How do you study the Word, the Bible? To just study is a good thing, but don't be surprised if along the way, how you study and what you seek to know as you study changes. As a young Christian, I just read the Bible, I didn't study. Later, as I grew, I started studying, memorizing, trying to understand the things of God. I started studying to know the principles of God that run thru the whole Bible. Then, I started studying to know the promises of God that were for me. Then I started studying to know how to minister the Word and the Spirit to people. Good! All good! Along the way, I also studied to find out what God was looking for in me and what was missing in me. Painful, but good! All good!
In in the last few decades have I began to study to know God, not just know about God, and in a different way. I know you are thinking, "he is getting a late start", but, not so fast my friend. Knowing God is multi-dimensional, lifetime endeavor. In these last few decades, God has taken me back over all those previous studies, and taught me to see it all through His eyes. Same lessons, different viewpoint. In some cases, I saw my previous conclusions were not so great. In some of those studies, I only saw "me" and what was in it for "me". In some cases, what was a seed of information became a tree of knowledge. Some were "ah ha!" moments. In every case, as God put me back in class, I saw seen things I had never seen even though I had studied the subject before. Here is what I have learned: you can know about God and even know God, but not really know Him at the highest level (and I am not yet sure I know what the highest is). However, what I do know is that knowing God at a higher level requires seeing what you see, in the Word and then in living, through His eyes. Being "seated" in heavenly places, for me, has become about vision and maturity of vision. From there, in the Spirit realm, you begin to see what God sees and only then can you sort of begin to understand what God was, or is, desiring, wanting, aiming toward. And in that, your knowledge of God increases.
Here is another interesting conclusion: in all those previous studies, what I learned was not wrong or false. They were truths, but lower level truths. Example? I learned that God saved me by grace (lower level truth) then I learned why He saved me which was to worship Him (higher level truth). Both true, both good, but from very different views. Through my eyes, I was glad to just be saved and miss hell. Through His eyes, I began to see there was more here than just missing hell. I began to have understanding. It is easy to have knowledge without having understanding but as we grow in God and His Word, seeing from His vantage point, so does our understanding grow. Nothing changed in those studies, except my understanding.
Here lies the problem: The spirit of religion will do all it can to get you to hold fast to one understanding while rejecting all others. Result? Babyhood, meatless, infancy. These are those Paul wrote of who should have been eating meat but were only able to take milk. Problem? In spiritual infantile thinking, we adopt a one-size fits all mentality. Everything for everybody has to be exactly the same, and then of course, we have then established ourselves as judges responsible for making sure we all have the right size truth. From this comes group think, denominational-ism, traditional-ism and collective salvation. As a result, any true forward movement in understanding gets rejected by men for it means different size truths for different folks, and that then ends men's ability to judge one another. And, that would means, to religious folks, a loss of control, something people don't want to give up. We love playing God and judging others. Problem? If our understanding does not grow, then our knowledge of God does not grow. Problem? If we do not graduate in our understanding, we demote ourselves to tradition. What we believe then becomes just our tradition. Our truths may have come from and started with God, but we made it our tradition. Suffering a plague of snake bites, God told Moses to put a brazen snake on a pole and all who looked on it would be healed. Soon the plague was over, no more problem, except, it took 900 hundred years to get those people to quit worshipping the snake on the pole. That snake on a pole started with a Word from God but those folks turned it to tradition. According to Jesus, the one thing capable of making the Word of God "of none effect", without power, is "traditions".
The ultimate problem? The ultimate problem is that failure to grow in understanding eventually eliminates a true relationship with the Spirit of God. The job of the Spirit is to reveal, to bring understanding, to give us God's view, to reveal the "deep" things of God. However, if we are totally convinced we already have the deep things, then we get no more deep things of God revealed to us. We put the lid on! You are then back in the same shape the Pharisees were when they encountered Jesus. Your traditions and traditional thinking keeps you from having an ear to hear what the Spirit of God is saying and is saying.... NOW! The Bible says of itself that the "letter" kills but the Spirit give life to the letter. The way the letter kills is that you make it a tradition and refuse to grow in understanding. Our life with God is to be from truth to truth, faith to faith, glory to glory, change to change. Tradition digs a rut and there you plunk yourself down and go no more, grow no more. Of course, a rut is a grave with both ends kicked out. You can escape, but you have to move.
Here is another interesting conclusion: in all those previous studies, what I learned was not wrong or false. They were truths, but lower level truths. Example? I learned that God saved me by grace (lower level truth) then I learned why He saved me which was to worship Him (higher level truth). Both true, both good, but from very different views. Through my eyes, I was glad to just be saved and miss hell. Through His eyes, I began to see there was more here than just missing hell. I began to have understanding. It is easy to have knowledge without having understanding but as we grow in God and His Word, seeing from His vantage point, so does our understanding grow. Nothing changed in those studies, except my understanding.
Here lies the problem: The spirit of religion will do all it can to get you to hold fast to one understanding while rejecting all others. Result? Babyhood, meatless, infancy. These are those Paul wrote of who should have been eating meat but were only able to take milk. Problem? In spiritual infantile thinking, we adopt a one-size fits all mentality. Everything for everybody has to be exactly the same, and then of course, we have then established ourselves as judges responsible for making sure we all have the right size truth. From this comes group think, denominational-ism, traditional-ism and collective salvation. As a result, any true forward movement in understanding gets rejected by men for it means different size truths for different folks, and that then ends men's ability to judge one another. And, that would means, to religious folks, a loss of control, something people don't want to give up. We love playing God and judging others. Problem? If our understanding does not grow, then our knowledge of God does not grow. Problem? If we do not graduate in our understanding, we demote ourselves to tradition. What we believe then becomes just our tradition. Our truths may have come from and started with God, but we made it our tradition. Suffering a plague of snake bites, God told Moses to put a brazen snake on a pole and all who looked on it would be healed. Soon the plague was over, no more problem, except, it took 900 hundred years to get those people to quit worshipping the snake on the pole. That snake on a pole started with a Word from God but those folks turned it to tradition. According to Jesus, the one thing capable of making the Word of God "of none effect", without power, is "traditions".
The ultimate problem? The ultimate problem is that failure to grow in understanding eventually eliminates a true relationship with the Spirit of God. The job of the Spirit is to reveal, to bring understanding, to give us God's view, to reveal the "deep" things of God. However, if we are totally convinced we already have the deep things, then we get no more deep things of God revealed to us. We put the lid on! You are then back in the same shape the Pharisees were when they encountered Jesus. Your traditions and traditional thinking keeps you from having an ear to hear what the Spirit of God is saying and is saying.... NOW! The Bible says of itself that the "letter" kills but the Spirit give life to the letter. The way the letter kills is that you make it a tradition and refuse to grow in understanding. Our life with God is to be from truth to truth, faith to faith, glory to glory, change to change. Tradition digs a rut and there you plunk yourself down and go no more, grow no more. Of course, a rut is a grave with both ends kicked out. You can escape, but you have to move.
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