Today's Devotional Reading
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John.8:32)
I remember as a boy how I use to love to climb trees. The bigger the tree, the greater the challenge and the more thrilling it was to climb. I remember how I would climb as high as I possibly could, often getting up to what would seem to be very flimsy branches. I can remember how the limbs would sway and the breeze would blow through my hair. I felt like I was in my own little world--it was a feeling of freedom, a feeling of becoming part of the tree as it moved with the gentle brush of the wind.
I now have a son who likes to do the very same thing. Though when he does, I stand below him on solid ground looking up and thinking that he needs to come down a little bit. I look at him high up in the tree and fear for his safety and get nervous for him--while he remains completely unafraid. It seems I quickly forget how much I enjoyed the same thing as a child.
I see God's Truth like a Great Tree to be climbed. It is a massive and challenging tree that stretches into the sky. Each and every branch represents another part of God's person, and the higher I climb and the more I stretch, the more I become one with Him--holding tightly to Him--moving with Him as He moves.
As a child in Christ, as a new Christian, we may find that we like heights. We cannot wait to get back up the tree of God's truth each and every day. We climb and climb, hoping to discover something new about His person. With each stretch toward another branch we cling more fervently to Him. The higher up we move, the more dependent we become upon Him to support us. It is a feeling of freedom.
But as we get bigger the heights appear too high, and the risk appears too dangerous. Fear begins to replace freedom and we find ourselves standing on the ground, looking up and perhaps wondering what has made us afraid to climb the tree the way we did once upon a time. And when we do get up the courage to climb, we cannot seem to bring ourselves to go as high as we once did. We stop short of limbs we had once traversed, and we see no hope of ever stretching beyond the place we have already been.
We, therefore, settle for the familiar. We climb to a point that feels comfortable, a point that we can settle with because it fits our logic, our preconceived ideas or our religious doctrines. We then live our lives never searching out the depths of who God is, but settle for the pleasant familiar and miss out on so much that He has to offer.
To speak plainly; there are many things that God has yet to show us. There are many ways to love Him, many ways to minister to others and many ways to live out our Christian life that we have yet to begin to discover. We rob ourselves of true freedom by learning one way to love, minister and live--then settling within the comfortable familiar, reluctant to stretch any further.
We do not learn to walk with a walker in our infancy and then use one the rest of our lives. In the same way, God does not teach us ways to walk in our Christian infancy that we are to cling to throughout our Christian lives (see Heb.6:1-3). He wants us to move beyond what is familiar and trust Him that he won't let us fall out of the tree.
God's truth is limitless. When we stop stretching beyond some part of the comfortable truth, we begin to put our trust in that truth, understanding or doctrine (these are the branches we rest on), and we begin to withdraw our trust from Him. God did not give us doctrine so that we could walk in it, but doctrine is a spiritual walker to help us to learn to walk in Him. It is not something to settle with, but something to help us move beyond ourselves as we learn to abandon everything we have ever known--and trust completely in our Lord.
Where do you want to be? Do you want to be the one who enjoys the freedom that comes from being stretched by God's truth? Or do you want to be the one standing on the ground looking up--wishing that those who are in the heights would come down a little bit so that you feel more comfortable?
"Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit."
Heb.6:1-3
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