Our minds are one of the greatest creations God has ever made.
With it we can solve the most baffling of problems, calculate the mystifying math equations and creatively imagine unfathomable concepts.
However, remembering something extremely important can be quite a feat – schedules, birthdays, anniversaries, names of acquaintances, scientific names, generic medicine, etc.
There’s one thing we can never forget. If we do, then we’ve lost everything.
God.
Hearing the quote of Alexander Solzhenitsyn from one of my most favorite teachers, Ravi Zacarias, reminded me of the disaster that befall us when we do.
He was asked why Russia fell apart.
To this, he answers …
”And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again:
Men have forgotten God.”
I read a proverb to my kids over breakfast. I often do.
I have breakfast with them every morning before going to school for a couple reasons…
- To connect with them
- To set their day off on the right direction – with God’s word.
.
This morning, I read Proverbs 26:11 , “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”
Pretty graphic word picture. I asked my kids, Nathan, Janina and Ryan if they knew what it means for a dog to return to its vomit.
Janina says, “it’s when a dog goes back to his ’suka’ and eats it!”
To this, Ryan answers, “Whoa!!!! Cooooooool!”
I think he missed the point.
The bigger we get, the smaller we need to become.
Church is not just about numbers. Numbers are not completely irrelevant for God thought about writing a book in the Old Testament with the same title.
However, we cannot allow people to be reduced to stats. Jesus didn’t die on the cross for stats. He died for people. He died for individuals. He died for you and for me.
It’s not about having 12 in our small group or 5 new individuals who attended or 7 who made a commitment to Christ. All those are important, I hope I don’t get misunderstood.
But what we are after is LIFECHANGE! Lifechange happens when God steps into a person’s life and many times, this happens within the context of a discipleship relationship.
Jesus modeled that to us when got together a group of guys. And as we’ve seen, this small group of guys’ lives got radically changed and rocked our planet.
“He who refuses to learn from history is forced to repeat its mistakes.”
When my wife and I were newly married, a friend introduced us to foreign exchange currency trading. Because we wanted to find a good place to invest, we went into it.
We’ve been told to never get into something if we don’t know what it really is in the first place. Not only that, we’ve been told about a few horror stories about those who went into it blindly.
I’d hate to admit it, but we didn’t listen. We stubbornly chose not to heed their advice. You can probably surmise what the outcome was.
Unfortunately, some of us like to learn lessons from our very own experiences. While some lessons are worthwhile learning by experience, many of them don’t necessarily have to be.
People who have gone through what we’re currently going through are some of the best teachers we can learn from. Experience really isn’t necessarily the best teacher.
“He who refuses to learn from history is forced to repeat its mistakes.”
