| Good Morning Everyone, Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself” Our Bible verse for today: “At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.” Matthew 11:25 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Childlike faith and willful ignorance are not the same thing” One of the reasons Christians are sometimes satisfied with simplistic or shallow faith is they misunderstand Jesus’ teaching about having “childlike faith”. They mistakenly conclude it must mean we are to remain childish in our understanding of God and His ways. But it doesn’t mean that at all. Having childlike faith simply means that we’re willing to come to God, love Him, and trust Him, even if we don’t have all the answers. We can have childlike faith while still seeking and searching for answers. We can have childlike faith while still working for spiritual growth and deeper understanding. In his book “Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God” Pastor John Piper reminds us that Christianity has a long history of deep thinking, and it is that deep thinking by Christians that has resulted in many of the great advances in civilization over the last two thousand years. The Apostle Paul was a scholar and deep thinker, as were all of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Piper writes: “This mindset (deep thinking) is the reason that everywhere Christianity has spread, schools have spread. And the longer Christianity has stayed the more serious and thorough the educational enterprise has become. During the Reformation, the major Protestants, especially Luther and Calvin, defended the absolute necessity for higher education against the populist anti-intellectual movements. Invariably, where Protestant universities were strongest, the Protestant Reformation had its greatest impact.” Christianity thrives and is strongest when Christians are serious students of God and His ways and are therefore committed to the practice of deep thinking about faith, people, and the world in which we live. But we’re in danger of losing that. Far too many Christians are no longer willing to put the time and effort into that kind of thinking. It’s so much easier to be content with superficiality, or to let others do our thinking for us. The childlike faith that Jesus commended, and the willful ignorance that is so prevalent today, are not the same thing. We have to be better than that. We have to want more than that. We’ll think more about this tomorrow. God Bless, Pastor Jim |
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