So What's the Big Deal?

I swear, it is when you think you know that you really don't know. I do not think it is true, that the older you get, the less you think you have a handle on. I think the real truth is that the wiser you get, the less you think you know.

I was practically bottle-fed and burped on the Roman's Road, John 3:16, the Wordless Book, Jacob's Ladder, Onward Christian Soldiers, and the books of the Bible. I had the books of the Bible memorized, Old and New Testaments, well before the third grade. I was born again at six years old, and baptized in the Spirit (a very real "second experience") at eleven years old.

So you can imagine how that, in my adult life, I thought I had knowlege of the gospel of God and manifold grace. Meanwhile, my consistent default mode was lawlawlawlawlaw. What's the big deal about grace? It's a doctrine.

I. Did. Not. Know. Jack.

::she says, laughing::

And I still don't know...not as I will come to know as I grow ever older and hopefully ever wiser. All I know now, is that this gospel of Jesus is all there is to know, and I will be a lifetime understanding it, applying it to my life, and ministering it into the lives of others. Oh, happy calling!

The great hymn writer Isaac Watts said this: "Acquaint yourself with your own ignorance. Impress your mind with a deep and painful sense of the low and imperfect degrees of your present knowledge."

Deep. Painful. A deep and painful sense. Oh, Mr. Watts! Been there, done that recently. I've decided I prefer to stay "down here", though. I want to live my days out in the low posture of a student...only then can I truly teach with bold confidence. And teach I will. I will not be silent. I read today that there are two things the devil will always, always capitalize on: unhealthy solitude and self conscious silence. I do not learn wisdom in a vacuum, I do not gain wisdom by myself, in solitude. I learn it from God, and very often through others.

What He shows me in secret, in that deep and painful place, that I will shout from the housetops, all silence and self absorbed propriety, be gone!