Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Spiritual Self Defense For Christians

If you are Christian, it does not make much sense to stock up on food and water and forget your Bible. How can you think you will be safe from a mere hurricane when your spirit is at risk?

I am not speaking to people of no religion, or other religions here, so feel free to skip this post if you belong to those groups.

Someone in my life has latched on to something out on the internet that says that the "three days of darkness" mentioned in the Bible are coming upon us shortly. It is supposed to happen this Thursday, in case you like to be up on these things. I am not going for this alarm. This is because I read the Bible and study it even. 

I have read estimates as high as over 60% of Christians who have never read the entire Bible. This is very strange and does not make any sense. 

How can you call yourself a Christian when you have never read the book you are supposed to base your life on? 

The person who gave me the tip about the three days of darkness mentioned that she has a list of over 100 prayers she thinks she needs to say every day. She said that she isn't sure she can manage the time to study the Bible because of having to say her prayers every day takes up so much of her time, she doesn't see how she can fit in the Bible too.

That does not make any sense to me. Prayers are mostly for the purpose of asking Gd to take care of something. It is a one-sided conversation, with the person saying the prayer(s) doing all of the talking.

It seems to me that our relationship with Gd ought to be one with two-way conversations. We get our two cents in with prayers and then we get Gd's side of the conversation mostly through reading Gd's Word, the Bible.

When I want to know what Gd wants me to do or know about a particular subject, I get out my Concordance of the Bible and start studying, until I understand what Gd's idea is on the subject.

I do think prayer is necessary for a Christian, but not as much so as spending time "listening" to what Gd has to tell me. I do this by reading and studying the Bible. Since Gd has a better idea of how to handle everything than I do, I like to spend more of my time studying what Gd has to say about everything, in the Bible. In my two-way conversation with Gd, I'd rather do more listening, than talking.

There is an old Native American saying that sums it up pretty well: "We have two ears and one mouth. This tells us that we need to do twice as much listening as talking." It is even more important to do this with Gd. 

Knowledge of Gd's Word is the very basis of Spiritual Self Defense for Christians.

No comments:

Post a Comment