October 17, 2014
Sent
Before Bill can begin a new
vaccine treatment for prostate cancer he must have a special heavy-duty port
surgically installed. Unfortunately he keeps getting sent to surgeons who
thought they were dealing with a normal size port, and when they realize they
can’t do the installation we have to go through another referral process. Taking
this scenario to a spiritual level I wonder if something similar happens to new
believers. We want to help them mature so we refer them to devotional books, DVD’s
of prominent preachers, or to a fellowship group. Seldom do we send them to the
right place for maturing — the Bible and Jesus.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Gail;
-----God made this world a place of tricks. He could have written His Word across the sky. Nobody would doubt it then. So He did that with stars (Ps 19:1-6) to not make eternal assurance for fools, and wrote clues for what He meant, sprinkled like seeds, into a collection of letters, treatises, and books through the hands of several dozen people having lived over a dozen and a half centuries. He did not make its binder of glue and paper, or of even leather. We did that. He made its binder of truth, the sense which ties things together. Then He put the book amongst a species of beings cultured in falsehood, as if any of us could understand it.
-----Fortunately, He made soil for germinating and growing its seeds of truth within any who will mix the soil's formula: 1) not knowing what you don’t know (that is, a humble attitude,) 2) desire to know the truth, and 3) desire to unite with everything truthful. Then He made us all incomplete without each other, for any one of us can only know a scratchin’ of anything. Only together do all our scratchings etch a somewhat useful picture.
-----So we can neither mature with or without others. We can only mature with and without them. We were created to be social beings partly because we were created with minds far too limited to know much of anything without first having learned from others. I have always wanted to think that a person could reason his way to Christ. And I try to think that. But it does not stand up to Paul’s “But how are men to call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?” (Rom 10:14) The bigger part of what we know comes through revelations of truths given by others who knew first. We even learned the very means of receiving information by mommy teaching us language.
-----But all that does not mean DVD’s and self-help books are necessary to understand God’s Word. They are only useful. And they're usefullness is only sometimes. But something like them is necessary and is written all around us all the time in the hearts and speech and actions and reactions of others who are built into the Lord’s body. The impressions we receive from them effect the way we understand what we read from the Bible when we practice it amongst them. It’s kind of like we are all preachers to each other built into a single temple. Yet each stone will not be edified there lest it desires unity, and lest it gave up making believe to seek truth. A person can only extinguish his own falsehoods from his own thinking. No one can surrogately desire truth for
another. Each has to desire it himself. Each has to purify and intensify it himself. Each has to study the Word himself. But we can not relate to the Word, nor to its God, without relating to others as well. So we can only grow with and without others. It’s a tricky thing.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
"Christian Ear" has been included in our A Sunday Drive for this week. Be assured that we hope this helps to point even more new visitors in your direction.
http://asthecrackerheadcrumbles.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-sunday-drive_19.html
Post a Comment