YOU'RE AN EXAMPLE OF CHRIST: REPRESENT (6)

'Be an example ... in faith' 1 Timothy 4:12

It can be easy to sit back and switch off your critical faculties at church, like you're in the cinema with a bag of popcorn, automatically accepting that what is being said must be true. 'They're in the pulpit of the anointed, they're the divine download - they must know what they're on about, right?' But who and what do you ultimately put your faith in? As much as we should respect our God-given leaders, we should never assume they are right all the time.

Every human makes mistakes, and your pastor should be the first to admit that for themselves! Our faith comes from Jesus. So we ultimately put our faith in Him, not our pastors. If we're unsure about something, we have the right to go back to God, read the Bible and check it out. It's okay (no, it's good!) to question things that don't seem right to you - if you keep praying to God and talking to people who are wise about it, what is true will stick.

The Christians in Berea (a country in New Testament times) didn't just take Paul's word for it, they 'received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so' (Acts 17:11 NKJ) Let's do this! Sermons and books are important, but as Rob Bell writes in Velvet Elvis, 'God has spoken, everything else is commentary'.

What now? Get yourself a notebook and, if you don't already, start making notes of the key points during sermons. Get into the habit of 'searching the Scriptures' and weighing up what you hear week by week.

written by Bob Gass