Do you ever find yourself bored with your church, with your Bible study, or with the sermons you hear? You're not involved in anything that's a spiritual hinderance, it's just you've been in church for years, and you know you've heard this material 1000 times before. Yes, it's good to hear the "old old story", and to hear those lessons one more time, but there comes a time where you feel a holy dissatisfaction with the material you're receiving.

Rejoice! God is calling you to a new level in Him. It's time to study and/or be taught things that are in the Bible, but aren't usually taught in the western church. You're ready for meat many Christians never sample. Maybe you'll be led to teachers you've never sought out before. Maybe you'll be led to books, videos, or tapes that aren't part of your normal church experience. You might even be led to new types of music. The web can be an excellent place to look as well. Sure, you'll reject some teachings as error, but other times the Holy Spirit will open up whole new vistas.

Have you ever investigated, really investigaged, subjects such as submission, solitude, extreme fasting, simplicity, or handling injustice in ways you never thought of? Sometimes the revelations are startling. You'll find yourself saying, "Here I've been a Christian for years, read the Bible through many times over, and have studied it since childhood. How come I've never seen this before? It's been there in the Word all along. How come none of my many teachers or preachers brought this out before? Are they even aware of these revolutionary Truths themselves?"

Then you find yourself asking God how He'd have you apply these things, and you're shown some radical steps you must take if you're to continue to progress.

Friends, just when you think you know the Word you find you don't. Just when you think you really know about the Lord you find there's a bunch you've been missing about Him. What tremendous depths there are to be discovered in His Person and His Word!

Many Christians are sailing in circles, round and round the same shallow harbor. They need to launch their boat into the great vastness and depths that are God. And just when you think you've done this, you realize you're still in the harbor. So launch out again, and again, and again...

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2002

Answers

I've been away from the board for a bit and I have been out of town attending a convention. But this topic struck me to read; and it was food to my soul.

God's Word is what I call regenerating. It just continues to grow, you can't exhaust it. You think you know today and tomorrow that same Word will open up new paths. What we as Christians have to relize it that when God opens up a Word to us, we should act upon it. We are accountable to God to move up.

Yes it is time to launch out into the deep. Our mission is to win souls, reconcile the world to Christ. I'm not a fisherman, but I believe there is an abundance of fish in the deep waters.

In Christ, Carmen

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2002