Saturday, June 21, 2014

Truth and Passion

Truth and passion need to be linked in the Christian faith. Too often we find passion toward life without any firm basis in truth or truth without a firm passion behind the truth.

We need both truth and passion in our Christian walks working together. The Christian message is a message full of content. The content of the Christian message should motivate us to action.

The direction is that truth comes before the passion and the passion is based on the truth. But the truth of Christianity should always motivate some form of action.

That is not to say that every text in scripture has an immediate clear application to life. It is easy to attempt to force scriptural passages to have an application when we do not see one. Often if we read a text we will not always see its application in the moment, but if we study the text later a situation will come when the application will become apparent.

All scripture is useful for life. We may not always see the use and it is important to not try to force the use out of a scriptural text when we do not see the use in the moment. But we should always trust that when we read scripture God is speaking to us.

Sometimes we do not understand what he is saying. Sometimes he is saying something to us not for this moment but one many years down the road. But God is always speaking to us. We need to listen even when we do not understand what is being said.

Sometimes when we listen carefully even if we do not understand what a text means then we will understand later. But if we do not understand and thus fail to listen or stop reading then we will never understand the message in a text.

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