An Eager Heart & Faithful Mind

The people here were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, since they welcomed the message with eagerness and examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 

Acts 17:11

I'm convinced that one of the biggest hindrances to the growth of the church is the lack of teachability and humility, stemming from the assumption that we have it all figured out already. The idea behind it is a false confidence- one that resembles arrogance more than faith, and a need to impress people. This fear is often that we will appear unstable and our faith will be stolen if we admit that we can't wrap our minds around every single aspect of God. But here's the truth: our faith can only be stolen when we personally hand it over. And our stability has nothing to do with the opinions of other humans.

Brothers and sisters, we don't have to understand it all or have all the answers. We don't have to respond to pretend to know everything and it's totally appropriate to say, "I don't know" or "I don't understand." Faith has less to do with knowledge than it does believing The God we don't see and that His way is better than ours. We were created to think, obviously,  but sometimes our feelings and brains won't coincide with the faith we're called to have. Sometimes God wants to change our minds on a topic but we refuse to believe that what we have believed for so long could be flawed. Faith has to be an intentional belief that God is who He says He is, He is limitless and He is trustworthy. And in order for these things to happen, we've got to be willing to move and change when called He hands us an invitation.

In my experience, faith is limited when we let our need to know it all rise above our vulnerable trust in God. Often, it's just that we're believing what we've been taught and have never questioned it. Maybe we have this idea that questioning what we're taught is somehow blasphemy. But it's not. The Spirit welcomes questions and a desire to learn and grow at every age. The Spirit fills us with this eagerness to learn and the ability to change when we seek the truth with open hearts. Growth is a journey, not a destination and when we start believing we have nothing else to learn on any topic, we stunt our own growth.