“Am I simply repeating what God says or am I learning to truly hear Him and then to respond after I have heard what He says?” – Oswald Chambers; My utmost for His Highest
“It is most common for us to skip a step in our ability to learn for we, by nature, chose how much of what we learn we will allow to impact our lives. We do this even in our relationship with God.”
The learning process goes as follows:
We see the words
We read the words
We memorize the words
We repeat the words
We act upon the words
It’s the last step that we skip most of the time when studying scripture.
How many of us can recite scripture verses? I would guess that many of us could rattle off a few. The tougher question is how many of us act upon what we learned from the verses we so easily can repeat?
Hebrews 13:5
“He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
I find that I frequently just move on afterwards, skipping the last step in the learning process by not acting upon what I just read. What does this scripture mean for my life and how will it affect how I will function in this world? The God of the universe will never leave me or forsake me.
As I enter into the final phase of learning, I find this is where the internal debate is won or lost on whether I believe what I read as being true or not. If this is true, then what?
Can this be a good or a haunting thing?
Wow! God is always there every minute of my life. How comforting!
or
Wow! God is always there every minute of my life. How smothering!
So, we chose to rewrite the scripture to read something like this:
“He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you when you decide that it works for you for me to be there. I will wait for your call.”
I imagine this will all depend on how we understand the nature of God. Do we believe that He is for us, loves us and cares for us? Or does He just want to control us? If we believe that God wants to control us, then we will skip the last step and not act upon what we learned. However, if we believe what He said was true, then if we apply it, our lives will never be the same.
Just a Thought…
