new church life: september/october 2015
The clay on the ground is in the land of Canaan. This represents the church
where the Word is. When the “church” is mixed with the moisture from the
Lord’s mouth (the truths from the Word), and this ointment applied to our
intellect (our blind eyes) by the hand of the Lord, faith in the Lord is born.
The Lord can then begin the “re-formation” of our mind, but this is not
enough! We can allow the Lord to anoint us with truths but we must do our
active part or we still cannot see. We must go, in freedom, and wash in the Pool
of Siloam. We must let the truths from the Word wash our false ideas away.
Then we can see!
So he went and washed, and came back seeing.
This is the process we must all go through, many, many times, as we
develop a faith in the Lord.
Our blind and dark understanding is enlightened by the truths from the
Word and for the first time we “see.” We believe in something higher than
ourselves.
We must invite the Lord to make vital changes in our attitude, thinking
and behaviors. This is the function of reformation.
As the term implies, reformation is a reforming, a reorganizing, of the
content of the understanding, which is effected by arranging a person’s
thoughts around a new center, around the Word of the Lord, instead of around
self-intelligence, where it was concentrated before.
The reformed understanding is the home of the new will and this becomes
our living faith. We not only understand how to love others but we live it! We
love it!
We are all in freedom to remain spiritually blind if we choose. We read in
Heaven and Hell 603 that most spiritual blindness results not from ignorance
or an inability to understand spiritual things, but simply from a lack of interest
in such things.
The “Pharisee” in all of us wants to deny the power of the Divine and the
light that it brings. It would have us focus only on the things of this world,
obsessed with the “broken law” of healing on the Sabbath.
But the Lord wishes to heal our spiritual infirmities. He asks each of us to
bring our intellect to Him so that He may anoint it with the precious truths
that bring light, so that we can hear the Lord say:
You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.
. . . and we can answer, “Lord, I believe!” And worship Him.
Take a minute – close your eyes if you like – and think back to some
struggles, some temptations, some difficult times you have had in your life. A
time when you were “blind,” not sure what to do next, when you were ignorant
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