Grace, in action, is a bond between God and man. It is man who must remain in grace because he is the one who can change. For the sap of the tree to reach the branch, it must remain on the vine and the believer in Christ. Grace is like love or any other gift, … Continue reading Partners with the Holy Spirit: Part #49 →

Christians are the instruments by which God’s grace is dispersed. They display the presence of the Holy Spirit when they apply grace. There is no other way for grace to be visible, but through those who believe in grace and those who practice grace, first on themselves and then on others. The Apostle Paul, Himself, … Continue reading Partners with the Holy Spirit: Part #48 →

Spiritual blindness results from hatred imposed by an absolute systems, which have no room and no tolerance for anyone else. The religious system of Jesus’ day suffered from such darkness, and it held men like Paul in its clutches. Paul could not stand the light of truth and it blinded him. Jesus sent Ananias to correct his vision (Acts 9:1-9).

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would be “a Counselor” and not a commander or a servant. He would not bear a person’s cross, but enlighten him/her how Christ lived and what He taught. And the most profound service Christ rendered was for the benefit of his fellow men. John, the Evangelist, injected Jesus’ promise of a Counselor four times.

The first thing Jesus said to John’s messengers was that He had come to cure blindness, “the blind receive their sight”, and the fourth thing was that “the deaf hear” (Matthew 11:5). Jesus linked physical blindness and deafness with mental and spiritual impairments. The human mind puts blocks on what it does not want to see or hear. The mind is the intelligence center, which controls the “intake” and “output” of things beneficial or harmful to life. To the earliest Bible people, the mind sort of collided and collaborated with the heart, the soul, and the spirit. One simply could not and did not dissect the human life into parts unrelated to each other. The translators have been kind enough to assign certain functions to these different organs and parts of the human body. So, the mind stores information and skills useful for their survival. For instance, after Joseph emerged as the second in command over Egypt, Jacob kept in mind Joseph's dreams, which hinted at a time when his parents and his brothers would bow to him and that he would save them from starvation, (Genesis 37:11). The mind was mostly self-serving and acknowledging that God had it all planned (Genesis 50:15-21).