Why is self initiated pursuit of knowledge not good? We do not know what sources of knowledge we are pursuing will lead us to the truth. When You act out of your own reasoning, it automatically has Satan’s influence. You will end up reading things that will not be helpful and in many cases harmful. This is what happened to me early in my Christian walk. I wanted to know everything about everything, so I read anything handed to me. The only problem was that not everything I was reading had been inspired by the Holy Spirit, but rather by demonic influences instead. I found myself not in control of my mental activities and getting off into weird activities and fighting off demonic influences. I asked the Lord why this was happening and His answer to me was, "I did not tell you to read that book! From now on I do not want you reading anything without seeking My counsel first." That is what I have done ever since. When I am having an intellectual problem, I go to the Lord with it and seek Him to lead me to the answers. The end result is that he leads me to the right answers in His Word, in book literature and wherever else the answers are to be found. The Holy Spirit does know where the right answers are. We do not.

Jesus, in talking about the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John, said,

"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." (John 14:26).

And in another passage,

"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever he hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. he shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you." (John 16:13-15).

What it means then to love Jesus with all our minds means that we look to Jesus first to lead us into the truth about whatever it is that is concerning us and then trusting Him to do just that through the Holy Spirit in His time and way as we wait upon Him in faith. Believe me, He will. I have been intellectually active ever since, but in the truth, not in demonically influenced secular or spiritual works.

Jesus, then, by His Spirit, as we wait upon Him, will lead us to the answer in the best possible way in one of several ways: to a book, or directly to the Word, or He may bring a brother to us who is knowledgeable in the area. He may speak to us in Church out of our obedience because of His promise in John 14:21 or during our quite time. However Jesus leads us to our answer, He will lead us in the way that will give us the best possible answer.

No matter how Jesus chooses to lead us to our answer, the way we know in the end whether the answer is truly of Him is by checking it with the Word of God. Jesus by His Spirit will never lead us contrary to the Word of God, because the Bible is the written revelation of who Jesus is to our lives. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, "Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth." (John 17:17).

Even our proper understanding of the Word can only come about through Holy Spirit revelation. I have been a Christian for 32 years and in this time I have read through the Bible several hundred times. I have done exhaustive word studies, but I was not able in any of these cases, no matter how much intellectual study of the Word I did, able to come to a full understanding about the truth without the help of the inspiration and revelational knowledge of the Holy Spirit. This is why just reading the Bible will not save a person. The activity of the soul by itself cannot see God’s salvation in the Word. In fact, what they see instead is condemnation, not God’s salvation. This is why we are commanded by Jesus to aggressively go out and share the Gospel with men, because only a person who has the Holy Spirit can see God’s salvation in his Word and only a person with the Holy Spirit can clearly communicate that salvation to the lost. That is what Paul is talking about in Romans 1:16-17 when he says,

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.’" (Rom 1:16-17)

The only way an unsaved person devoid of spirit can come to know God’s salvation for him is through our sharing these truths with them, ". . . from faith to faith."

What are the benefits of looking to Jesus first in our pursuit of knowledge, instead of ourselves or others for a knowledge of the truth about our faith? When we look to Jesus first through worship and praise and in Spirit and truth, we do not waste time with a lot of material that may do more to confuse and tear down our faith than to build it up with understanding. Second, as was already said, by looking to Jesus first, we are led to the best source of the truth about what it is that is presently concerning us. Most importantly, by looking to Jesus first we are looking to truth itself: Jesus! Jesus said in the gospel of John, "I am. . . the truth" (John 14:6), not a source of truth, but truth itself.  Jesus said "Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."

Whatever Jesus ministers to us is always ministered in a Spirit of love, because Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that it is the love of Jesus that constrains us.³⁶ Because Jesus is ministering the truth to us in love, we are able, as the Spirit leads us, to administer it to others in love. This is because we are able to see Jesus’ love in the truth. When we see Jesus’ love in His truth, were not just ministering facts to others, which only impresses them with our intelligence, but we are able to explain Jesus’ love in what we are ministering and so it leads to further love, not arrogance.