It’s easy for me to look back on parts of my life and say “how did I do that?”
I’ve written posts in the past on the subject of the joy of feeling like the things you’ve done in your past are much smaller than what you’re doing now because it shows a sin of improvement and growth…it’s not so nice when you look back and see things that you did that you have no clue if you could do them now.
Last week I picked up my cello for the first time in over 6 months. I’m amazed that I still had some of the skills that I did. Similarly to riding a bike, you don’t forget it, but I’m not as polished as I once was.
Today I had a similar experience. As I was meeting with my discipleship group this evening, I grabbed a random notebook on my shelf because I couldn’t find another one. As I looked through this notebook, I noticed that the first couple of pages were sermons from when I was in NC for a missions training program.
As I was flipping through the pages, I was amazed at the depth I went into in my research on the book. At the time, I was in scripture so much. In class, we were diving deep into the word and understanding the history and culture behind what we were studying. Because I was in that environment, my mind knew how to study well and because we had a great teacher, I was able to mimic that in my teaching.
When I look at the sermons I wrote, I know that I couldn’t go into that much depth if I were to preach a sermon now. That is to say, I may be able to, but I wouldn’t be able to by studying for one day as I often did in NC. I would need quite a bit of time.
This morning I started a new reading plan for the Bible and I look forward to a more in depth study of God’s word. I miss the deeper studying aspect of a book that has complete truth. It is possible to get too academic with the Bible and lose the relational aspect of what it is, but I think we do ourselves a disservice to only read and not study.
We have something in America and in this century that people in history would have only dreamed of. Something people in other countries still only dream of. Some of these people are hungry just to hear a sentence of God’s word, yet we have access any time, anywhere to God’s word. Let’s not take that for granted while we still have it.