Pas­tor Julien Cyrus

The peo­ple who know their God shall be strong and do ex­ploits (Daniel 11:32).

We are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the won­der-filled age of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI)—com­put­er sys­tems de­vel­oped to per­form tasks that typ­i­cal­ly re­quire hu­man in­tel­li­gence, with ap­pli­ca­tions that have rev­o­lu­tionised the way we ac­cess so­lu­tions to dai­ly life chal­lenges. Through AI, sig­nif­i­cant break­throughs are be­ing wit­nessed in al­most every in­dus­try.

But be­fore Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, there ex­ists an even more pow­er­ful sys­tem called Spir­i­tu­al In­tel­li­gence (SI). This is a body of knowl­edge that can on­ly be ac­quired through a re­la­tion­ship with the Spir­it of God.

The Bible de­scribes the ex­pe­ri­ences of some ex­tra­or­di­nary men and women whose walk with God pro­vid­ed them with the SI they need­ed to ac­com­plish great things in their life­times.

In Daniel chap­ter 2, King Neb­uchad­nez­zar had a dis­turb­ing dream and sum­moned his as­trologers to tell him what he dreamt and to ex­plain what it meant. The king’s ex­pec­ta­tion was im­prac­ti­cal among men, but he gave or­ders to have them ex­e­cut­ed. When Daniel heard about it, he im­me­di­ate­ly ob­tained roy­al per­mis­sion for ad­di­tion­al time, as­sur­ing that he would tell the king what the dream meant.

Daniel asked his friends to pray about it and that same night every­thing was re­vealed to him in a vi­sion, which he shared with King Neb­uchad­nez­zar.

Con­sid­er the prophet Eli­jah, who, be­cause of Is­rael’s sins, prayed earnest­ly that no rain would fall, and none fell for three and a half years. He then prayed again to un­lock heav­en and the rain fell, and the earth be­gan to pro­duce its crops (James 5:17-18).

Al­so, there is the time when the king of Syr­ia fought against Is­rael and made se­cret plans to at­tack its cities. How­ev­er, on every oc­ca­sion, the prophet El­isha would re­veal his plan to the king of Is­rael, and the Is­raelites were alert­ed.

The Syr­i­an king be­came great­ly up­set and sum­moned his of­fi­cers to find out who among them was spy­ing on be­half of the king of Is­rael. Then, one of his of­fi­cers in­formed him that El­isha was telling the king of Is­rael the very words that he spoke in the pri­va­cy of his bed­room! (2 Kings 6:8-12).

And what about Noah, who built an ark af­ter be­ing warned by God about a flood that would cov­er the whole earth? And David, who fear­less­ly stepped for­ward and de­feat­ed the Philis­tine gi­ant, Go­liath?

Man’s abil­i­ty, as fa­cil­i­tat­ed through AI, though out­stand­ing, is lim­it­ed to hu­man in­put. Paul warns that our faith should not stand in the wis­dom of men, but in the pow­er of God (1 Corinthi­ans 2:5).

In Christ, we re­ceive the Spir­it of God, who gives us ac­cess to the things that are freely giv­en to us by God.

When the dis­ci­ples asked Je­sus why he spoke to the peo­ple in para­bles, he an­swered, “The knowl­edge about the se­crets of the King­dom of heav­en has been giv­en to you, but not to them” (Matthew 13:10-11).

T&T, let us pray that the eyes of our un­der­stand­ing will be en­light­ened with the SI need­ed to ad­dress the is­sues of to­day. Amen.