How many times have we heard change will occur in our lives, or even in our nations, when we begin to apply Biblical truth?
It’s true isn’t it?
You don’t have to be a believer to have God’s principles work.
- If you handle money the way God tells us to, you will prosper. Think of how wealthy the Jewish people have become.
- If you walk in the wisdom God gives for a healthy lifestyle, you will be in better health.
- We all take certain Biblical values as absolutes, such as society being better if I do not go on a murder spree!
This has nothing to do with following God.
Can we as Christians journey to a place where truth substitutes for God?
A life focused only on truth can turn us into a manager. Skye Jethani describes it as being, “an autonomous being who has been given a divine manual for operating my life and world, and whose fate will ultimately rest upon how well I implement God’s principles and instructions.”
Truth is good right?
If we focus on truth over God, we become the source of our success. This life gives us control of our own lives, with no place for God.
We don’t need God himself, He is just the master rule and principal writer. Our task becomes discovering and implementing them.
In a sense, we view God as having written the laws of nature into the world, winding the watch and letting it go as He stands by observing it all.
In Numbers 20 when Moses was at the rock at Meribah. God told him what to do and he did it different. Why? He had struck the rock with his staff before (Exodus 17). Now God told him to speak to the rock.
He had the formula and the principal.
We do this too, “God works this way…”.
“7 Steps to Answered Prayer”.
“3 Principals of Physical Healing”.
Moses was effective at getting water from the rock, but God was displeased because he trusted a method rather than Him. This ultimately cost him entry into the Promised Land.
What is the Bible primarily to us?
Is it a divine instruction manual for life?
Or a vehicle for Knowing God and fostering our communion with him?
Of course the Bible does contain principles. I have dedicated my life to teaching this Book, so I am very much in favor of it! But, if we replace relationship with God for formulas, we are missing God
A world of proven formulas sounds so appealing, but it is actually a tremendous amount of pressure.
Anxiety and tension come with being ultimately responsible for the outcome of our lives.
When we replace God with a set of principals, making him marginalized or irrelevant, we are not only over God, we ultimately end up in a life without God. This is no life at all
Truth is good and necessary, but it can never be a substitute for God himself.
This post has been influenced by an incredible book by Skye Jethani. [amazon_link id=”B005EH36QE” target=”_blank” ]With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God[/amazon_link].