Advent 2015 - Day 10

"Jesus you are Wonderful Counselor—our righteousness, holiness and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). In you are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3). I look to you for knowledge of great mysteries, but also for wisdom about handling fresh disappointments, old hurts, and unfulfilled longings. You care so tenderly for your lambs" (Scotty Smith)

Prior posts:

Day 9 | Day 8 | Day 7 | Day 6 | Day 5 | Day 4 | Day 3 | Day 2 | Day 1

Second hand faith?

I am still processing a blog post I read yesterday by Jonathan Parnell at Desiring God. His post was titled We Don't Want to Live at Second Hand. The main idea that Parnell shares is that it is very easy for us to ascribe to the concepts of faith and grace that we read about, but it is an entirely different thing to actually own them. Thus, we in essence are relying on second hand faith.

"The mind moves a little faster than the heart. It's easier for us to intellectually apprehend truth than it is for us to actually embrace it. This creates what Thielicke calls the hiatus between the arena of spiritual growth and what we already know intellectually about this arena (11). In other words, many of us could talk the day lights out of justification, getting the concepts down and the order right, but never really living in the fullness of what it means to be justified."

The sad reality for me is that this is often true. So much I read, so much I hear simply flows through the sieve of my mind and never gets anchored down. Parnell has two good recommendations:

1) Pray - It is God who will empower us to embrace what we read and hear

2) Apply - As Parnell states, "We want to be able to take what we've consumed and reproduce it through our faith in action.  Nothing is happenstance. God, in his sovereign grace, has made it so that you read and watch and hear all that you ever read and watch and hear."

To God Alone be the Glory