NEVER STOP LEARNING

'You shall love the Lord your God with all your...mind.' Mark 12:39 NKJV

God created us with the capacity to keep learning until the day we die, something we shouldn't take for granted. ' A wise man will hear, and will increase learning...'(Proverbs 1:5).

The average brain weighs about three pounds, yet neurologists estimate that we can learn something new every second, every minute, every hour, every day for the next three hundred million years. Awesome, right? But it's more than that. It's a stewardship matter. Jesus said, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength .' It's impossible to determine the percentage of our minds we use, but all of us have untapped potential. Your imagination is capable of considerably more than you can dream. Yet somewhere along the way, most of us stop living out of imagination and start living out of memory. We stop designing the future and start copying the past. And that is the day we cease living and begin dying. Why? Because we stop educating ourselves. Loving God with all your mind requires maximising your mind by learning as much as possible about as much as possible. The true litmus test of spiritual maturity isn't the quantity you know. It's knowing the quantity you know. It's knowing the quantity you don't know. 

It's reconciling yourself with the reality that God is not an object of comprehensive knowledge as much as He is a source of wonder. And that sacred sense of wonder ignites a holy curiosity to keep learning more about the Creator and His creation.

GOD AND YOUR WORK

'Whatever you do, do well.' Ecclesiastes 9:10 NLT

In the Bible, you will notice that everybody works! And most of its heroes had secular vocations. Issac developed land, Jacob was a farmer, and Joseph served God best by staying in his well-paying government job rather than starting a non-profit, faith-based organisation to do charity work. Daniel was an immigrant who attended Babylon's version of Oxford and grew to be prime minister. Lydia was a profitable businesswoman in textiles. 

Conceivably, the ultimate expression of how much God values work is Jesus the carpenter. More than three-quarters of His life, He occupied Himself in the building profession, creating benches and tables, and was translate 'carpenter' comes from the Greek word tekton, from which we get our word technology, and it would contain the capability to do stone or masonry work. The Bible was penned by workers, about workers, and for workers. Work was God's idea. 'The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it' (Genesis 2:15 NIV). The first man, Adam, was a landscaper. By identifying what you have been called to do in life and giving yourself fully to it, you are as 'ordained' as any pastor who stands in a pulpit. It's a pity we use the word secular when it comes to any kind of work other than church work, because God doesn't see it that way.

All honest work earns His smile of approval. When it comes to work, the thing He requires from you is wrapped up in these words: 'Whatever you do, do well.'

GOD'S FIRST COMMISSION TO US

'Fill the earth and govern it.' Genesis 1:28 NLT

The first thing God told Adam and Eve to do was to 'fill the earth and govern it'. The fact that Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden doesn't mean they were limited to the Garden of Eden. God told them to 'fill the earth and govern it'. 

Stop and think about it. God was inviting Adam and Eve to explore. Everything outside Eden was uncharted territory. They could travel 24,759 miles in any direction and never see the same landscape twice. There were 196,949,970 square miles of virgin territory to explore. One way we glorify God is by exploring and educating ourselves about everything He has created. One author explains: 'The astronomer who charts the stars, the geneticist who maps the human genome, the researcher who seeks a cure for Parkinson's disease, the oceanographer who explores the barrier reef, the ornithologist who studies and preserves rare bird species, the physicist who tries to catch quarks, the chemist who charts molecular structures, and the theologian who studies God have one thing in common. All of them are explorers. They are fulfilling the Genesis commission. And their exploration honours God if it's done for the right reasons and results in the right response to know Him and to worship Him.' There will always be some scientists who arrive at atheistic conclusions. But rather than abandon science, we have been called to reclaim it. 

If God created everything, then everything carries His holy fingerprint; all truth is God's truth. Abraham Kuyper said, 'There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, 'This is mine! This belongs to me!''

A WHOLE NEW APPROACH

'The word became flesh.' John 1:14 NKJV

When the angel visited Mary, he said, 'Don't be frightened...God has decided to... bless you! (Luke 1:30 TLB). Yet when it comes to approaching God directly, many religions are ruled by fear. 

Philip Yancey says: 'Certainly the Jews associated fear with worship...A person "blessed" with a direct encounter with God expected to come away scorched or glowing or maybe (in pain) like Jacob...Among people who walled off a separate sanctum for God in the temple and shrank from pronouncing or spelling out the name. God made a surprise appearance as a baby in a manger. In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear...A New Covenant...that would not emphasize the...gulf between God and humanity but instead would span it...I learned about incarnation when I kept a saltwater aquarium...You would think, in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank, they dove for cover...to them I was deity...too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty, my attempts at healing ...as destruction. To change their perceptions...I would have to become a fish is nothing compared to God becoming a baby. Yet...that is what happened at Bethlehem.' 

The God who created matter took shape within it, as an artist might become a spot on a painting or a playwright a character within his own play. God wrote a story, only using real characters, on the pages of real history. 'The Word became flesh.'

'SILENT NIGHT'?

'You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.' Luke 1:31 NIV

We have sung the words of that Christmas carol since infancy. But those words actually do not come from Scripture. 'Silent Night' was a poet written by an Austrian poet in 1816. The words conjure up a serene picture with the happy couple watching their newborn baby. It's not likely, however, that there was silence.

 After an exhausting journey on a donkey, Joseph and the very pregnant Mary didn't check into the master suite of the Bethlehem Grand Hotel. They begged the use of an animal shelter, complete with the clatter and scents of barnyard animals - anything but silent! Ask any mother about giving birth. Even with the help of modern pain-reducing medicines and sterilised environments, the bravest women rarely remain silent while giving birth. For Mary, Joseph, and Jesus - this was hardly a silent night! 'Oh, Holy Night ': of all nights in history, this was the most holy. 

God set in motion His eternal plan to come to earth as the Redeemer of lost people. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them' (2 Corinthians 5:19 NKJV). Jesus came to take on Himself the sins of doomed humanity, so 'that we might become the righteousness of God in Him' (v. 21 NKJV). It doesn't get any holier than that! 'All is calm, all is right': on that holiest of nights, our spiritual and moral darkness was forever dispelled by Jesus, the Light of the World. And our fears as lost sinners were replaced by the peace and joyful assurance that we are His eternally forgiven people.

THE POWER OF SHARED FAITH

'Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?' Amos 3:3 NKJV

If your attraction to partners is found only in the way they look, imagine how they might look twenty-five years from now. Regular exercise and good diet will only take you so far; then Mother Nature and Further Time begin to take their toll. The truth is that looks may bring you together, but only commitment and a shared faith will keep you together! 

The Bible says, 'Don't team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? (2 Corinthians 6:14-15 NLT). That doesn't mean the two of you must hold identical views on every issue and practice your faith in similar ways. But you need the same values and views regarding the fundamentals of your faith - how you view God, the role of the church, and personal practices. 'Can two walk together unless they are agreed? Faith is the indescribable strength, that secret weapon of the soul that shows us how to persevere even when the facts seem damning and the truth unbearable. It's what keeps us going when we're not sure we can continue. It's the light that leads us out of the darkness, and the map that guides our way. Without faith, we would probably pull over to the side of the road, give up, and watch everyone else pass us by. 

But when we trust in the Lord and believe that He will guide us, there is almost nothing we cannot withstand and walk through together.

KIDS AND KITES

'A man shall leave his father and mother.' - Mathew 19:5 NKJV

If you're a parent, letting go of your children is often one of the toughest phases of parenting. 

Erma Bombeck compared it to flying a kite. Mum and Dad run down the road hoping to catch a breeze. Eventually, and with much effort, they manage to hoist the kite a few feet in the air. Just when they think it is safely underway, great danger looms. It dives towards electric lines and twirls perilously near the trees. It is a scary moment. Then, unexpectedly, a gust of wind catches the kites and carries them upward. Mum and Dad begin feeding line as rapidly as they can. The kite then becomes difficult to hold. Parents reach the end of their line and begin to wonder what to do next. The little craft demands more freedom. It rises higher and higher. Dad stands on tiptoe to accommodate the tug; it is now grasped tenuously between his index finger and thumb, held upward towards the sky. Then comes the moment of release. The string slips through his fingers, and the kite soars majestically into God's beautiful sky. The kite is now a mere pinpoint of colour in the sky. The parents are proud of what they have done - but sad to realise that their job is finished. It was a labour of love. 

But where did the years go? Parenting is an exhilarating and terrifying experience, and one that was ordained from the beginning. With the ultimate release, your task as a parent is finished. The kite is free, and so, for the first time in twenty years or so, are you. What's next? Ask God; He has a plan for your life.