A friend recommended a book for me to check out, The Power of Now, A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle. I was a little surprised. Why is the most devout Jesus lady I know suggesting a book about enlightenment? I thought this was a Buddhist thing, and it’s not a word I have heard used much in Christianity.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I started doing some digging straight from the ultimate source. What does the Bible say about enlightenment? According to my NIV concordance, there are only 3 verses in this translation that use the word “enlighten” or “enlightenment”.

Isaiah 40:14 (NIV) Who did the Lord consult to enlighten Him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?

Silly questions – can you picture God asking someone how to do something? Yea, me neither. Have you ever met a know it all? They think they know it all, but they don’t. Well, God is the ultimate know it all and lives up to the nickname.

Psalm 147:5 says “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”

God doesn’t need to be enlightened because he already knows it all.

Ephesians 1:17-18 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you; the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

The message translation of this verse says, “I ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory – to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians, on the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him, endless energy, boundless strength.”

Isn’t this what we all want? Knowing God personally? A focused and clear vision of what God is calling us to do? Hope, not a wish, but a faithful expectation? A glorious inheritance that is available to us, his holy people?

Yes please!

Some days I live MY life, not God’s. Clear and focused direction would make this easier. Yet some days finding a purple unicorn seems more realistic. Why? Have I prayed that the eyes of my heart will be enlightened to know the hope to which God has called me? Am I claiming the riches of his glorious inheritance?

I love the phrase “eyes of your heart.” We see things with our earthly eyes, but the eyes of our hearts are different. If the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, we will truly know the glorious things available to us.

Hebrews 6:4-5 It is impossible for those who have been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away to be brought back to repentance.

If you have received God’s gifts, how can you go back to your old ways? The Message says “Once people have seen the light, gotten a taste of heaven and been part of the Holy Spirit, once they’ve personally experienced the sheer goodness of God’s words and the powers breaking in on us, if then they turn their backs on it, washing their hands of the whole thing, well, they can’t start over as if nothing happened. That’s impossible. Why, they’re re-crucifying Jesus.”

My question – why would you want to? I don’t, yet I do it every day. I get caught up in earthly things and my mind starts to drift away. And that last part – re-crucifying Jesus. Ouch. We can’t deny the sacrifice he made for us.

Colossians 1: 9-12 says “…We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way; bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.”

The same power

Sharing in the inheritance makes us joyful and thankful. I love food, so let’s think of this inheritance as a breakfast buffet. If you had a breakfast buffet available to you every morning with oatmeal, bacon, eggs, ham, sausage, potatoes, pancakes, and toast, would you just eat oatmeal every day? I will apologize now for any confusion to the oatmeal lovers in the audience. Try this. Picture the most bland, boring, plain oatmeal ever. Would you constantly pick that over a glorious display of breakfast food? Why? If you have all this delicious food available to you, free of charge, why would you keep eating oatmeal? We do it every day when we rely on ourselves instead of God’s power.

Romans 8:11, 14 says, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”

Cue the lyrics from Jeremy Camp’s song…

“The same power that rose Jesus from the grave, The same power that commands the dead to wake Lives in us, lives in us. The same power that moves mountains when He speaks The same power that can calm a raging sea Lives in us, lives in us. He lives in us.”

Putting it all together

Studying these verses has been like piecing together a puzzle for me.

• Children of God have the Holy Spirit living within us. This is so powerful, yet many of us spend a good portion of our lives, or sometimes our whole life, not tapping into this power. We rely on our own strength to get through things that require God’s strength, which is silly because God’s power within us is accessible any time. Finding and relying on this strength enlightens us, and once we truly find this enlightenment, we will not want to go back to relying on our own power.

2 Timothy 3:16 says “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Reading scripture gives us the tools we need to find this enlightenment. The more we read, the more we connect. I have always thought of faith as a muscle. God gives those muscles strength, and the more we pray and read the Bible, the more our muscles grow, kind of like a spiritual gym if you will. Once we see our muscles growing, we want more, so we try to buy a membership to this spiritual gym. But it turns out we have had one all along, we just didn’t know it. You can’t use something you don’t know you have! Don’t waste what has already been given to you.