Thinking on human terms can cause us the most discomfort in our walk of faith. We cannot think outside the box, nor can we possibly begin to imagine what our "eternal" existence will consist of. We talk of meeting loved ones gone before us, being reunited with husbands and wives, and the occasional hope of "not running into so-and-so" when we get there. If we read God's word, we find that not only will we be in the greatest presence imaginable, we will have a new name and a new body!
There are many passages in the scriptures that are often taken out of context and used to justify actions and beliefs. One cannot grasp the true meaning any book or the passion of the author by reading just one or two lines in the middle of it. The joy of reading a mystery comes when you begin to put the pieces together when you've reached that last chapter. Remembering who the key characters are and what their role has been throughout the story helps you to draw the conclusions the author brings you to in the final pages. The same is true for the Bible.
Unless we put ourselves into the word of God from beginning to end, we will never comprehend the entire story. We, as a nation, place a very high value on education. We go to and send our children to college to learn more about a particular field of study and become "experts" in such. We take the classes and do the homework, learning as we go. Ninety-eight percent of the time, we trust that the teacher or professor instructing us knows the material better than we do (which is why we go to them in the first place). We do not open a complex physics book and automatically know how to work the problem. When we began to learn math, we started by first learning the numbers and their sequence. Then we learned how to add and subtract. You can't multiply and divide without knowing addition and subtraction. Once we mastered all of that, we moved into negative and positive numbers, then algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and then on to physics. Never once did we question the formulas used to arrive at the conclusions.
When we begin to study the Bible, we begin with the basics. God created us, he loves us, we sinned, he sent us a Savior, who died on a cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and is coming back to get us. Our education or "accumulated knowledge" of God should not end there. It is not enough to just know the basics.
If you don't already read your Bible or participate in Sunday School class, start! Trust your education of God to the professionals. You would not hope to gain a law degree simply by watching "Law and Order", you would not be licensed to practice medicine by watching "Gray's Anatomy" and you will not know the Lord if all you do is show up to church on Sunday and daydream for an hour! Read his word, study his works and come to know the ways of God from the ways of Satan. Your life after death depends on it!
