The goal for me personally as a Christian, is to intensively and extensively memorize and accurately recall God's Word - the Bible. More important, I wish to give the average Christian that same ability by helping them towards the right learning/memorization utensil. A large part of being a Christian is developing your relationship with God through God's Word. His Word is to become part of you and the plumbline for your life, and yet the average Christian is unable to quote or accurately locate the ten commandments without using a concordance, let alone the other commandments scattered throughout the Bible. And yet throughout the Bible, it speaks of knowing His commandments (Prov 3:3, 6:20, 7:1, John 15:10 etc.) while the commandments themselves are scattered throughout the Bible (Ex.20:2-17, Deut. 4:2, Deut.12:32, Rev. 22:19, Matt. 5:16, Matt. 5:27-48, Matt. 22:37, etc, etc). John 8:31b.If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed; 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
At times, people will emphasize our relationship with God , but His Truth is passed over, creating a good-sounding theological stance, but frequently leading to some new cult. It is said that 70% per cent of converts to cult religions come from a Christian foundation - I would go along with that figure. A leader in what has been considered the biggest missionary organization - Youth With A Mission - told me that 75% of everyone who completes their Discipleship Training School (DTS) will end up at some point turning away from God - some forever! Unfortunately
YWAM is not the only Christian organization with these
basic problems - it is well known that 85% of an average church
sermon will be forgotten within the first hour of leaving the
church by the average person. This is not the fault of the churches.
Statistics show that over 70% of any subject learned through standard
methods will be forgotten within two years, if not applied. Just
think of all the expense and hours spent towards this training!
For the content of these sermons and lectures to have any real
impact on people's lives, they have to become integrated into
their natural lifestyle. The first step toward this goal is simply
to remember what was taught. Failing this, it's no wonder that
so many are falling away in despair.I have personally been directly involved with four suicides. One was my closest friend and fellow missionary who had been through all the training with me. We had gone out for dinner together, and the following morning she took her own life. Another friend had completed an extensive Bible College training course, but later on took his own life as well. And this is not counting when I had just started at another Bible College, only to learn that several weeks previous, a fellow student had taken his own life! There were definitely a combination of factors involved in each case, and to simply say that each never had a relationship with God, or had heard God's truth preached to them is a very simplistic viewpoint and far from the truth. I don't intend to go into a large theological discussion on this point, or to go beyond what I have already stated. I am not saying I am trying to solve all of the worlds problems on this site, only knowing and following God's ways can do that. But what I offer here should help towards that by better utilizing (being good stewards of) what we have all been given.
