The Balance between Revelation and Study (Part 1) | Ep. 179

A persecutor becomes a herald of grace, and the catalyst for change was not better teaching but a blazing revelation of Jesus Christ. We walk through Paul’s story—from Saul’s elite training and fierce zeal to the Light on the Damascus road—and then step into the silence of Arabia, where God dismantled a lifetime of tradition and rebuilt a life in the Spirit. Along the way, we explore what wilderness can do for us: expose idols, retrain the conscience through meditation, and make room for a new identity that cannot coexist with the old.

I share how surrender gets tangible when love confronts what we cling to; for me it was getting rid of comics because it held a piece of my heart. That concrete act set up a deeper lesson in Romans 8: the law is holy, but we are weak; the Spirit is present, and He is strong. We trace the move from schoolmaster to sonship, from duty to delight, and from obligation to the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If you’ve ever tried to white-knuckle your way into holiness, you’ll hear why revelation, repentance, and the Spirit’s indwelling presence are the nonnegotiables of real transformation.

You’ll leave with a simple framework to practice today: seek revelation in Scripture, embrace your Arabia of quiet and wrestling, meditate to train your conscience, walk by the Spirit’s guidance, and act against your idols with decisive steps. This is a candid, practical, and hope-filled invitation to become who God calls you to be—free, focused, and led by His voice. What’s your Arabia, and what idol is God asking you to lay down?

Chapters

• 0:00 Blood, Breath, And A Call To Return
• 0:56 A Challenge To Examine Belief
• 1:31 Paul’s Gospel By Revelation
• 3:42 From Saul’s Training To Zeal
• 6:40 Damascus Light And Radical Change
• 12:01 Arabia As Wilderness Formation
• 16:35 Wrestling With Idols And Repentance
• 21:15 Study, Meditation, And Renewal
• 26:04 From Law To Spirit In Romans 8
• 31:55 Schoolmaster To Sonship
• 36:18 Walking In The Spirit, Not Just Knowing
• 39:30 Closing Exhortation And Support

Transcript

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 0:03

The vision received was that of blood cells traveling throughout the body, supplying the much-needed oxygen and other nutrients to the differing members of the body to fulfill their purpose. Once the blood cells are spent, they must return back to the heart to be refilled before being sent out again and fulfill their purpose. Y'all hear that? That's that bee. I've been hearing that bee for a couple weeks now. And I want to share with you the bee that's in my bonnet. Because the Lord has been that bee to me for a couple weeks now, and it's actually that's not his fault, but Elder John has something to do with this because he asked a question at some point, and it just stirred me up in my spirit, and I told him about it during our AWCF conference. And today, I want to share with you something that's on my heart that I hope will challenge you in a way that maybe you haven't been challenged. I'm not here to put anybody on the spot, but I am here to be a mouthpiece of the Lord and let Him put you on the spot in your own heart and question some of the things that you've said or that you've done or that you've experienced or even the things that you believe in. But a lot of it has to do with Paul, and I've been meditating a lot on Paul's life and where Paul was and where he ended up in. And if you will, can you turn to Galatians 1, verse 11? Paul was speaking to the Galatians, and he said something very interesting, very, very profound about the gospel that he preached. He says, but I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it. And what I feel I'm sharing with you today is not so much a teaching. I feel like what I'm gonna do for the next hour or so is sort of share with you things that sort of can't be taught to you. You simply have to experience them. And Paul said that this gospel that I preach was not taught to me of man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and I wasted it, and profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him fifteen days, but other of the disciples saw I none save James, the Lord's brother. And I read this text and I begin to meditate on the word, and I begin to think, My God, how in the world did Paul, or excuse me, let's start with who he was originally. He was Saul of Tarsus. He was a Pharisee, he was a son of a Pharisee. How did he get such zeal for the Christian faith that he previously persecuted? Have you ever just sat down, sat back, and thought about Saul became a Christian? You see, when scholars have written about the life of Saul, that if he was a Pharisee and his father was a Pharisee, most likely he began his training in the house. His father taught him what it was to be a Pharisee, and then when he probably turned around 13, that's when they thought Jews, the boys became men, he then began into rigorous Phariseeal training. And in the Jewish culture, when the children were considered to be men, and they went through this rigorous Phariseaical training, they began to memorize large portions of scripture. They began to memorize the whole Torah, the first five books of the Bible, word for word. And they would have to copy it down and write it like scribes would have to write the word and copy it down, and they couldn't make a mistake. And this was his life. 20, maybe 30 years. I don't know when his conversion was. But if he was a son of a Pharisee and then went into Pharisaical training, he must have had to memorize the 613 laws in the Torah. All 613. And he had to discipline himself and fast from different dietary laws. He couldn't touch this and couldn't touch that. And he was very zealous for that. And he created a great reputation for this. And his reputation for the strictness of the law and his devotion to keeping it was well known in Jerusalem. In fact, even by his own admission, he said, I was a top-of-the-line Pharisee. He didn't say it exactly like that. I'm paraphrasing, but if you look at Philippians 3:5, he's describing who he was. And he said, I was circumcised on the eighth day. I was of the stock of Israel. I was of the tribe of Benjamin. He's sort of spouting how he was a Jew of Jews. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. And as of touching the law, I was a Pharisee on top of being Hebrews. And concerning zeal, I persecuted. I was all for my Phariseeal upbringing. To the extent that I would even kill for what I was raised in. Because it was by his own admission that Stephen was stoned to death. And he said, touching the righteousness which is in the law, I'm blameless. I was blameless. I did everything I was required to do. And so when you look at his past and you come to see that all of the natural accolades that you could garner, he got that. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees and son of a Pharisee. And yet, truth be told, it was only natural. There was nothing supernatural about Paul before the road on Damascus. And yet, Paul's life changed so drastically. How did this man come to declare the kingdom of God with such power and anointing and authority? Think of that. Just meditate on that. A lot of the teaching today is questioning do you really meditate on the word and consider the deepness of the ramifications of what Paul went through? To be on a road to Damascus and to see a light shining in his eyes and to hear a voice and to immediately know and recognize that it was the Lord whom he thought he was serving. But that same Lord said, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And yet he was persecuting the church, thinking that he zealously served the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And yet he found out that he was actually persecuting the God whom he thought he loved? I mean, I think of today who could make such a drastic change from a horrible previous life to being a Christian, and the only person that I could think of that might be on measure with Paul is Hitler. Can you imagine Hitler doing everything he did against the Jews and allowing all of this stuff to happen to then be transformed into a zealous Christian? Because that's what it was like for Paul in his day. He persecuted them, he jailed them, he spoke ill of them because he was a part of the Phariseeal training and it was all he knew, and he thought it was right. Yet drastically, in one day, in a flash of light, his life changed. Profoundly changed. How is that possible? And the answer is within these words for I neither received the gospel of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. That is what changed, changed every Christian's life in the early church. They had a revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul never met the man in the flesh. He didn't walk with him for three and a half years. Yet something happened to him so profound that he ended up not persecuting the church but saving them and then bringing the world into the Christian faith as well. There should be nothing more profound of an experience in your life than an actual revelation of Jesus Christ. There's a song that the Hill Song sings. And it's become so popular, not because it's such a well-written song, it's because it resonates in Christians around the world. It says, I will never be the same again. I can never return. I've closed the door. The glory of God has filled my life, and I will never be the same again. No one can sing that song with such sincerity and genuine unless they've had a revelation of Jesus Christ. That's why it resonates within Christians around the world. Because they met him. It wasn't something about they read in a book, it wasn't something that they were taught. They had a revelation of Jesus Christ. But there's something else more interesting about Paul, and he says it in verse 17. He said, When I received that revelation of Jesus Christ, I didn't go to the apostles before me in Jerusalem. I didn't confer with them. I didn't talk with them to see if the experience that I had was genuine. It says I went to Arabia. Now, if you've ever looked at a map, Damascus is a city about right here. And if you look west, and I'm doing it in your perspective, if you look west, it says Arabian Desert. Why would Paul go to the Arabian desert? I can't tell you specifically what he experienced in the Arabian desert. I don't have any resources to go to. There's nothing in the scriptures that would allow me to say, this is what happened to him. This is what he learned. There's no biblical scholars that can tell you through research, this is what he went through. So I want you to allow me to speculate. And I'm going to try to speculate and make it as biblical as possible so that I'm not stretching it like a rubber band and watch it snap. I want to stretch it so that it fits. You see, in the old covenant, the wilderness is synonymous with the desert. Now, where were the Israelites called out of Egypt for? To be delivered. They were called out so that they could go worship him, they were called out so they could go serve him. And where did he call them out of Egypt? Did they go right into the promised land? They went into the wilderness. And what happened in the wilderness that was so profound to them? They first went to Mount Sinai. What did they receive on Mount Sinai? The law. The law was written in tablets of stone. Yet all of that I'm speaking here, I'm trying to show you types and shadows so that I can make a maybe a valid speculation as to what Paul went through when he went to Arabia because he didn't go there for a day. He went there for three years. That's a long time. Three years he went to the wilderness. And what happened to the Israelites in the wilderness of spirit? They got the law at Mount Sinai. In the middle of the desert, when they were panting for water, out of the rock flowed the water that gave them to drink. And we know that they were sustained, even their clothing did not wear out during all of that time. But we know also that the Israelites in the wilderness from 20 years and up passed away. You see, while they were there, God was using this wilderness experience to reveal himself to them. He tried to do that through the law. He tried to do that through all the manna coming down from heaven. He tried to do that as he brought the water from the rock to show them I'm your provider, I'm your sustainer. Just live by my word. I don't want you to have kings. I want you to live by your relationship with me. You to me got scared and they came down and He always gave them what He wanted. Always gave the people what they wanted, but it's not

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 15:25

what He wanted. So they went through the promised land, and then many of them passed away. And so what God was using in the wilderness was a place of purification, a place of I need to renew my people because they're a mixed multitude and they walk in unbelief. And I need to rid them of that, or they will never be able to take the promised land that I've given for them. So I take it to the new cast. Think of all those types and shadows, don't let them go. But in the New Testament, who was taken into the wilderness to be tested for 40 days? Christ. And there he fasted, and there he wrestled, not with God, but he wrestled with Satan. And he wrestled in the word, he wrestled in the spirit. But after he got out of the wilderness, what was the first thing that took place? He went into a synagogue and he read the scrolls. And what did he read that was prophetic concerning him? It says in Luke 4: 18, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. The Israelites went through it. Jesus went through it. And if they're an example unto us, then we need to go through it. No one jumped over the wilderness over the desert. They had to go through the desert in order to get where God wanted them to be. Now, considering all of these examples that I've just uh relayed to you, could Paul have possibly, when he went to Arabia, see tremendous amounts of revelation directly from God? It's possible. Could it have been a place for him where God was purifying him and removing the things that he had learned? It could have been a place of renewal because he was a Pharisee. You don't just let that go in one day. You don't let that go in one moment. He'd been taught that all of his life. He was an adult, maybe 30, maybe 40 years of age. It says that he was probably born around zero uh uh BC. That's about 40 years, maybe. He had a lot of false teaching that he had to get rid of. God had to do something different with him because he was not taught right. He was taught the traditions of men, and he was very zealous to keep those traditions. Although some of the traditions had been from the word, they were really simply traditions of men. Consider that, because he couldn't have just walked zealously in the Christian faith without having dealt with that. How much of our lives were horrible and vile before we came to the Lord, and they didn't just go away. Our paradigm of thought, our temptations that we were weaken before, and that we were just going before we knew the Lord, we still struggle with them sometimes until the Lord really delivers us, but it usually doesn't happen in a day. So for me, Paul had to get rid of a lot of baggage, and I think that's what Arabia was for. And so for me, Arabia symbolizes a place where it's just you and God, and there is where you wrestle with God, like Jacob wrestled with God before he met his brother again. He was wrestling for a blessing, wrestling, and he wrestled until he lost the hip in his socket and he stayed with a limp for his life, but he had to wrestle with God for a blessing. And I believe Paul was so immersed in the Pharisaical teaching that he had to wrestle with God, like the Israelites were wrestling with God with their murmuring. And they're complaining and they're questioning how we're gonna do this, how are we gonna do that? Let's go back to Egypt. They wanted to go back to Egypt. It was still in them. They got out of Egypt, but Egypt was not removed from them yet. And they had to go through the wilderness to get it out of them. And so I believe Paul, like all of us, had to go through a wilderness where you wrestle with God. You wrestle to let go of your own understanding. You wrestle to tear down these idols that you yourself erected. You need to tear them down. If he is gonna be on the throne of your life, it must be you that tears them down. That's called repentance. I turn away and I tear down the things that I worshiped before I met you. And you have to wrestle with God to give up anything that challenges his authority in your life. I can remember when I first met him, I you might not know this, but I collected comics and I was totally immersed in comics, and comics was like an idol to me because I would spend $20 to $100 every week, no lie, and I would buy up all the comics and I would spend my weekend reading all of the comics. All of them. By the time I really met the Lord, I had chests in my room, about four to five of 10,000 comics in there. And one of the things that I wrestled with God was getting rid of them. And I threw 10,000 comics into the garbage dumpster. I didn't go sell them. I threw them all away. By the time I was collecting comics, comics were not a dollar, they weren't 50 cents, they were like a dollar, dollar ninety five, two ninety five, three ninety five, four ninety-five because they had all these wonderful pages. But I had to get rid of that from my life. And I wrestled with him for a while, but I had a particular individual in my life that spoke to me, and when he did it, I knew it in my heart, and I had to get rid of it, and I got rid of it. Music had to get rid of it. There are things in your life before you came to God that are ingrained in you, and you feel like that is your sense of self, but it is not. It is not you. It is what God needs to get rid of so you can become the you in Him that you need to be. There has to be points in your life where you are wrestling with God to give up the things that need to be given up in order to move on with him. Because otherwise, casting aside every burden, every weight, it's gonna hold you back. And you're not gonna be able to go out in a full run because you're with this parachute behind you, and it's holding you back. It's making you strong, but strong in the flesh, but it's holding you back. And then we wrestle with him to be silent. Because we so much value our own opinion, we so much value our own experiences in the Lord that we think that's the way it has to be. And so we talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk to the Lord, and we never shut up. We never just be quiet, but listen of me. Learn of me, learn of my ways that I may show you who I am. And so that's my speculation. Take it or leave it. Years after this, Arabia and receiving this revelation and him ministering the gospel, he says, Paul says to his spiritual son in the ministry, he says, son, show your study and show yourself the proved unto God, rightly dividing the word. And so I want to take this spiritual, experiential aspect. I can only share with you. I can't teach you how to do it. I can only tell you that it must be experienced. And as you seek him, you will have your unique experience with the Lord. But when it's all said and done, it's gonna be very similar to what many of the saints of old experienced. And you're gonna do some of the things and give up some things, maybe not give up comics. Maybe that wasn't your vice. Maybe your vice was something else, but you have to learn to give up things in order to move on with God. So he says to him, study, show yourself approved, rightly dividing the word. And see, this is our challenge. I'm taking the spiritual, now I'm going now to the natural. I want to make it practical, I want to make it something you can now put your hands on, but the other stuff, you gotta seek the Lord on it. And in order to meet this challenge, to study, to show ourselves approved, practicing how to rightly divide the word, how do we rightly apply this particular word to our situation or to his situation or her situation, we've got to set aside time to really dig into the word. Because many times in the old covenant, and I'll just bring up three examples, he says, Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he do what? Meditate day and night. Meditate day and night on the law. It says also, when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night watches. That means while you're in your bed or or you're standing on the wall and you're you have the watch of the night. You're not just sitting there almost trying to stay. No, you're meditating on the Lord. You're meditating on him when you put your pillow down and you go to bed and you talk with him and you meditate on the things that he's taught you and how they apply to you. And he says, David says, I will meditate upon thy precepts and have respect unto thy ways. Meditation is something that must be practiced by us. We meditate. For some of us who went to college who were really serious about it, we meditated on the things that were taught to us, and that's how we got good at it. That's how we studied and we memorized and we passed our tests, and others, well, we really didn't meditate on it, so we passed with a C. But for those of us that were serious about school, we meditated, and that's what it was. It was a study, it was it was uh uh you thinking on it deeply, not just superficially, not just oh yeah, yeah, I heard that, I remember something about that. It's you you really got into it, especially if you liked it. But it says in Joshua, this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth. The law, the words of the law, you will be speaking them at all times. Bible breath? Any Bible breaths in here? That's speaking the law out of your mouth, and some people kind of get antsy with me on Facebook because I use a lot of scriptures. That's because the law is in my mouth. I'm not trying to be impressive, I'm not trying to no, I'm trying to use the word to apply it to that situation, but we've always got to be doing that, and you will meditate on the law day and night. Why? Because back then, when you meditated on the law and your parents were constantly teaching you, constantly teaching you about the law, why did they do that? Because they wanted you to observe it and do it. It was all about obeying it, not just simply memorizing it. It was actually doing it. That was the purpose of your meditation so that you learn to do it. For then, only then, when you do the law, is when you make your way prosperous, and then you'll have good success. You see, in the old covenant, meditating on the law was considering it deeply, not superficially. It's dwelling on what did the Lord say? How do I apply that to my life? How do I do that? Well, I don't do that, okay. The purpose of all of this meditation is to train your conscience. Because a lot of you had an upbringing that wasn't quite right in the Lord, and your conscience is trained to think certain things that are actually wrong, but because you've always done it in your life and you never told it was wrong, your conscience actually thinks it was right. But you need to train your conscience in the word, and then you receive new conviction, and then you start renewing your mind, and then you start walking differently. But it doesn't happen by reading the word and saying, Yeah, I read chapter one. It's about meditation, letting it sink in, and not hear a word, oh yeah, that applies to sister so-and-so, or brother. No, you missed it because it applied to you a lot. We always thinking about how it applies to somebody, we don't realize that it applies to us. So the purpose of all of this meditation is to train our consciences, and this is what is called in the new covenant, renewing the mind, so that we may observe and obey his word. But if that's all we do, if that's all we do, study, study, study, study, we will never be lifted off of this natural realm into walking it in the spirit. It'll just be an obligatory obedience. And although obedience is better than sacrifice, when you obey with a willful heart rather than a begrudging heart, who do you think he's gonna be more pleased with? He's gonna be pleased with the one that was a cheerful giver, that cheerfully obeyed, and not just begrudgingly, you know? So in Romans 8, Paul teaches us of some very powerful things. He teaches that the law could not fulfill righteousness in us. Why? Because the law is weak through our flesh. If we tried our best from the day we were born to walk in the law as he spoke it, wrote it, we would fail. It was inevitable. Every human being on earth has decided to walk contrary to the law, except one. And so if I'm going to walk in this law, it doesn't come by meditation. I must be raised up into a higher level, into another realm of existence. And Paul goes on to teach in Romans 8 that there is now a law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And it is this law that has freed us from the law of sin and death. This law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, not the old one, this one freed me from the law of sin and death. Have you meditated sufficiently on that one? Have you thought about that real deeply? Because some of us struggle with our little vices, and we're struggling because we have not learned the new law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which frees us from the law of sin and death. You see, in the law, inherent in the law was righteousness. There's nothing wrong with the law, the law is perfect. Don't steal, don't murder, worship the Lord your God, and him only will you serve? Honor your father and mother. All of that's good. All of that's perfect. There's nothing wrong with the law. It's us. And I cannot fulfill the law in the flesh. And so I've got to learn well, what is this law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus? Because that's what's freeing me from sin and death in the new covenant. So our meditation is not merely on the law of the old covenant. Anybody know what the purpose of the law of the old covenant was? Interestingly enough, Paul speaks of this as well. Bishop Harris was about to answer. I'm like, you know, you know. The purpose of the law of the old covenant was, you can turn there. Galatians 3, verse 24. You can write that in your notes. The purpose of the law in the old covenant was to bring us unto Christ. Yeah, it taught us what to do. Yeah, it taught us what not to do, but in my flesh, I can't even do it anyway. So it's supposed to drive me, it was supposed to push me in the direction of where I need you, Jesus. I need you. And it's what we try to teach our own children as we raise them up and have them understand. Do you see what's in your heart? Do you see what's in your heart? And not focus so much on the on where the parts where they fail, but we acknowledge them. But that is supposed to drive you into I want a relationship with Christ because I can't do this alone. I can't do this by myself. Without Jesus, we can do nothing. He said the law was our schoolmaster, it was our teacher. It brought us to Christ. After failure, failure, after failure, after failure, all I want to do is be freed from this and know Christ. Because I can't do it on my own. And then look at what it says: that we might be justified, never sinned by faith. By faith in Jesus. But after that faith is come, we're no longer under a schoolmaster. I'm no longer under the law. Not to say that the law was wrong, but to say that if I'm going to be justified, is now going to be justified by faith in him. He's going to justify me, whereas I could not justify myself. For ye are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. You see, our relationship with our Father or Christ as children is not through the knowledge of him. Our relationship is Christ as children is not because we know he exists. It is by faith in him, in knowing him. It did not come through the knowledge of the law. So I say again, our meditation should not merely be on the law, but on him whom the law was to bring us unto Jesus Christ. There's a difference there between just knowing the law for the sake of knowing it and knowing him through the law. That's why it is so important that you inherit the indwelling spirit of Christ. I cannot separate the two and say, I have faith in him, yet I have not his spirit. Paul says, Ye are not in the flesh. I'm back in Romans 8. Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, big if. If the spirit of God dwells. So I'm asking you, is the Spirit of God in you? Because if it is, then you have access to being in the Spirit. If you don't, you don't have that access. I all I can do is question you. You figure that out. You'll know if you measure your life experiences with the word and what it teaches us to receive the spirit. Now, if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his. So here I say again that it was not the knowledge of the law that established your relationship to God. It was your knowledge of him. It was you knowing him, and by faith in him, through the Spirit of life that indwells us, we now have relationship with him. We now have our being, we have our identity, we are the children of God. Because Paul goes on to say, right at that end of Romans 8, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. So when I say by faith, well, yeah, but if you don't have the Spirit and all you're doing is believing, yeah, that God exists, and yeah, the third day, that's all fine and dandy. But you need to have that relationship with him because it is by the Spirit that you were as a child of God. So if the scriptures tell us that we should be meditating on the law of the Lord and meditating, considering deeply his commandments and his ways, not merely focusing on the word, it's meditating on him through the eyes of the word. That's where our meditation should be. Our meditation in the new covenant that we live in is to consider deeply what it means to walk in the spirit. 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