Tuesday Testimony

Do you ever feel like you stopped learning after college or high school?  Maybe you are a Mom who is too busy with small children, or a man who comes home from work only to plop down in front of the TV/computer to watch shows or play games.  These are two of the most common examples of what can happen to stop us from continuing to learn.

This week we read chapters 8-9 of Gordan MacDonald’s Ordering Your Private World.  I really felt like these chapters were speaking to me.  In the midst of blogging, mothering and being a wife, I don’t find enough time to read like I used to or educate myself.  I am the perfect example of a person that got a great easy start, but is now falling behind in the race of life.  I was Salutatorian at my high school graduation, I worked and studied to make excellent grades in college, and I started out with a great job after college.

Now I feel as though I’m caught up in so much of the busyness of life that I am no longer learning, and I feel my mind is not as sharp as it used to be.  I’d like to say that I blame it on pregnancy and giving birth.  It’s strange how those things affect a woman’s mind, but I think it is mostly because a woman becomes way too busy to continue stretching her mind as she used to.

But this is just how I relate as a mother to what Gordan is saying.  As a Christian, educating myself takes on a much bigger and more important aspect.  If you are a Christian, but are not educating your mind, there are some pretty serious results.

“Thinking Christianly without a regular renewal of our commitment to Christ leads to a deadness of religion, a boring faith, an ineffective witness to God (pg. 102). “  Many of us have met Christians like this, or have even been there ourselves.  Christianity without commitment and education leads to rituals with no meaning or heart behind them.  It leads to Churches and people becoming stuck in their ways, so that they are no longer an effective witness to a world that is hurting.

God has created a world with a wealth of knowledge that He wants us to learn about and figure out.  He wants us to ask the hard questions, become thinkers, learn how to do things and understand His ways as best we can.  Getting stuck into thinking a certain way without ever learning and expanding our minds leads to a dull and unordered private world.

What are your thoughts on these words, and on the chapters we read this week?  I’d love to hear!

For next week: Read chapters 10-12, and if you haven’t already, get out a notepad and jot down a few of your own thoughts when reading these chapters.  Continue to spend at least 10 minutes a day in prayer, and focus on turning your thoughts to God throughout the day.