Theology Thursday: Action Items
The seed for this edition of Theology Thursday was planted Sunday morning when Pastor Ron had us all take five minutes to journal about Proverbs 2.
raise your voice for understanding
4 if you seek it like silver,
and search for it like hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand how to fear the Lord,
and you will discover knowledge about God.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom,
and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
The passage is convicting for me due to the prominence of action words, as Ron rightly pointed out. Obviously, Solomon was telling us that gaining in the knowledge and understanding of God takes effort. This flies in the face of the "feed me", consumer mentality of much of the modern church.
Here's my problem: I don't consider myself a consumer. I'm a self-feeder. I've been doing the Bible read-through every year for the past five years or so, and I've found it enormously beneficial. I've definitely gained in knowledge of the Bible, but have I truly gained in my understanding of God? In wisdom? I'm not so sure.
See, doing the Bible reading, and even journaling (which I consider I'm doing right now) is not what I'd call extra-effort for me. I love to read. I love to read the Scriptures. I love to write. So, what for another person (one, perhaps, who struggles with keeping up with the read-through) might be extra-effort, for me is just the minimum. I'm doing the minimum. And I expect God to do His best on my behalf.
I need to pray more. This is a huge struggle for me, because I'm actually a bit shy. I really don't like to pray aloud in front of others. It's completely outside my comfort zone. I should pray with my wife, but it's so hard for me that I completely neglect that practice. Of course, Jesus encouraged Secret Prayer, but I'm not really doing that, either. When I pray before meals, I feel like a complete hypocrite. I don't consider praying before meals to be a necessary thing, but it seems like it's a healthy practice. But it shouldn't be the only praying I do.
My solution? Read books about it, of course!!! Done that. Still not praying. I need to just man-up here. Somehow I find 20 minutes to do my HundredPushups.com thing. Can I not squeeze in five minutes to pray? When I look back at this post, I'm ashamed of myself. More than that, I know I'm short-changing myself.
This is getting wordy. Sorry. It's Pastor Ron's fault.
I thought of a tie-in in Jesus' teachings. Check this out:
Again, the focus is on the individual to actually put forth effort. And both passages also tell of the reward of the effort. Good stuff.
If I've somehow managed to come off as boastful (the "reading the Bible is easy for me" thing) while confessing that I'm less of a Christian than I should be, keep this in mind:
"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,
24 but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,"
declares the LORD.
There's no place for boasting. I don't know the Lord as I should.
September 11th, 2008 - 09:56
great post seth.
September 12th, 2008 - 06:05
Obviously you’ve got the passages related to humbleness down. Self-improvement is always something to strive for, just be cautious that you don’t start loathing the amazing creature God created in the process. Those who know you, and even those of us who really don’t, know that you are a good and decent person.
September 12th, 2008 - 06:53
Oh, no worries about me being self-(or Seth)-loathing. I don’t think I’m a bad person, or a particularly lousy Christian. In fact, I don’t think my story is all that uncommon in modern churchiness. Just trying to give myself a swift kick…it’s healthy now and again.