Instruct the wise, and they will be even wiser
How do you make sense of a life that doesn’t add up? You read promises of peace, yet you feel overwhelming anxiety. You believe in provision, yet your bank account screams lack. You claim victory, yet all you can see is the conflict surrounding you. The world presents us with a constant flood of physical truth – what we see, what we feel, what we fear. And for many of us, that shifting, subjective reality has become the measuring stick we use to judge the objective, eternal Word of God. We use our experience to edit Scripture, instead of using Scripture to interpret our experiences. Today, we draw a line. It’s time to stop judging the unwavering truth by your shifting circumstances and start judging your shifting circumstances by the unwavering truth of God’s Word. Get ready to see life from God’s perspective in this article. Be blessed as you read!
Most people interpret God’s Word through their own experiences. They think: God’s Word says one thing, but here is what happened in my situation. If someone doesn’t get healed, they make up their own theology and say, “Well, not everyone gets healed.” But that’s totally wrong. God doesn’t say no to something He already said yes to. You need to learn to interpret your circumstances by God’s Word, not the other way around. You need to understand spiritual truths and physical truths. Most of us have seen a promise in God’s Word and believed it to the best of our ability, but it didn’t come to pass. If we ask God for something and we don’t see it manifest instantly, most people question why God hasn’t answered that prayer yet. They assume that because they haven’t seen or heard anything, nothing has happened. That’s all wrong. We need to have more faith in God than we have in a medical doctor or a scientist. So how do we harmonise the fact that God is true to His Word even when it doesn’t happen? You need to understand that there are spiritual truths and physical truths. And again, there’s a physical world, and there’s a spiritual world. The spiritual world created this physical world, and there is a spiritual reality for everything physical.
The Bible gives us a vivid illustration of this in 2 Kings 6, with the story of Elisha. 8 Now the king of Syria was making war against Israel; and he consulted with his servants, saying, “My camp will be in such and such a place.” 9 And the man of God sent to the king of Israel, saying, “Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Syrians are coming down there.” 10 Then the king of Israel sent someone to the place of which the man of God had told him. Thus he warned him, and he was watchful there, not just once or twice. 11 Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was greatly troubled by this thing; and he called his servants and said to them, “Will you not show me which of us is for the king of Israel?” 12 And one of his servants said, “None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.” 13 So he said, “Go and see where he is, that I may send and get him.” And it was told him, saying, “Surely he is in Dothan.”
Elisha, the prophet of God, was revealing the battle plans of the Syrians to the king of Israel. Every time the king of Syria attempted to ambush the king of Israel, Elisha would warn him, allowing the king of Israel to counter the Syrians’ ambushes. This occurred so frequently that the king of Syria eventually asked his servants to identify the traitor among them, suspecting that the king of Israel could not be manoeuvring so effectively without inside information. One of his servants informed him that Elisha, the prophet of God, was relaying the king of Syria’s battle plans to the king of Israel…
" You need to learn to interpret your circumstances by God’s Word, not the other way around. "
…In response, the king of Syria sent his armies to capture Elisha. When the Syrian army surrounded Elisha, his servant panicked and asked Elisha what they should do. 2 Kings 6:15 says, “And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?” He knew why they were there. They had discovered Elisha was the one telling the king of Israel the king of Syria’s battle plans. They were in big trouble.
Look at the response of Elisha to this situation in 2 Kings 6:16: “And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” People who believe that nothing exists beyond their five senses might say that Elisha was lying. They would argue that he was claiming something to be true when it wasn’t, hoping that it would eventually become true. However, that’s not the case at all. Elisha was speaking the truth. He told his servant, “Fear not, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Kings 6:16). There were more with him than were with the Syrian army. It’s just that Elisha’s forces were in the unseen reality. The key to understanding this is to recognise there is another realm of reality beyond this physical world. Those who are limited to only their five senses will always struggle with this. They think Elisha was lying, and indeed, he would have been lying if all that exists is this physical world.
You could count the Syrian troops in the thousands, while there were just Elisha and his servant. However, Elisha was not lying; he understood that there was another layer of reality. When considering the complete picture – both the physical and spiritual realms – it became clear that Elisha was correct. In the spiritual realm, there were far more horses and chariots of fire surrounding Elisha than there were Syrian soldiers. The Scripture continues to elaborate on this: And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha (2 Kings 6:17). In the natural, they appeared completely outnumbered and doomed. While it’s true that things seemed that way in the physical realm, the spiritual realm revealed that powerful angels of God surrounded them. Elisha spoke the truth.
According to 2 Kings 6:17, “Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” Gehazi’s physical eyes were already wide open, but God was now opening his spiritual eyes. He began to see with his heart into the spiritual world. When considering the spiritual realm, Elisha’s statement held true. Those who view faith as an attempt to make the unreal become real will always struggle with those who understand faith as a means of making what is spiritually true a physical reality. Those who limit truth to the physical world might label Elisha as a false prophet. However, in doing so, they reveal their own limitations. They only acknowledge what they can see, taste, hear, smell, and feel as real. The Bible refers to such individuals as “carnal.” When Gehazi’s eyes were opened, the Syrians did not disappear; they were still present. The physical truth remained unchanged, but a greater spiritual truth emerged. True faith does not deny physical reality; instead, it refuses to let physical reality overshadow spiritual truth. True faith brings physical reality under the authority of spiritual truth.
