The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

Matthew 13:10

1 Peter 1:8 talks about “joy unspeakable” and “full of glory”.  Suppose you had experienced this “joy unspeakable”, and had to explain it to someone else.  How would you do that?  Well, about the best way you could put it would be that it is, in fact, “joy”, and, it’s so incredible, it’s “unspeakable”, so that words do not even seem to do it justice.  That would be about it.  You could, perhaps, get a few more adjectives in there.  It was so “glorious”.  But, unless someone else had even seen “glorious”, they wouldn’t get it.  You would be more or less stuck, unable to explain it to them.

Now, suppose, for a moment, you were in Jesus’ sandals, sanctified dwelling place for His most blessed feet that they are, and you had to describe the Kingdom of Heaven to people.

Now, first, remember, that you cannot even see it unless you’re born again, let alone enter it (John 3:3-5).  So, we’re talking about a class of experience that is not only outside the frame of reference for your entire audience, but outside most of theirs even capability to comprehend such a thing, let alone it in actuality.  They’re simply not going to get it, because you just said they wouldn’t!

So, what does that leave you?  You can’t talk directly about it, because, no one could ever say “I see!” unless they believe, see?  Unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven (John 3:3).  If only you could use something that people knew to describe what they cannot, but might come to know.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

1 Corinthians 2:14

Without belief, without being born again through Jesus and His Spirit, you cannot receive anything of the Kingdom of God.

There is a requirement before understanding His truths, and that is belief.

We could talk all day and night about the wine and the wine-skin of Luke 5:37, but, when you understand what the anointing is, the strong drink of His Spirit, there is little left to discuss.  Jesus was the wine at the wedding of Cana, because He is the best drink.  When we understand the anointing, understand the flow of His Spirit, we can look to the parables of the wine in the wine-skin with fresh eyes.  Believing and understanding that substance within us, that stretches us, bubbles and churns inside of us, we understand different than we did before.  To sit down and do a book-study on what all the symbols of the parables mean, without faith, is the most worthless, religious exercise you could possibly imagine.  Until you can connect the unction within, the flow of living water which is the Spirit, to what was being said, saying with Peter on the day of Pentecost, “This is that…”, you haven’t correctly interpreted a thing, even if you have all the words correct.

Correct doctrine does not make you right.  The Spirit of Jesus, infusing you, as you embrace with a whole heart that right doctrine, does.

In John 16, Jesus says that he will, in the future, tell the disciples plainly of the Father, and not in figures of speech.  His disciples exclaimed, “Now we understand you plainly.”  Jesus asked then, “Do you believe at last?”  He hadn’t, yet, according to the text, begun to use plain language, and yet, they began to understand Him more clearly.  What was Jesus’ response?  “Do you believe at last?”  or, “You believe at last!”.  Jesus saw that the reason for their confusion, their inability to hear correctly, was due to their unbelief, their hardness of heart.  In John 6:64, after all but the twelve left, it says that Jesus knew who believed and who did not.

We are believing in an unseen reality, a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.  We are believing in a Kingdom that is ruled by the meekest, strongest, most perfect and humble God ever.  We are believing in a Kingdom that will never change, except to increase.  When He touches us, do we perceive it?  When He speaks, do we hear it?  When He moves, are our eyes clear enough to see it?

We all want the big, and the big happens, but if that is all we are trained to see, we will miss over 90% of the rest of what God wants to do.  We want to see the angel visible like Cornelius, the Acts 10:3, where he clearly saw in a vision an angel.  But, what about the faint whisper, the moving light, out of the corner of the eye?

What about the gentle wind?  What about the still small voice?

We all want the earthquake and the fire and the rock-shattering winds, but, if the Lord is not in them, they are of no use (1 Kings 19).

What if all the power in the entire universe came down before us, wrapped in flesh, and said, “Follow me.”  Would we leave our nets?  Or would our hearts be calloused and fat, could we miss the Creator of creation in our midst, and fail to feel the heart that beats for the whole of the world?  The eye of faith sees that the level of deliverance is not always in the flashiness of the trumpets, and the sound of their blast in your own ears, but in whether or not you are delivered.  Period.

David’s faith brought him five smooth stones.  Samson’s brought him the jawbone of an ass.  Elijah’s got him a fiery altar.  What are you waiting for?  Believe, and see the deliverance of the Lord.  The issue is not the showiness of the demonstration, but in the Kingdom that is being demonstrated.