KNOWLEDGEABLE ZEAL
You only need to be a Christ-follower about a week before you realize that calling upon the name of the Lord is not a one-time experience. You need God's mercy more than once in your life. The Christ-following life is on-going day-to-day relationship with the God who created you. But a problem arises down the road. You came to the point in your life where you recognized your need for salvation, you acknowledged your guilt, you asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins — and he did, of course — and then you say, in effect, "Thanks, Lord, I can take it from here. I can do the rest by myself." That's not how Christ-following works. Christ-following is a process of getting to know God.
A mistake that can be made is basing your spiritual ideas not on what you’ve learned but rather on what you’ve been told. Do you see the difference? You're Baptist because your parents were Baptist and you were raised in the Baptist church and that's enough for you. Now, the truth is, you can get away with this if you're Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian but what if you're raised as a Jehovah's Witness? Or a Mormon? Or a Muslim? You can't just rely on what you've been told. You can't just believe what you believe because your parents believed it and your church tells you that this is what you should believe. At some point you have to find the truth for yourself. It's not enough for any preacher or any church to tell you what to think. You must think for yourself; see for yourself; learn for yourself. You need to be zealous for the things of God, but this zeal needs to be based on knowledge. You can be sincere, but be sincerely wrong because you haven’t done your homework. “I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal.” (Romans 10:2)
Many folks want to create God in their own image. They dream up a concept of God and that's remarkably similar to themselves. Maybe he's a God of no consequences or maybe he's a God of revenge or maybe he's a God of racism but some people want to decide for themselves what God is like and that's the God they believe in. Even worse, sometimes these folks know enough of the Bible to quote a verse here and there to give the impression that their God is the Biblical one. But their zeal is without knowledge.
Life is a process of discovering God. He has revealed himself to you through nature, through his Word, through the history of Israel, through his Son Jesus Christ, and he reveals himself to you personally. Life is a process of getting to know him in his Word. Living the Christ-following life, then, is a process of learning to listen to the Word of Christ as it is presented to you — through Scripture, through the preaching of the gospel, through the testimony of other believers. When you hear the word, your faith is ignited. The goal is to learn to listen when God speaks to you. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Don't make Christ-following more difficult than God intended it to be.
A mistake that can be made is basing your spiritual ideas not on what you’ve learned but rather on what you’ve been told. Do you see the difference? You're Baptist because your parents were Baptist and you were raised in the Baptist church and that's enough for you. Now, the truth is, you can get away with this if you're Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian but what if you're raised as a Jehovah's Witness? Or a Mormon? Or a Muslim? You can't just rely on what you've been told. You can't just believe what you believe because your parents believed it and your church tells you that this is what you should believe. At some point you have to find the truth for yourself. It's not enough for any preacher or any church to tell you what to think. You must think for yourself; see for yourself; learn for yourself. You need to be zealous for the things of God, but this zeal needs to be based on knowledge. You can be sincere, but be sincerely wrong because you haven’t done your homework. “I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal.” (Romans 10:2)
Many folks want to create God in their own image. They dream up a concept of God and that's remarkably similar to themselves. Maybe he's a God of no consequences or maybe he's a God of revenge or maybe he's a God of racism but some people want to decide for themselves what God is like and that's the God they believe in. Even worse, sometimes these folks know enough of the Bible to quote a verse here and there to give the impression that their God is the Biblical one. But their zeal is without knowledge.
Life is a process of discovering God. He has revealed himself to you through nature, through his Word, through the history of Israel, through his Son Jesus Christ, and he reveals himself to you personally. Life is a process of getting to know him in his Word. Living the Christ-following life, then, is a process of learning to listen to the Word of Christ as it is presented to you — through Scripture, through the preaching of the gospel, through the testimony of other believers. When you hear the word, your faith is ignited. The goal is to learn to listen when God speaks to you. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Don't make Christ-following more difficult than God intended it to be.
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