The Plumbline

Life Hack #12: It amazes me how many individuals actually think they are learning something when they just attend church on Sunday, issuing proclamations of agreement and head nods in assent to the teaching, or even watch Christian TV all through the week, and still don't manifest a life change. Exposure to a subject and even agreement with it is not learning - but God holds us accountable for the knowledge we possess, even when we don't use it. Exposure to a subject gives us knowledge of the subject - application of the knowledge gives us the chance to be affected by it.  Give yourselves to disciplined instruction; open your ears to tested knowledge. (Proverbs 23:12) We need to "give ourselves" to disciplined instruction. We actually have to put something into our learning, but we all have experienced the difficulty associated with actually learning. The first thing we must remember is that the attitude we exhibit when truth is made available to us and how well...

I inherited your book on living; it’s mine forever— what a gift! And how happy it makes me! I concentrate on doing exactly what you say— I always have and always will. (Psalm 119:105) What have you inherited in your lifetime? As a small child, my paternal grandmother passed and she left me her silverware, complete with a beautiful wood chest to store it in. It is that kind that you wouldn't use everyday, but it has such meaning because it was from someone I got to know only slightly. When my dad passed, some of his tools were incorporated into my tool-shop, but do you know what I treasure the most? His lapel pins! He had some that he had 'earned' as a certified life underwriter for a large insurance company and others he had 'earned' as a member of the military armed forces in Canada. Those are also in a special wood box - memories I will always cherish because they are a small connection with my dad. When mom passed, my home was filled with all kinds of treasures s...

And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. ( Deuteronomy 6: 6-7   NLT ) Have you ever read a good book, put it down, and then taken it up a short time later to read it all over again?  I have! There are times when I reread the entire chapters again until I get a good handle on the content contained within, or just because I thought maybe I missed something the first time I read through it. If we do this with novels and instructional books designed to help us be better leaders, learn a new task or skill, etc., doesn't it also make sense that we'd want to do this with God's Word? As a matter of fact, God even asks us to do it! No one needs to remind us that pain is real, do they? We stub our toe, immediately cry out in pain, and hobble around for days ...

There are some things in the Bible which just appear a little to hard to grasp. They are a "mind challenge" and most likely a "heart challenge" - especially when we have a mindset toward doing exactly the opposite of what is being presented!  Then there are other things we just gravitate toward because the teaching is easy to understand, brings us some satisfaction, or we just like hearing the words over and over again because they bring us some sense of peace.  Most of the books of the Bible don't open up with an explanation of why they are being written.  In fact, you have to get to know all the "players" in the chapters, figure out a little history of what has gone on, and then try to understand the audience to whom the pages were penned, so you can piece together the meaning of the words - most of which you have a hard time actually knowing how they apply to you anyway.  Proverbs is just the opposite - it simply states right from the beginning - WE...

Mature:  Fully developed in body or mind; complete; perfected; ready; prepared.  Now, how many of you will say you are mature?  In society today, we often think of maturity as reaching a certain age - the age of "legality".  In other words - it is a measure of chronological years, not so much a measure of anything on the inside of the person.  The problem with this way of thinking is that we often have a whole lot of "mature-looking" individuals walking this earth, but they really lack the evidence of maturity in the emotions, mind, or their spirit.  Chronologically, they are "of age" - spiritually, emotionally, or intellectually, they are still immature. Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.   Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.   This will continue until we all come to such unity in our...