God speaks to us is as follows: The word we read comes "to" our intellect or reasoning phase of mind; it is the "letter" and has to have feeling added to it; whereas the word God speaks to us (through the "still small voice") is spoken "in" and "through" us so that we experience it in both thinking and feeling. The words we read may present a truth intellectually, but the word that God speaks is Truth itself. God's word is insight, spiritual understanding, and carries inner conviction.
The word we read may have in it the potential of Truth, but it will require the "breath of the Almighty" (Job 32:8) to give understanding, or the meaning, back of the word. In I John 4:8 we read the words "God is love," but until God Himself reveals His nature to us as love, we have only the "letter" and not the "spirit" of these words. The word we read, and the word we hear may become channels for the word that God would speak to our innermost being.
If we read the Bible and intellectually memorize many of its statements, this does not guarantee that we have grasped the laws of God back of the words. However, when we "take ... words, and return unto Jehovah" (Hosea 14:2) in the Silence, as we wait in the "secret place of the Most High," then the words we have read may become the words that God speaks to us. All their beauty, meaning, and power will fill us and thrill us, and we will be able to apply them in our daily living.- In Lessons In Truth 12:14 and 12:15, we are told of the woman who had read certain Biblical words many times but when she asked God for a special word, He used these same familiar words. However, the words were then illumined by Spirit, and the woman knew them to be the word that she had asked God to speak.
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Preceding Entry: When we proclaim that we alone see Truth, what does this indicate?
Following Entry: What does it mean to have a "single eye"?
