Faith is the driving force in each of our lives because we act on what we believe. Our faith is what causes us to do well in our relationships, it defines our work ethic and even gives us our success and failure, because faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
How often do you check your faith or challenge what you believe? Faith, after all, comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and it is that scripture, inspired by God that gives us doctrine or the framework of what we believe and why.
According to 2 Timothy 3:16 that doctrine should be challenged, reproofed and corrected using the word of the Lord because we can be wrong in what we believe.
How often do you take a belief that you have had for a long time and challenged that belief? We often take for granted that what we believe is biblical and true when we could be in error.
Take something like good works. Going back to 2 Timothy 3 we find that using the God inspired scriptures, the doctrine and correction that come from studying those scriptures, that the man of God is equipped for every good work.
What good work is the Apostle Paul talking about? After all, salvation comes by grace not works, but we are not talking about salvation but life after salvation we were meant to experience in Christ Jesus as we walk in the light.
In order to know what good works are, we must study the word of God, which is where they are defined. If believers of the Way of Jesus understood this basic principle, Christians would be very different indeed because we would truly be imitators of Jesus, after all He is the word of God in flesh.
Christians should be continually studying the word of God looking for ways to obey it. We take for granted that we are living good and righteous lives because we consider ourselves saved but by what standard do we believe this to be true?
If we don’t study and meditate on the word of God how will we know we are living the way the Lord wants us to live? Are we getting instruction in righteousness? Are we being corrected in our error? Do we even know what we believe?
The Lord expects us to continue in the faith we learned in the beginning from our salvation and to continually learn more of His scripture each day and each week to become mature in our faith instead of unstable and double minded.
There are many false teachers who teach that God’s word, the bible, is not inspired by the Lord and so they teach that immorality is acceptable and good. Their teachings lead to destruction and they should be avoided.
We were saved to do good works and walk in the light with the Lord, we are to study His good ways and do them to the rejoicing of others as they are blessed by our obedience in doing good works to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
