Interpreting Common Reference Points

When God speaks, He will use common reference points in our every day life in order to help us make quickened connections with what He is saying. Finding common reference points is like drawing a picture by connecting dots. Soon when enough connections are made, His overall picture emerges.

In learning a new language, a common reference point is something we already know.  When we hear something new, our minds search for a point of reference in which to categorize the new word.  For example, a child already knows the shade of red in his old crayon box.  This shade is his reference point.  In his new box he needs to identify and sort more shades of red.  Learning a new language is just like sorting new crayons together with older similar colors.

MISC DEFINITIONS OF REFERENCE POINTS

A reference point is a recalled memory that comes to mind at the time we see, hear, taste, touch or smell something with our senses.
A reference point is an indicator that orients you generally.

A reference point is the place from which you measure, record or witness an event.

A reference point is a point to which other points, lines, and so forth are referred.

HUMOROUS EXAMPLES OF COMMON REFERENCE POINTS!

I found the following humorous entries on the Internet.  I thought they were too cute to pass by.  To understand them, is to understand what the Lord goes through in communicating with us!

• “My youngest son once thought that God was a turtle.  (God is eternal)”
• “After Sunday School, my friend asked her five year old daughter what she did in class that day.  Susie replied, “We gave Jesus a bath!”  Susie’s mother asked, “What do you mean – you gave Jesus a bath?”  Susie replied, “Our teacher said, “Warsh up the Lord.”
• “My five year old is learning the song that teaches the books of the Bible.  “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Axe the Opposums.”
• “We remind our kids each year that Easter is a remembrance of Jesus’ death on the cross and His raising from the grave.  My five year old with big eyes asked this year, “How many times does Jesus have to die?”
• “My five year old son and I like to listen to Steve Green, a Christian music artist, while driving in the car.  One of his songs has a rousing chorus of “Jesus Christ is Lord.”  My son, obviously moved by the music, joined in with his own rousing version, “Jesus Christ is bored!!”
• “My grandmother said that when she was a little child, after church she would look around the altar for the hole.  I asked her what she meant and she replied, “You know, the pastor talked about ‘The Father, the Son, in the hole he goes.’  She never could figure out what He was doing in that hole.”

When I read these, I thought what perfect examples they are of what it is like to learn a new language.  New words are understood by connecting common reference points of things we already understand.  And sometimes like these children, when we learn a new spiritual language, our reference points are not exactly what the Lord intended!  He must chuckle at some of the things we think He is saying!

What the children above did not have, was a solid reference point in which to understand words like, “eternal, worship, Acts, Apostles, keeping in remembrance, Lord and Holy Ghost.”  These new words were not connected with common reference points in their every day vocabulary and thus their precious minds heard the closest reference point they could find!

I know a gal who was praying over her husband and saw a picture-vision of a bellows.  She didn’t know what a bellows was and had no common reference point to understand the picture.  Later she saw a bellows on someone’s fireplace hearth, and remembering her vision, she asked what it was.  When she found out that it blew air onto embers to flame up a fire, she knew the Lord was saying He would be blowing upon her husband, stirring and rekindling his life back into passion with the Lord.

To begin finding common reference points, the best foundation is connecting what the Lord is saying to you with the Bible. This enables you to draw spiritual connections in how the unknown Word applies to your spiritual life. Once you begin to make these connections, with the help of the Holy Spirit’s quickening power, you will understand that the same kind of spiritual connections can take place outside the Bible, because the Lord uses anything in our lives to speak to us, if we will listen. When this happens, those new interpreted words will cross reference and interconnect with the Bible.

As we search for common reference points, we will begin to connect each of the isolated, questionable pieces of rhema. We find common denominators of patterns which are reference points with His Word; we use concordances, we include our personal life in the places where He has given us understanding before, etc and connect it all with the parts that we do not understand.