We need to know the Person of God, not the Idea of God

                In Colossians 2:8, we are told to not fall for the traps of the philosophy of men. There are those that take this verse, other pieces of scripture, and their own misguided view of faith to try and mean that we should not study philosophy, even as a means of apologetics. I believe that this is an extreme view, just as much as the extreme view of spending all of our time studying about God, but never really pursuing a relationship with God. While I am all for the study of apologetics, Dr. Ravi Zacharias puts it best, that apologetics are the seasoning, and the gospel of Christ is the main course. However, I want to unpack this a little bit more. What I want to do here is explore what it means to me to love God with all of our minds.
                We are told to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Mind is second in this list, but I think that it is very easily ignored by the majority of the church. In this age of secularism and reason, the church is lagging in our mindful defenses of the gospel. As I said earlier, there are those with the mindset that any means of defending Christianity outside of the Bible. While scripture is supported time and time again, I believe that we need to be aware of extra biblical sources that help us with questions about our faith. Now, our core has to be the Bible, we cannot make our gospel the writings of Christian philosophers and researchers, as some are prone to do. The problem that we run into here is that we may use our minds so much that we only spend our time talking about ideas about God, but not actually talking to God. It’s like if I had spent all of my time studying the pros and cons about my wife, but I had never taken the plunge and gone and gotten to know her as a person. We must learn the balance of the ways we come to know about, love, and talk to God.

                So this one wound up being a little short, and I may come back to this issue later, but I wanted to have a discussion starter and my quick thoughts on the topic out there as a favor to one of my more dedicated readers. How do you find your balance in heart, mind, soul, and strength when it comes to loving God? Leave me your thoughts below! God bless and have a good rest of your day.

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