Peter himself in the previous passage expresses the honest position of not understanding everything at present that Paul has written. This was probably because at the time Peter was writing 2 Peter he had not experienced or encountered the kind of problems Paul had which motivated Paul to write what he did. The Psalmist David states, "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes." (Ps 119:71).

Take the life of Job for example. The following conversation took place between Job and Yehovah in Job 42,

Job had an intellectual knowledge of who God was before he went through his trial. In verse five Job states, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear." (Job 42:5). In the middle of Job’s trial, Job makes a commitment to the intellectual knowledge he has. Job states, "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him." (Job 13:15). Job had heard with the hearing of his ear through the testimony of others that God was a good God and that God loved Job. In the midst of Job’s trials from appearance sake and from a feeling standpoint, Job was not experiencing his intellectual knowledge of God’s love for him, yet through this statement Job is saying he chooses to believe it any way in spite of how things appear and in spite of how he feels. Job in this statement showed that his heart was completely God’s. The book of Job throughout is a dialogue between Job and his three companion friends Elihu, Eliphaz and Temanite and their differences of opinion about their theology about God in relation to Job’s trials. At the end of Job’s trial, and after everyone has failed in their theology through reason; God reveals Himself to Job experientially in a cloud. Job states as a result of this experiential reality of who God is, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You." (Job 42:5).

In verse three of this passage, Yehovah asks Job a question about his theology, "Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?" Job replies back to Yehovah, "Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know." (Job 42:3). Before Job went through his trial he had an intellectual knowledge of who Yehovah was, but this was not a complete knowledge. His intellectual knowledge was a beginning, but his greater understanding about who Yehovah was in relation to himself and his theology came about through a field experiential reality of Yehovah as a result of his trials. He expresses this incomplete previous theology when he states in verse six, "Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes." Or as the Psalmist David stated, "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Thy statutes." (Ps 119:71). We start with an intellectual study of God’s Word, but true understanding of what the word teaches comes about through revelation, not through intellectual pursuit. Watchman Nee writes in his phenomenal work, The Spiritual Man,

"To know things in our intuition is what the Bible calls revelation. Revelation has no other meaning than that the Holy Spirit enables a believer to apprehend a particular matter by indicating the reality of it to his spirit. There is but one kind of knowledge concerning either the Bible or God which is valuable, and that is the truth revealed to our spirit by God's Spirit. God does not explain Himself via man's reasoning; never does man come to know God through rationalization. No matter how clever man's mind is nor how much it understands about God, his knowledge of God remains veiled. All he can do is rationalize what is behind the veil, because he has not penetrated the reality hidden from view. since he has not yet seen, man can understand but never can he know. If there is no revelation, personal revelation, Christianity is worth nothing. Everyone who believes in God must have His revelation in his spirit, or else what he believes is not God but mere human wisdom, ideals or words. Such a faith cannot endure the test.

"This kind of revelation is not a vision, a heavenly voice, a dream, or an external force which shakes the man. One may encounter these phenomena and still not have revelation. Revelation happens in the intuition--quietly, neither hastily nor slowly, soundless and yet with a message."^57/77-78

If we do not under-stand something in Scripture at present, because of a lack of experiential reality or God’s revelation, as was Peter’s case con-cerning Paul’s writ-ings,²⁹ lets not distort its meaning by forcing it to fit into our present limited soul motivated theologies, whatever they may be; but rather look to Jesus to enlighten our understanding through time and experience. When you do not understand something that you are reading in Scripture, rather than try and make it fit into your theology, pray like this,

As Harold Hill would say, "When a King’s kid sees God’s Word confirmed in the world, nobody’s theology is going to persuade him that his eyes are making things up."^12/179

As we approach Jesus through worship and praise and in Spirit and truth about our needs or a person’s needs, the Holy Spirit will begin manifesting which gifts are needed in the given situation. This will be dealt with in much greater detail in this Section along with several case counseling examples.

Paul writes in the book of Ephesians,

Any gift or manifestation of the Holy Spirit and any calling of Jesus is given to the Church to manifest and glorify Jesus,³⁰ "until we all attain to the unity of the faith." The gift of tongues as a personal prayer language, then, is also given to manifest Jesus and cause us to come into unity with one another when used properly.

How does our spiritual language bring unity? Our spiritual language is the Holy Spirit praying through our spirit a prayer directed by Jesus to the Father for our needs at the moment. There are not multiple Holy Spirits and there are not multiple Jesuses. There is one Jesus and one Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us about the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John,

Jesus plainly tells us in this passage of Scripture that the Holy Spirit will not speak or act out of His own initiative, but only out of His initiative. Since there is only one Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who prays through all Christians, and who only acts out of the initiative of Jesus Himself, when Christians use the prayer language with interpretations (whether it be in the privacy of their prayer closet using their private devotional prayer language or in the body of Christ giving a message through the temporary separate gift of tongues with interpretation) it can only result in unity of the brethren as a whole. This is because Jesus does not work against himself. And indeed, if all believers yielded to the Lordship of Jesus in receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit which would result in their receiving their private personal devotional prayer language with interpretations, and then used it regularly privately in submission to Scripture as final authority, unity in the Church would be a continual, daily, yearly reality. This is because all believers would be constantly continually in tune and in unity with what Jesus is doing through the Church as a whole at any one given time, day, or year; and thus as a result continually, constantly in unity and in tune with one another in the body of Christ as a whole.

This is discussed extensively in Section 2 and in Section 4

The Apostle Paul states,

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Eph 6:12).

This goes back to the complexity of man’s constitution. Man’s problems and sicknesses can center in many different things. It can be physically centered, spiritually centered, mentally centered, or demonically centered. Only the Holy Spirit knows for sure which one.

Paul states in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5,

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful in order to destroy strongholds¹¹². We are subverting computations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ."

When we are sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our battle is not against people, our battle is against the lies that Satan has fed and bound people with. Paul says in another passage,

"And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled, to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Cor 4:3-4).

This is why Paul says, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh." What people are saying may not be what is keeping them from receiving Jesus. Only Jesus knows what is truly in the heart of man and what lies Satan has placed there to blind man of his need of Jesus. The only way we can come to know what those lies are, are through the use of our spiritual language. This is because as Paul states in Romans, "and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is. . . ." (Rom 8:27). The Holy Spirit knows what is in the hearts of men. As we pray in our spiritual language about how best to approach a witnessing situation, Jesus will reveal the person’s heart to us through the Holy Spirit and thus we will know how best to approach the situation so that what we say will go to the heart and not just the head, and thus bring about the change Jesus desires.

When we pray in our spiritual language and then receive the interpretation concerning any given situation, we are receiving the truth about the situation and how best to deal with it because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth.