Most Christians don’t have a good answer to this question. Do you?

The US Treasury Department has a special group of people whose job it is to track down counterfeiters. They are not trained by spending hours examining counterfeit money. Rather, they study the real thing.

To know the real thing from the false, you have to study the truth.

The same is true in our Christian faith. To know God, to know what He has to say to us, and to receive His instruction for how to walk with Him as His adopted children requires us to study the Bible for ourselves and build our own intimate knowledge of our Creator, our Savior, and everything that constitutes the Christian faith.

How much of your spiritual knowledge is your own?

For most Christians, the answer to that question is a very small percentage. Since most Christians don’t read or study their Bibles except occasionally while at a church service on Sundays, most of what Christians believe as the content of their “Christian faith” is based almost entirely on what someone else tells them or something they’ve heard or read (from a source other than the Bible).

The problem is, someone else cannot learn for you!

To know the truth, you have to study it for yourself. Others can make a mistake or share a bias that isn’t true, or in some other way mislead you if you’re relying on them to tell you what to believe and how to live a Christian life.

God has guided into writing a revelation of Himself that also contains all of the critical information we need to know how to navigate this life in a way that pleases Him and is best for us. If we give ourselves to daily digging into God’s Word, and conversing with Him about it in prayer, we can gain an understanding about how to build our lives on a foundation that will sustain us for this lifetime. Jesus described for us how the Word applied to our lives is an essential foundation for living …

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash,” Matthew 7:24-27.

If knowing, understanding, and applying God’s Word to our lives is so essential for living, then why would we allow someone else to do all the studying for us and once a week share some snippets from what they have learned? Is that a reliable foundation that you’re willing to try to build your life on?

If you want to know the truth, you have to study it for yourself.

What kind of Bible student are you?

Scotty