Putting Tow and Two Together

Isn’t it cool how God structured the Bible so that to really know Him you have to work at it a bit?  He could have simply written a book of rules and left it at that.  Would have been easier for us, that's for sure.  But He didn't.  God expects us to be able to put two and two together.  I love this example from Acts of how Peter does it.

Acts 11:15-17(NKJV)

15And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning. 

16Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 

17If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?”

Look at the process here.  He goes against hundreds if not thousands of years of Jewish tradition and law by associating and sharing with non Jews.  In the previous verses God had spoken to him through the Holy Spirit.  He remembers Jesus saying something that now seems relevant and he connects that dot.  Then Peter thinks it through using a bit of simple logic or common sense.  "If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?”

I just think that this is a great example of how we need to use all of our resources to try and fully understand God.  We need to be in prayer, we need to be in the Word, we need to listen to the guiding of the Holy Spirit, we need to use our powers of observation, and we have to use our God given intellect together in our quest to grow closer and closer to God.

Seem like a lot of work?  It is!  But here is what is really cool.  It's worth it!