SPIRITUAL APTITUDE

If you’re like me, you got your fill of them in school – those dreaded aptitude tests. There is no doubt, God has created us all uniquely. No two people are the same. We all have varying aptitudes, and a part of maximizing who we are is discovering our strengths, then capitalizing on those strengths.

We all have different aptitudes, but we also have needs in various dimensions of our lives that we meet by exercising those skills. We have an intellectual aptitude, and we must use it to think. We have an emotional aptitude, and we use it to feel and relate to others. We have a physical aptitude, and we must exercise our bodies to develop it. We don’t use a calculator to demonstrate love to a sweetheart, and we don’t use our heart or our athletic ability to solve an algebra problem.

The Bible tells us there is another aptitude we often miss - a spiritual aptitude, or lack thereof, in 1 Corinthians 2:11-14: For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of the person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

In order to have, or use, our spiritual aptitude, we must rely on our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and on his indwelling Spirit in our lives. Although God never asks us to “divide” ourselves in order to isolate and use just one aptitude, some things are definitely spiritually discerned.

Try as we might, we cannot rely exclusively on our intellect or our emotions in order to apprehend God’s truth and deepen our spiritual lives. Rather, we also must exercise our spiritual aptitude, something honed only through an intimate relationship walking and communing daily with God himself.

In Christ,

Chris Heinss