My little addition to Our Daily Bread (11/15/11):
Therefore, leaving the elementary message about the Messiah, let us go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation….
(Hebrews 6:1a HCSB)
The words “laying again the foundation” brings to mind another verse: “But everyone who hears these words of Mine and doesn't act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” (Matthew 7:26 HCSB) This picture of spending effort building something that only has to be rebuilt with each and every storm is something (now that I work on home improvements on the house that shelters my family) that I have learned from those experiences and pressed on to bigger things.
After several Promise Keepers events and other rallies, I have often heard the challenges for men to band together and I truly believe that “Iron sharpens iron, / and one man sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17 HCSB) As a single man, I would get so frustrated that the churches I attended could not sustain a men’s Bible study nor could I find mentors or accountability partners among the men in the church. Now that I am a husband and father, I am more understanding that, as important as that partnering on the faith journey might be, there are other pressing matters of family and the hectic pace of life (like plumbing issues and paycheck-earning) that crowd out even the best intentions.
I know that I have been blessed to have a foundation of faith and a Christian college education that others have not, but I sometimes just cannot understand. Some of those times that I have found men that gathered around the Word, I would often be disappointed to find a man who had been attending church for decades “choke” on a morsel that seemed more like a hot dog than the ribs that I was looking forward to coming off the grill of the particular Scripture passage we were studying. C.P. Hia in today’s ODB mentioned it also, and it is so hard for me to understand how someone could “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” (Psalm 34:8 HCSB) yet not hunger for more than just the milk. May I never lose my hunger to know Him more and more.
- Andy Jentes
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