Hows It Going So Far?
In my first few years as a Christian I met a guy name Mark.
Mark was an ex-Pro Body Builder.
He had become a Christian and was doing a sales promo at the gym I was working out at.
He was very aggressive in his sales pitch.
One day he had a guy in the office...had shared the sales pitch with him and the guys replied, "sounds good, I'll think about it".
Mark answered him, "have you been thinking about working out for quite a while now?"
To this question the guy answered, "oh, for about a month or two."
Then Mark hit him with, "You've been 'thinking' about working out for months...has it got you into any better shape...you better stop thinking about it and start doing it!"
The guy signed up.
A good lesson is to be learned here, not just in the fitness realm either.
You can think about being a great dad...but that doesn't make you a great dad.
You can have all the right talk about the business world...but that doesn't make you a great business man.
You can spend hours reading book about God and the Christian life...but knowing isn't the same as practicing.
I am reading books on evangelizing and reaching out to our culture with the life and power of the Gospel...some really great stuff.
But if I never close the book...and keep in perpetual "learning mode"...then I will never truly profit from what I took in.
What we learn really and for truly blesses us when we put it into practice...its the difference between being an egg head and a man of wisdom.
Its time Humpy Dumpy had a great fall in many Christian mens lives.
posted by Dale Callahan at 6:03 AM
5 Comments:
Thanks Dale,
That is a good admonishion that I find that I need to be reminded of. I guess it ties in with the chat we had on Sunday that perhaps we can continue next time we are in town.
I am not trying to tie this into the analogous side of the sales pitch story, but I can just imagine some 90 pounder (I know, look who's talking, right?) whimpering under the persuavsive tones of Machoman Randy Savage.
Me, I'm a vision kind of guy. I need a picture, a notion, a gut, on where I want to go or what I want to do or be. Anything else is too higgledy piggledy, like living life unkempt. I see those folks, too, just doing whatever, but always active doing something. Busy, but not accomplishing much. That time we spend in our minds is critical and I think more people need to spend more time there. People have become "urgency addicted" to doing and not thinking. I don't meet too many people who spend too much time reading and thinking and planning and being creative with ideas. I meet people who do too little, but I wouldn't say its because they spend too much time theorizing. Typically, they aren't doing anything.
I worked for a guy one time. When a crisis arose, he would put his fingertips together, kind of bouce them off eachother back and forth like springs, and stare out his little office window. It finally occurred to me one day, "He's not thinking things over....he's not really searching deeper for some creative notion. He's literally thinking, 'Well, that sure is a window and look at that...a view'". We have way too many Christians being way to active on far too many moronic things. They do, and they never stopped to think first.
You are right. For us to sit back and feel good about feeling good never changed the world for anybody, or accomplished anything for that matter. But I wish people would just take some time out to stop doing, read a good blog, and think. Become thinkers before they become doers. For anyone with half a clue, the ideas, if they are good, become too hot to handle just sitting in our intellect and we feel the urge to purge and tell, or write, or debate, or vote, or volunteer, or whatever.
I see dumb people. I see them all the time. And they don't know they're dumb.
The Apostle Paul spoke of those that have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
I agree with you Barry, that we need to be a people of God's word, we need to love God's word and desire to study God's word, having God's word define what it means, and having the humility of heart to follow what it says, rather than what we want it to say.
All I was getting at is that there is another temptation, especially in intellectual circles.
Men can become so consumed with study that it goes no further.
God's word should increase our knowledge and make our lives holy and beautiful and fruitful for God's glory and the advancement of Christs Kingdom.
This is another one:
1 Timothy 1:5-7 (English Standard Version)
5The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
I wonder about this though:
A man sits alone in his apartment. He thinks, he writes, he thinks some more. He edits what he writes, and theorizes about other theories upon which he will write next. But he never publishes. He's just intellectual by himself.
He dies.
They discover his stuff. They find it illuminating, insighful and inspiring. It encourages millions, it edifies, it bears fruit.
I would say there is more value in that than in just sitting and reading, or studying alone and never writing. I think to write out our theorizings, to formulate and make bring our intellect into hardcopy is valid. Even if you stuff it into a drawer and forget about it. There's something to putting it all down that keeps it from being vanity. Value may be determined later by others. But necessity dictates that the creative efforts of our theorizing minds be explicated. In other words, if we enjoy these things, the lease we can do is record our thoughts. That autta be enought to keep us from vanity.
I agree Barry.
Others..thousands of years later profited from his writings...but did he?
Whatever the topic...if he himself didn't practice his theories then he really didn't profit, even though others might.
We see from Jesus that there will be 'many' who say "did I not teach" and will hear "depart from me".
Teachers will receive a stricter judgment, because to the Lord it is a given that if we are going to teach others then we should be practicing what we preach.
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