Keeping Your Balance

Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. (1 Corinthians 8:2)

Here are three principles to help us stay balanced and be wise in our pursuit of knowledge.

1. No one person has all the truth. Healthy Christians, young and old alike, maintain a variety in their diet. They draw truth from here and they draw it from there. They grow from this person and from that one … from this ministry and from that one. They realise there is not only wisdom but safety in a multitude of counsellors.
2. No single church owns exclusive rights to your mind. Maybe I ought to broaden the word “church” to “ministry.” No single ministry owns exclusive rights to your thoughts. We are not to commit intellectual suicide when we become a part of any ministry. If we do, we’re on our way to trouble. I think that might be the major reason God allowed a Jonestown. What a living memory in our minds! So many of those sincere followers committed intellectual suicide as they absorbed and embraced only one man’s message simply because he said it. In subtle ways he stole their allegiance, which belonged to Christ. Our submission is ultimately to one Head—the Lord Jesus Christ. We bow to the lordship of Christ, not the headship of some minister. To respect human leaders is commendable, but to follow them, regardless, is to flirt with danger.
3. No specific interpretation is correct just because a gifted teacher says so. If the Bereans felt Paul and Silas were worth comparing with Scripture, surely that says something about teachers and preachers today.

Well, there you have it. I really want you to live a fuller life than you now live, especially those of you who have settled for tunnel vision, lacking imagination. In fact, I don’t want you to wind up your Christian life as I started mine, sacrificing the beauty and colour, perception and creativity.

Today, your life may literally face a blank wall, and the only thing you can draw on is the beauty and depth and colour prompted by God’s Book. You need more than knowledge; you need a new infusion of creativity from the Spirit of God Himself. In a word, you need discernment. Don’t miss it. Add a full cup of it to your knowledge. Mix it well, and you’ll never lose your balance.