“I Knew That!”
April 15th, 2008 Posted in Growth, Spirituality
I was struck by something the apostle Paul wrote to the young preacher Timothy. “Keep reminding them of these things.” (2 Timothy 2:14) Young Timothy was to have a ministry of reminding!
If you listen regularly to me preach and teach, or any other preacher or teacher, you’ve probably thought to yourself partway through the presentation, or at least at the end, I knew that.
As a preacher, teacher, and writer, I’m well aware I’m not always dispensing new material. That’s good! My job’s not to come up with brand new material but to proclaim the best material ever put to paper, the Bible.
When someone’s new to faith much of what they hear and read is going to be new stuff. That’s exciting. At some point of spiritual growth, however, we discover we’re hearing and reading the same ideas over and over again. We have a choice at this point. We can become bored and tune it out or we can open up ourselves to deeper thinking on the familiar and greater application of that which we already know.
As a speaker and writer I try to come up with fresh ways of expressing the same old truths. I’m OK with that. It seems to me that God’s saying to all of us, “And I’m going to keep repeating myself until you get it right!”
Dave
