I love that in the day and age we live in we have such easy access to instruction and guidance on so many topics. If I don’t know how to fix my phone, lawnmower, table, or car, YouTube will have a video preprepared by someone helpful that will sort me out (often with variable results). Today, information is more plentiful than its ever been as are the people who will provide that information.

When we apply this thought to the church and learning more about who Christ is and what it means for us in our day, the same principle applies – lots of info from lots of people – also with variable results. I’ve learnt so much from watching other teachers, reading other blogs etc. but I’ve also read a lot of stuff that is less than helpful, and quite frankly not true. In the midst of all this info and our increased ability to access it we need to be sure of the foundation upon which we add this info.

As I’ve been reading through the book of Acts in the Bible, I’ve been following the story of Paul as he reaches new cities across the Greco-Roman world. When he would arrive in a new place he would often teach them about the resurrected Christ. Often this information was new and different from what the Jews or Gentiles in these places had heard previously. This naturally caused a lot of tension amongst the hearers and often caused them to run Paul out of town.

In many places it was well received. Berea was one of those places. As I was reading about his teaching in Berea I noticed something very interesting, and very mature, about how the people there treating the new information they were receiving. We can see what they were doing below.

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men. Acts 17:11-12

I just love this.

Paul was clearly an excellent teacher, he was super educated, and his teaching was often accompanied by supernatural signs and wonders. It would have been easy as a listener to simply swallow and believe everything that he was talking about. I love that the Bereans took the time to test and weigh all that he said. And look at the results of that process – we are told that many of them believed! Not just because of Paul’s words and great teaching but because they had taken that knowledge, tested in with the scriptures and applied it to their own lives!

I would love to see the same level of maturity across our churches today. I would love us to take all that we are hearing, leaning, and experiencing from the world we live in, to the scriptures and prayerfully ask ourselves what is true and what is not. I want us to rely on God to teach us the truth rather than abandoning His truth for a more popular and often more comfortable teaching.

I’m not trying to be ‘old fashioned’ here. I don’t want us to become critical of anything that is new or different to what we have heard before. I don’t advocate that we start from a place of cynical stubbornness when we listen to teaching or others thoughts. In truth this can be as harmful as someone who swallows and believes everything that they read or hear.

Let’s make sure that we engage in healthy investigation of what we hear. Let’s be mature with what we hear and thorough in our investigations – God will lead us in our learning and we will move closer to being who He is calling us to be.