Seeing Spiritually

The scriptures give plenty of examples of people who are not present seeing other people doing things.

• Elisha saw Gehazzi ask Naaman for money even though the was not there. He said “my spirit was with you” (2 Kings 6:26)
• Jesus saw Nathaniel under the fig tree before he met him. He had already discerned his character (John 1:47-48).
• Paul seemed to know what the Corinthians were thinking and doing.

Because we are spiritual, ie active in an additional dimension, we are not constrained by the three dimensions of space plus time.

These seeing experiences can have two causes.

• gifts of the Spirit. ie people being shown things by the Holy Spirit.
• The spirit born person becoming more like Jesus.

I used to presume the former. That all these experiences occurred because the Holy Spirit showed someone something. I assumed that all knowledge beyond the natural is a “word of knowledge” which is the gift of the spirit.

I more recently beginning to think it is more of the latter. As we become more like Jesus, we can begin to operate more in the way that Jesus did.

Over the past year, I have read a couple of books by people describing an amazing ability to see spiritual things. They each had this as a child, before they developed a relationship with Jesus and encountered the gift of the Spirit. This suggests that they were seeing with some human spiritual senses. This seeing created all sorts of problems for them, but once he started walking in the Spirit, it started to make more sense.