I completely agree with Marshall Segal in this piece he wrote about making sure you do not serve both God and Theology. "It’s possible to love what we’re learning about God more than we love God himself", He said. "We will never be truly satisfied by knowing about God. We need to know him. If that dichotomy doesn’t make sense to you, beware. Facts about God without feelings for him and fellowship with him—without a sense that you are God’s chosen, redeemed and known son or daughter—will give you a false sense of God’s love and security".
Christian leadership can be exciting and can equally be a snare. Exciting because you are a servant of the Most High God with a whole lot of divine resources available to you. God uses you you to manifest His awesome power, bringing glory to His name. On the other hand, it can be a snare because our hearts can be so lifted up that we forget that we are still children of God and are not essentially different from other sons and daughters of God who are serving Him in some other areas. Our relationships with other people are affected as we expect to be served instead of serving. We expect others to pour out their lives for us instead of pouring out our lives for them as leaders. We expect others to always think about our comfort and good without thinking about their comfort. We teach them what to do without doing those things ourselves. We separate ourselves into a lonely position where people that knew us before can no longer reach us. We are not bothered anymore even when we know that we need God's touch. We refuse to cry out and ask for help because of our position. We die in secret because we do not want anything to destabilize the picture people have about us. It can be a snare because we may become conceited, thinking that we have become very familiar with God, thinking that we have known a lot about God, we lose all fear of Him. We can do anything with impunity thinking that as long as we sanction it, God sanctions it also. In fact we think that we know God more than everybody else who do not have the same exposure we have.
Marshall Segal said "Their education and pride—their knowledge and confidence in their own system—had blinded them to the very image and voice of God. They knew so much about God, and yet knew him so little...So we should fear money when it leads our hearts and allegiances away from God. And we should fear our system of theology when it more subtly does the same". Read and be blessed.
You Cannot Serve Both God and Theology.
