“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” –Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
Isn’t it sad that this statement is just as true today as it was then? We are doing a study on what it means to be a Christian in my Sunday School class, and while I might complain a bit now and then that I feel like I’m being fed information below the level that I’m at, there are still some pearls of wisdom to be gained even if something is taken to a simplified level.
We forget that just because we’re Christians it doesn’t mean that life gets any easier. In fact, it probably gets harder because Satan is now focused on messing up out testimony and trying his hardest to make us feel so completely inadequate that we become paralyzed when it comes to doing God’s work.
We live in a society of convenience and want our relationship with Christ to be as easy to form as it is to microwave a meal. We’ve got to remember that it takes time to learn what God wants us to do. It requires time, patience and willingness to read and listen to what he’s saying. We can’t instantly understand what we’re told, in fact, sometimes we never “get it” and simply have to go on our faith that God is seeing the “big picture” for us. But it doesn’t stop there; John G. Miller said that “learning is not attending, listening or reading. Nor is it merely gaining knowledge. Learning is really about translating knowing what to do into doing what we know. It’s about changing.” How can we accomplish that change if we insist on having a fast-food relationship?
neumatikos 