Let me explain before you call me a heretic.
A group of mature Christians in Bellflower who have been meeting for several years in order to study the word together started reading the prophets of the old testament and something changed for them. They read the texts in Isaiah and Jeremiah that clearly show God's heart for the orphans and widows. They heard his rebuke of the people of Israel for neglecting the poor while they religiously continued to worship God with thier mouths. They were convicted. Then they did something pretty cool... they decided to be not only hearers of the word but doers. They opted for simple plain-faced obedience.
They decided instead of just studying about God's heart for the orphans, that they would ACTUALLY try loving orphans themselves. Their group is made up of busy people (as most of us So. Californians are) and so in order to make space in their lives, they stopped meeting for Bible study. In place of this study they've invested themselves in serving and loving youth in foster care, the orphans of our community. Now they meet with foster care kids one night a week for games, fun and generally spending time loving them.
What would Bellflower look like if we took some of the time that we budget for weekly religious activity/spiritual education and spent it DOING what Jesus taught and modeled...
loving the "lepers" of our society,
the chronically homeless,
the drug addicted,
the mentally ill,
the financially broken
the lonely neighbors we are surrounded by but so often pass on the otherside on our way to our various church meetings to study about God's heart for them.
The church is an under-tapped treasure-trove of love, skill, passion, time and action, that far too often gets silo-ed into Bible-education based busy-ness. I believe that God wants us to take our Bible with us into the trenches, to go read our Bible and do what it says where the hurting people live. Then our orthopraxy (right living/obedience) will catch up with our orthodoxy (Right thinking/doctrine).
Let me be clear. I am not advocating that people should stop reading the Bible. I am not saying Bible Studies are bad. New Christians especially, need to read the Bible and read it regularly with other believers so that they can fully understand the message of grace and the gospel of God's Kingdom. We have to know what the Bible says in order to be obedient to it.
What I am imploring is that we in the church would not spend more of our time studying about obedience than we do becoming obedient.
God give us room in our schedules for obedience.
1 comment:
What if people did both, fervently study Scripture and live it out? Why divorce the two? If lives are too busy to serve and study then maybe some pruning needs to take place...
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