By Brent Veyon
Deuteronomy
4:9
Jesus once asked the question: "For what shall a man be profited if he gain the whole world, and loose his own soul?" Thats a very good question, and we know that nothing in this would is worth loosing our soul. Yet, how many times do we put
If our spiritual growth is so necessray, we should ask ourselves, how many times did we study the Bible this week? Everyday... or not at all; or maybe its somewhere in between? We must understand as Christians our learning is the key to ur growing in faith (Rom. 10:17). We need to "understand what the will of the Lord is" (Eph. 5:15-17) to be able to apply the word of God, by putting it into practice. If this is not the case, do we find ourselves going thourghout the day without even haveing the word of God on our mind, much less in practice?
The apostle Paul put much improtance on theis spiritual growth, when he instructed Timothy to "give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine...," and instructed him to "meditate on these thing; give [himself] entirely to them, that [his] progress may be evident to all" (I Tim. 4:13-15). Paul went on in his second letter to tell Timothy to "be diligent to present [himself] approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (II Tim. 2:15). Note in these passages, Paul emphasizes the need for Timothy's spiritual growth by telling him to "meditate on these things" and be "diligent" to that end. This wording shows us the weight Paul pu on studying the scriptures. Furthermore, Paul described that Timothy's mind should be set on spiritual things, by telling him to "give [himself] entirely to them," so his "progress" would be evident, and thus more able to "present [himself] approved to God." Paul understood the key to rightly dividing the word of truth, is to understand what those words are.
If we have a sound foundation in our knowledge of the scripture it can help us to not wrongly divide those words. The question is: Does our attitude match the one Paul instructed Timothy to have? If not, we are doing our souls a great disservice by not "setting [our] mind on things above" (Col. 3:1-2) and growing spiritually.
The writher of the Hebrew letter, did not look lightly on this lack of growth either. In Hebrews 5:12-14, he shows his disappointment in those who were not ready to grow because of their lack of spiritual exercise. He goes on to show that this exercise is the key to our discerning good and evil. Do we desire solid food or are we not even desirous of the milk? Is our state like those in the Hebrew letter, or maybe even worse? We should be careful to "give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest we drift away!" (Heb. 2:1)