Ever-increasing Desire Bible Reading: Psalm 42
I will always be grateful to God for one of the fellowships I attended while in the university. We gave persistent tribute to the contents of the bible. We saw it as a manual for our lives and we read it day and night. We advanced to a point where we could quote nearly every part of the bible offhand. At a time, we started reading the bible in the original languages – Greek and Hebrew. So if for example, you quoted I Cor. 14:4, “He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself”, we could say something like … The word edifieth in that verse is from the Greek word “oikodomeō ” which means to build up. In short, we were called “word men”. But as we continued along this word journey, I noticed two sets of people …
Some set felt they had arrived as far as the word was concerned. They believed they have successfully torn the word into pieces and digested every part. Pride and arrogance started gaining foothold in their lives and as time went on; their lifestyle could not match the word; their prime ability was to be able to accurately tell when someone misinterpreted the word.
The other set of people reminded me of one key attribute of a believer that is growing spiritually – they had an ever-increasing desire for God and the things that facilitate spiritual growth. The more they knew God, the more they wanted to know him. The more God’s power and virtues were evidently displayed in their lives, the more they appreciated the fact that they were just touching the fringes of His power. The more they studied the word, the more they realized they needed to always stay with the word.
Whether in that my campus fellowship or not, the truth is that we see this kind of stuff almost everywhere. When a man thinks he has finally arrived as far as spiritual growth is concerned, and stops paying attention to things that facilitates his growth, he is already backsliding. The man who wrote majority of the New Testament books once made this statement in one of his books – “My friends, I don’t feel that I have already arrived. But I forget what is behind, and I struggle for what is ahead” Philippians 3:13 (CEV). What about you? Have you arrived yet?
– tope aladenusi
