cont: "BEING A SPONGE OR A TEACHER"
Greetings in the name of Jesus:
For many years I spent a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out the differences that took place between those who had very good knowledge of God's word yet who seemed to ineffective when it came to teaching the word or in helping anyone else find God in a more meaningful way.
By the time I have finally understood these things most of my ministry years had past as far as being out in front of the public, but thankfully I still have things like this blog which allows me to still speak the truth to those of you who still care to listen. In the last writing we started off with the examples of prayer that Jesus demonstrated to the disciples, and how very important prayer is to connecting with the power of God within us. Then I made note of 2 areas of the ways people study the word of God...but it isn't just God's word alone, but a basic style of learning that indicates most of these people just want to get through the material without it ever effecting their lives. We find that to be true both in the secular world and the church worlds of today. It's like taking a speed reading course with the idea of how fast we can absorb the basic materials that is written without understanding any of the meaning of it. There are many people who can quote scriptures, but have practical application of it to their lives.
3.
I know many people who teach scripture as though it is a history class because they want to be seen as knowledgeable and yet at the end of the day nothing learn ed has any reliability to our present day walk with Christ or our church lives today; and that sort of thing certainly does not help with the average problems that come up in Christ for us during the workweek.
4. The last area I will touch on deals with what we have done as a church body in guiding those who come to us about living for Christ. It deals with the way we use our doctrines to explain the mind of God instead of using scripture to explain and show how to live for Christ consistently. Church doctrines are fine as long as they don't begin to get in the way of fellowship or division among Christians; which seems to be exactly what they are doing. Most of you have heard me say at some point that Denomination means " division", and we have gotten pretty good at teaching a brand of Christ in our churches instead of teaching the truth about what Christ really wanted us to know. Without even getting into it too strongly we could have named thousands of things that have divided us both from God and from one another
My point here is simply that for the most part our churches have forgotten the basic principal of why we teach...and that is we teach to teach people how to teach people! Church is not designed to gather a great number of people together to have a strong and viable organization for Christ. It is not what we can say about Christ or the examples we can use from all over the world of how God's Spirit is working; but it is to teach and encourage those who stand next to us to live in such a way that glorifies what Jesus came to die on the cross for.
Has you life been more like a sponge or a teacher? One of the things that I have always said is that what keeps peoples interest is whether or not is is challenging to them personally? You cannot be effective in teaching something to someone if they are not interested in the subject. There is a cost and a price that must be paid to live out the Christian life. There must be a heart that is intent on hearing God speak to it. Have we set ourselves up in the eyes of this world to be children of God without knowing what we are doing? Can we become like Jesus? Isn't that what we are supposed to be striving for? If we actually do that in life what is that going to mean for us? Have we ever really asked ourselves that question? So shouldn't we be learning what He did and how He went about life? Jesus share with those around Him what His personal experiences were with God. How about you? May you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
For many years I spent a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out the differences that took place between those who had very good knowledge of God's word yet who seemed to ineffective when it came to teaching the word or in helping anyone else find God in a more meaningful way.
By the time I have finally understood these things most of my ministry years had past as far as being out in front of the public, but thankfully I still have things like this blog which allows me to still speak the truth to those of you who still care to listen. In the last writing we started off with the examples of prayer that Jesus demonstrated to the disciples, and how very important prayer is to connecting with the power of God within us. Then I made note of 2 areas of the ways people study the word of God...but it isn't just God's word alone, but a basic style of learning that indicates most of these people just want to get through the material without it ever effecting their lives. We find that to be true both in the secular world and the church worlds of today. It's like taking a speed reading course with the idea of how fast we can absorb the basic materials that is written without understanding any of the meaning of it. There are many people who can quote scriptures, but have practical application of it to their lives.
3.
I know many people who teach scripture as though it is a history class because they want to be seen as knowledgeable and yet at the end of the day nothing learn ed has any reliability to our present day walk with Christ or our church lives today; and that sort of thing certainly does not help with the average problems that come up in Christ for us during the workweek.
4. The last area I will touch on deals with what we have done as a church body in guiding those who come to us about living for Christ. It deals with the way we use our doctrines to explain the mind of God instead of using scripture to explain and show how to live for Christ consistently. Church doctrines are fine as long as they don't begin to get in the way of fellowship or division among Christians; which seems to be exactly what they are doing. Most of you have heard me say at some point that Denomination means " division", and we have gotten pretty good at teaching a brand of Christ in our churches instead of teaching the truth about what Christ really wanted us to know. Without even getting into it too strongly we could have named thousands of things that have divided us both from God and from one anotherMy point here is simply that for the most part our churches have forgotten the basic principal of why we teach...and that is we teach to teach people how to teach people! Church is not designed to gather a great number of people together to have a strong and viable organization for Christ. It is not what we can say about Christ or the examples we can use from all over the world of how God's Spirit is working; but it is to teach and encourage those who stand next to us to live in such a way that glorifies what Jesus came to die on the cross for.
Has you life been more like a sponge or a teacher? One of the things that I have always said is that what keeps peoples interest is whether or not is is challenging to them personally? You cannot be effective in teaching something to someone if they are not interested in the subject. There is a cost and a price that must be paid to live out the Christian life. There must be a heart that is intent on hearing God speak to it. Have we set ourselves up in the eyes of this world to be children of God without knowing what we are doing? Can we become like Jesus? Isn't that what we are supposed to be striving for? If we actually do that in life what is that going to mean for us? Have we ever really asked ourselves that question? So shouldn't we be learning what He did and how He went about life? Jesus share with those around Him what His personal experiences were with God. How about you? May you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
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