S.H.A.P.E. (1)

In order for you to understand God’s will, for the next few days let’s use the word S.H.A.P.E. as an acrostic. S represents your spirit. Your regenerated spirit is the part of you that’s capable of connecting with God and responding to Him. The Bible says: ‘People who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things’ (1 Corinthians 2:14-15 NLT). You can know something in your spirit without understanding it in your brain. Does that sound strange? It’s not: ‘But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things’ (1 John 2:20 NKJV). Sometimes a Scripture leaps off the page you’re reading in the Bible and you ‘know’ it’s God speaking to you and giving you direction. At the time it may not seem to make sense to you, but it resonates in your spirit as being right. We use different words to describe this experience, such as ‘a leading’ or ‘a prompting’. Will you sometimes get it wrong and make a mistake? Yes. The most mature Christians among us do. In his youth, God spoke to Samuel the prophet four different times before he finally recognised His voice. Just as you exercise your body to make it stronger, you must exercise your spirit to make it sharper and more sensitive to God: ‘Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognise the difference between right and wrong’ (Hebrews 5:14 NLT).