The other day, I was scrolling through Facebook while on a break at work, and after reading status after status and comment after comment I thought, wow… We really like to get on our soap boxes don’t we?
We live in this age of social media (and society in general I suppose) where not only does everyone have something to say, but everyone is also the certified expert on the subject, as well as the new modern philosopher when it comes to debating and discussing whatever said topic is.
It's easy to mock that happening in front of us on Twitter, but the reality is we fall into that same trap in our faith too. We either get caught up in a whirlwind trend with all these radical new ideas that seem ok on the surface, but underneath sinisterly poison the Gospel, or we get so entrenched in defending and debating our views on theological topics that we lose sight of what following Jesus is all about. It’s like it’s more fun for us to create all kinds of new ideas in our head, and talk about things on our own “strength of mind,” meanwhile we haven’t opened our bibles in weeks to seek out what God actually says about the subject.
There are plenty of different reasons to explain why we get lost in our philosophical and theoretical discussions (and truth be told, it is probably a combination of all of them), but one of the main and most basic reasons in my opinion is that we’ve stopped reading our Bibles. That’s is, plain and simple. And that’s why I think our most recent message series “How to Study the Bible” has been so important (and just plain awesome).
Each week (if you missed a week or need to catch up on all of them, we have them posted on the website, and I definitely encourage you to do so), we dove into what it means to actually study the Bible and let it be the instructions for how we do life. This past week really summed it up for me when Marshall spoke on Hebrew 11:6 “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” We can’t truly experience the fullness of what it means to be a follower of Christ if we aren’t diving into the word, praying and hearing from God and truly learning how to be like Jesus. Our faith is rooted in what God has already spoken as his word.
This past week’s message, and message series as a whole, has been a huge encouragement to me. Armed with the tools of how to truly study the Bible, we can use them and walk forward as followers of Jesus emboldened and ready to live for the kingdom of God.
-Chris