THE FORWARD CHRISTIAN

You know that moment whilst studying your Bible that you see something that stands out to you or jumps at you and immediately you think to yourself, hmm this verse will be an inspiration to many others, let me quickly post it on my Instagram? You get it already, lol…Because the word hits you in your medulla oblongata so much so that it propels you to leave your Bible study and run to Instagram. But on logging in, you see a post that catches your attention and you stop to read it. After reading it, you realise there are more interesting posts that catches your attention and could “teach you a thing or two”, and you continued reading. Then before you know it, you have spent 30minutes on being distracted and enjoying it. Shoot! you remember that you only went there to post a verse that spoke to you, so you finally crawl to your page with all the guilt in your heart to write your “inspirational” post. Well, let me make this short, then you log out (but we both know that logging out isn’t as easy and fast on social media as I made it seem here). On getting out of Instagram, you remember that you were supposed to also post on Twitter and Whatsapp and you “quickly” do that.

Remember, you were only 3minutes into “studying” your Bible…

After walking the streets of your multiple social media accounts, you may or may not get back to “studying” your Bible because you’ve got other things to do now. You can follow my train of thought abi? Don’t worry, no one will beat you, we or let me say a few of us have been there or are still struggling with leaving there so you aren’t alone.

Now, how do we get out of this rut? It is as simple as I will state it here but the application will take a little “bulldog” action. The next time you sit down to study your Bible, and a word/message/verse jumps at you or speaks to you, you take a pen and a book and write it down, yes write it down! Then you make sure to finish what you opened the Bible for. Afterwards, meditate on what you wrote down. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see beyond the words to the very essence of which it was stood out to you. At the end of that exercise, which might take minutes, hours, days or months to digest depending on the journey God wants to take you through.

The point here is this: while it is good to post a verse, an inspiration and the likes, you have to bear in mind that if you say you are studying the Bible, the particular verse or message that jumps at you isn’t meant for Ms A. or Mr B., it is meant for YOU! Or did you go to study for people? I agree that whatever you learn might be of benefit to someone else, but do not be a forward Christian. Take some time to digest it first, then ask the Holy Spirit what He wants you to do with the message (to share, to hold on, to meditate further or for your own consumption?). He will tell you what to do, best believe. Some minutes to meditate wouldn’t hurt no one, would it?

So who is the Forward Christian? The forward Christian is one who believes the Bible is true and the words in it are truth but acts like the message therewithal is for someone else while sidestepping himself/herself. Note;

• All deeds are right in the sight of the doer, but the Lord weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2).
• “Be diligent to present yourself to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth”.