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Paul only said the words that the Holy Spirit gave him
1 My Christian friends, remember when I first came to you and told you God’s message. I didn’t use smart words, like a man that thinks he knows everything. 2 No. I only told you about Jesus Christ, and that he died on the cross for us. I didn’t talk about other things. 3 I felt weak and frightened while I was with you. I was so frightened I was shaking.* Acts 18:9 4 I didn’t think up smart ideas or use smart words to get you to believe my message. No. I trusted God’s spirit to use his power to show everyone that my message is true. 5 I did that so that you will not trust in a smart person, but you will trust in the power of God.
6 You see, whenever I am with people that trust in Jesus, and are strong for him, that’s when I can talk about things that are wise and good. I don’t mean smart ideas that people in this world think up, like how the bosses in this world plan things. Those bosses will finish up anyway. 7 No, the wise and good things that we talk about are the things that belong to God. He planned those things a long time ago, before he made the world, but he didn’t tell anybody about them until now. 8 None of the bosses in this world understood those things. So they killed Jesus. They nailed our very great and good leader to a cross. 9 But, you know, God says this in his book,
“God got good things ready for the people that love him.
Those things are better than anything anybody else can ever think up.
Nobody ever saw or heard anything as good as the things that God got ready for us.”* Isaiah 64:4
10 But God’s spirit shows these things to us. His spirit understands everything, even those things that God has not yet told anybody. 11 You see, nobody knows what another person is thinking. Only that person’s own spirit knows, nobody else. Well, it is like that with God too. Only God’s spirit knows what God is thinking. 12 And remember this, God didn’t get us to think the way the people of this world think. No. God gave us his spirit, and his spirit helps us, so we can understand all the good things God gave us. 13 Those are the things that we tell you about. We don’t use words that smart people taught us, but we use the words that God’s spirit teaches us. And we tell God’s message to people that have God’s spirit living inside them, and we help them understand it.
14 You see, if God’s spirit is not living inside people, they can’t believe any message from God. They can’t understand what God wants to teach them. They think it is all stupid. You see, the Holy Spirit is the only one that can help people understand the things of God. 15 People that have God’s spirit can think about all these things and understand them. But people that haven’t got God’s spirit can never understand the people that have got his spirit. 16 God says this in his book,
“Nobody can know what God is thinking.
Nobody can try to tell him the right way to think.”* Isaiah 40:13
But the Holy Spirit is in us, so we can think the same way that Jesus Christ thinks.