As I picked up one of the many Bible translations stacked around our house (we can’t get enough!), I asked, is this one for today?
³This Bible (The Living Bible) is one of my favorites. I put a special touch on it, which is still bearing fruit in other translations.
“I like some Bibles because they seek to reveal me‹those who translated them seek to reveal me. Anyone who loves the truth can love me, because I am the Truth. If they are genuinely looking after it, I will give myself to them. No translation of the Bible is perfect, just as with prophecy it is all in part and needs other parts to be made complete. My original words are perfect, and in them even in the original languages it is only with the reading of the Spirit to spirit can they be heard as perfect. Even the original inspired text can be read imperfectly if read with a dull heart‹one that is only looking for immediate solutions and not for my voice.
“You can often tell which translations are Œinspired¹ and touched by me‹because there is a breath and life in them that will water your spirit and soul. You know them because you feel inwardly refreshed by them. It doesn¹t matter if it is Œhigh¹ or Œlow¹ in its language, if I choose, they can still impart true spiritual meaning. If someone has sought to give the inner meaning‹the secret things of me‹I can give it to them even with a contemporary analogy.
“The church spends a lot of time arguing over words, but soon they will come to know Me as the Word. I reveal all things through my spirit if anyone would ask. The human mind is subject to decay just as with the rest of human nature, including the heart and the body. But since I seek to renew the Mind in these days, my people must learn to choose things with spiritual understanding, which transcends intellectual understanding. Only then will the mind be renewed and have perfect ³reason² and ³logic.²
“At present, the human mind is captivated by logic‹by sequenced arguments that build to create a kind of unshakeable fortress. Being very powerful as I made it to be, once the mind arrives at this fortress, it can take captive the rest of the human soul, including the heart. It is very difficult to ³change one¹s mind² once something has been absolutely proven through logic. Yes, I made the Greek mind and made it to apprehend spiritual things, but the Greeks often idolized it and wrote great raptures to its potential. This is why Paul taught that even to the Greeks who seek knowledge, my cross is a scandal to their logic, just as it is a scandal to those who need proof through miracles.
“Yet my people the Greeks still thirsted for spiritual things, but outside of me they would only come to them through sequential logic. This manifested most strongly in the Greek religion you call Gnosticism, which made its way into my church and Israel. In their religions, to achieve a spiritual enlightenment, one has to climb ladders of secret knowledge. This created an addiction in much of the world to that building of arguments in order that the mind may feel free. But the mind has become trapped. My knowledge is only secret to those who will not listen with spiritual ears. I gladly reveal myself, and will gladly open your mind to receive me in ways that ‘logic’ had never fully satisfied.
“I am the only fortress and the only unshakeable Truth. I am arrived at not just through logic, but through the inner eyes of faith, which believes in spite of all the material arguments. The mind is capable of so much more than it now explores. In my kingdom, the mind my Father intended will work in perfect tune with the heart and will be able to synthesize and comprehend things far beyond this earthly dimension. Its ability to learn, retain and even enjoy (yes, the mind was meant to enjoy) my Father¹s world will exponentially grow with each passing second in His presence. But now, on earth, this mind is often separated from heart and is decaying. Only by receiving my Spirit and by asking for this re-linking will the mind be renewed.
“Because man was created with a need for supernatural things, he will always seek them even when he is living in a highly secularized environment. Even in materialistic philosophies like socialism and Darwin and modern psychology magic has flowered. The spiritual drought created by many western philosophies left humankind begging, and so in that void there has been a flowering of occult religions, animal worship, earth-worship. You can see this in your own country‹all the seeking after Eastern spiritual practices was an attempt to fill in the spiritual void that the church had left behind. At that time in your history, the church was not seeking after my Holy Spirit and the supernatural rain He brings through the prophets and all of His gifts.
“This happened in Israel¹s life several times. Since Saul had thrown out all of my prophets from the land, there was no voice to connect him to supernatural revelation, and he was forced to seek a witch to conjure a dead prophet. In Elijah¹s time Israel suffered an actual earth drought since Ahab and Jezebel had killed all my prophets.
“In this day I am raising up new prophetic voices that will listen to my words and seek to bring the rain back to the Western church. I have brought many revivals and renewals to the church, but often the pride of the mind has stamped them out and argued them away. Will there not be one explosion of my grace into the earth that is received with great expectation? Will their not be one flood I send that other parts of the church will not try to critique? Whenever the church critiques my Holy Spirit¹s great outpourings‹as has happened many times even in your own lifetime‹religious pride and accusation flourish.
“How much I long to renew all minds that even the most intellectual thinkers of your day would find themselves every morning with a fresh idea of me, a fresh word, a fresh volume of thoughts that exceed all they have ever read! In this day I am giving to myself a new kind of teacher, one in whom seeks to know the Truth with all his or her heart, and will guide people into personally experiencing the very mysteries of heaven. I am seeking those who will give their minds to me so that I can expand them. They will think original thoughts and not just expand on others¹ thoughts. And their mind will be kept most of all by the renewed heart. For it is the heart that learns, and the mind that collects and gives understanding to that learning. If only the mind learns, no transformation occurs, no life regenerates, nothing is ‘renewed.’
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.
“The ‘pattern’ is the desire for consistent and convincing argument. Do not cling to this need for pattern, but rather seek transformation. Come to me, the Truth, every day, and I will show you patterns of heaven that have barely been breathed since the days of the garden.
