I heard this combination from the pulpit on Sunday and I was thankful. I don’t believe in my early Christian days that I even knew this, which leaves faith weak and a mystical type of thing with very little substance. Perhaps it was talked about and I just didn’t hear. Perhaps too as a convert to Christ later in life and coming into the church without knowledge, the importance of pointing me in that direction was overlooked and I was afraid to ask questions. Maybe women aren’t encouraged as much as men to study to show ourselves approved but now that I have come to understand that women too are to ‘grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, I am ecstatic.

     I am not ecstatic for knowledge in and of itself and so I guard that as I know knowledge can puff us up. I am ecstatic that I have grown in Christ thereby. I have grown in ‘knowing’ Him, I have grown in assurance, in trust and in my understanding of the greatest of doctrinal truths such as ‘justification’. I don’t tire of knowing these things as they teach me more of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Regeneration changes our thinking, our mind is renewed.

     I had one commentary all those years…. Calvin’s commentary on Romans. Now at my fingertips, via the computer, I have all of his commentaries on one .com address. I have a program called e-sword that I use a lot too and I have access to the thoughts of all the greats of the past. I have current thoughts as well as I find good places to visit online. I have learned to some degree to ask questions but I am still not comfortable in doing so which is so funny because I have a friend who does ask questions for that is how she learns. We are all different in this growing, but whatever way the Lord has for me I am truly thankful to Him.

Col 3:10 “And have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”

Eph 4:23 “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind”