Thursday, March 11, 2010

First Thoughts

I often have thoughts that I would love to write down. Sometimes I use facebook notes to do it, or sometimes I just do the old paper-pencil, but I decided that it may be worth it to just get a blog. So here it is, I'm going to try to stay away from posting anything about the events from my day, this is not resurrecting Xanga, rather I'm going to post up thoughts that I've been having, or things I've been praying for, or what God's been teaching me, or what I've been reading.

So, I have 4 different papers hanging above my desk with Bible verses written on them (thank you Dana :). One of them is 1 Corinthians 8:1b-3 "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." This is specifically speaking about food sacrificed to idols, because there were some in the Corinthian church who "knew" that it was not ok but others "knew" that it was. People were causing others to stumble in their faith (8:9) so God is telling them, the most important thing is not what you know, its whether you love me. We are told again and again through Scripture to love God, to place Him first above all things. (Deut 6:5, Deut 11:1, Deut 13:3...Josh 23:11...Matt 6:24...Rom 8:28...1 Cor 2:9...Rev 2:4) We are also told of the importance of knowledge (Hosea 4:6, Ps 119:66, Prov 1:7, Isaiah 56:10, John 8:32) But knowledge is almost always portrayed as secondary to a love for God, a fear of the Lord, placing God at the center and forefront of our lives. The only exception I can think of is Rom 10:1-3 where Paul says the Israelites were zealous for God but lacked the knowledge to follow him (obviously my paraphrase).

All of this to say, if I want people to be able to say one thing about me when I die it would be that I loved the Lord my God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I want to always have God as the center of my desires, my thoughts, my emotions, my everything. But back to 1 Corinthians 8, the beginning that I didn't write says "We know that we all possess knowledge". And if you look throughout Scripture where knowledge is spoken of you will quickly see that all possess knowledge, but some knowledge is good and some is bad. So I would hope, and my prayer is, that what I write here, coming from a love for God and based on Scripture, is "knowledge" or thoughts that are edifying and build others up in love, rather than puffing up as knowledge often does.

Ok, one more thing to add and then I'm done. This is something that I've been studying more recently in regards to this whole topic. I was struggling with pride from some things that I had been thinking, just ideas that I had implemented recently that were really working and turned out to be great. I was struggling with seeing myself as better than others, so I was praying about it and God led me to Psalm 16 where in verse 7 it says "I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me." What I saw is that to David (who wrote this Psalm) even his most brilliant moments were counsel from God. And then in Psalm 18 he attributes his strength and physical abilities as coming from God. So anything good that is written in this blog, any truth that brings life, it is from God, and anything that tears down or is harmful or wrong is from me and should be ignored.

May you walk in the love of the Lord and the strength that He gives, realizing that what you do is not by your own hand but the hand of the Lord, if the Spirit resides within you.

No comments:

Post a Comment