Firmly planted

So lately I have noticed that too many Christians have begun to drift away from the study of God's Word. For some reason that I cannot understand, we no longer esteem knowing doctrine as important. This idea of just "living right" has infiltrated the churches and Christians as individuals. A class that I took on postmodernism opened my eyes to this and I can see that it is a real problem. Before you get me wrong, I do believe we must live lives that are pleaseing to God, and I do agree with the statement "people don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care". My problem is, how do you live right if you don't know what that looks like? How do you please God if you don't know what pleases Him. The only way to find those things out is through the study of His Word. "Oh I will just let my pastor tell me what God's Word says about how to live and I will apply it to my life." Really?! We have completely and totally allowed Satan to decieve us when we think like that. Yes the world will not want to listen to our message if we do not live out what we preach, but think about this for a second; you have lived a life pleaseing to God and someone notices, so they come to you with all these questions and you can't answer the because you have been to busy living and your Bible has collected more dust on your shelf than your encyclopedia. Do you think people are going to want to listen to you if you don't know what you are talking about? You have to know what you believe and also live it out, you cannot have one without the other. Doctrine is important and every single word in the Word of God is worth looking into. What we like to do is find the passages that make us feel good. Seriously, what about the rest of the Bible? Don't you think that God gave us the whole Bible because He wants us to study and know the whole Bible? One quote that really bothered me the other day was from Donald Miller: "I won't defend Christianity because it means different things to different people". That was a summary of what he said in his book Blue like Jazz. It sounds good on the outside and I agreed with him at first. But think about it, if we never defend Christianity, then Satan has won. Yes we need to focus on defending Jesus, but whether we accept it or not we are Christians, and we have to defend what that truly means. Miller said he was a Christian and yet would not defend what the term meant? Really? Then he went on to say that he would rather talk about Jesus and how He "likes" us? That blew me away! Jesus does not like us. He loves us! With an incomparable love. I like ice-cream. Do you really want to compare that with how Jesus loves us? I don't. Here is something else that Donald Miller once said - "The problem with the Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against." I read that and think, DUH! We must have ethics and rules governed by God's Word. No, we shouldn't judge each other by them but we must have a moral standard governed by God's Word. Miller also said this "Trevor is one of my favorite people. He is my Ninendo buddy. We yell profanities at each other while playing NFL Blitz." Shocking right? Well this is what happens when you throw truth out of the window. We have to place knowing God and His Word above everything, because out of that, comes a lifestyle. Let us base our lives on biblical principals. Do not base your biblical principals off of your life, culture, feelings, etc. I am not in any way trying to lessen the importance of how you live. We must live according to His Word if we are to please Him and reach the world. But knowing how to do that comes first with studying God's Word and tryng to find what pleases Him.