So i'm reading this book...

It's called Secondhand Jesus, trading rumors of God for firsthand faith (by Glenn Packiam). I'll post a full synopsis when I'm done but thought I'd start the topic while I'm sitting here in jury duty. The premise is this -- how much of what we say we believe actually comes from what we know of God from Scripture and from our experience of Him in light of Scripture versus what we believe based on what we've been told by someone else. Have we sat in our chairs (or pews) and simply accepted whatever we heard as total truth and molded our lives after that, or do we get messy and dig deep in our personal relationship with God and know Him, really know Him? If we simply take what other people say, we very easily can begin to believe rumors, falsehoods that sound good and get repeated over and over until we accept them as fact, without even realizing that we don't really know what we've been saying. And here's the scary part. Until we have that moment or event that shakes us to our core and causes us to reexamine why we believe what we believe, we don't know what we don't actually know. We just keep moving forward until that moment when everything gets shaken up and we take a closer look, rather, we allow the Light of God to search out our hearts and expose those things we hold on to.

Now, don't misinterpret the aim of this blog. I'm not saying I've been sitting under false or erroneous teaching. What I'm driving at is the challenge for us to not just believe everything a preacher or evangelist or professor or even our best friend has told us about God but to dig deeper, to get our hands dirty, to do the work to know God for ourselves, not just take somebody else's word for Him. It means getting uncomfortable with ourselves and opening ourselves up to examination, allowing God to reach in and change our way of thinking. But, and here's why I feel it's important, I can't be comfortable in my relationship with God any more. For the fire to remain kindled forward momentum must be maintained, and simply sitting passively by and trying to live vicariously through the words and actions of others just doesn't cut it any more.

Know why you believe what you believe -- and because someone told you so doesn't cut it. Question what you hear based on Scripture, not on what you or some talking head thinks. Know God. Really know Him. It takes hard work. It will get messy. But it's so worth it.

(I apologize for any typos. Using the Blackberry to type this.)