Meaty Messages

So we're currently in this series on the Book of Hebrews at Pathway Church that I've entitled "Does God Care?" and every week as I pray and prepare to feed the flock I think to myself, "Man, this is meaty stuff! God, please help me share the meat of the Word in a digestable manner, especially to the younger Christ followers."

I've always been something of a Bible nerd, even when I first came to Christ as a 12-year-old and started taking Bible correspondence courses through the mail. Years later during the first week at my first pastorate, shortly before my 21st birthday, I made a desk out of cement blocks and wooden planks in the corner of the church nursery and said to myself, "You mean I get paid ($110 a week at the time - ha!) to study the Word and share it with others?! How cool is this!"

It excites me to study the Word for myself but I also want my friends to get deeper into God's truth because when we apply ourselves to understanding the "deep secrets" of God we are the recipients of truly practical and powerful knowledge! It puzzles me why some waste their time reading a horoscope or having their palms read or consulting with a psychic when God's Word reveals so many positive and factual things for here and hereafter!

I think Scripture itself is the best commentary on my current dilemma of sharing the Word in an understandable fashion.

Paul writes this to the church family at Corinth in chapter two of his first letter to them:

1 Dear brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I did not come preaching God's secret with fancy words or a show of human wisdom. 2 I decided that while I was with you I would forget about everything except Jesus Christ and his death on the cross.3 So when I came to you, I was weak and fearful and trembling.4 My teaching and preaching were not with words of human wisdom that persuade people but with proof of the power that the Spirit gives.5 This was so that your faith would be in God's power and not in human wisdom.

6 However, I speak a wisdom to those who are mature. But this wisdom is not from this world or from the rulers of this world, who are losing their power.7 I speak God's secret wisdom, which he has kept hidden. Before the world began, God planned this wisdom for our glory.8 None of the rulers of this world understood it. If they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written in the Scriptures: "No one has ever seen this, and no one has ever heard about it. No one has ever imagined what God has prepared for those who love him." — Isaiah 64:4

10 But God has shown us these things through the Spirit. The Spirit searches out all things, even the deep secrets of God.11 Who knows the thoughts that another person has? Only a person's spirit that lives within him knows his thoughts. It is the same with God. No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.12 Now we did not receive the spirit of the world, but we received the Spirit that is from God so that we can know all that God has given us.13 And we speak about these things, not with words taught us by human wisdom but with words taught us by the Spirit. And so we explain spiritual truths to spiritual people.14 A person who does not have the Spirit does not accept the truths that come from the Spirit of God. That person thinks they are foolish and cannot understand them, because they can only be judged to be true by the Spirit.15 The spiritual person is able to judge all things, but no one can judge him. The Scripture says: 16 "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been able to teach him?" — Isaiah 40:13 But we have the mind of Christ. (New Century Version of the Bible)

I am praying for the church family who listens to the messages in our current series to be spiritually minded. I am asking God to help me avoid human wisdom and rely on heavenly wisdom. I am asking for the mind of Christ.