“Lose up to two pounds daily without diet or exercise”, lose ten pounds in ten days, lose 20 pounds in ten days, lose 12 inches in one month…etc are very familiar commercials to many of us. By the way these are all taken from real commercials and websites. Hundreds of products like the diet patches, magnet diet pills, electric muscle stimulators, appetite suppressing eyeglasses, magic weight-loss earrings…I am not kidding these are real products out there promising a quick and easy weight loss without much pain.
In fact there are so many commercials on TV for all kinds of gimmick weight loss diets and magic pills and products that the Federal Trade Commission released a report educating the public that most of these commercials are not scientific and are simply an exaggeration of their effectiveness and results. Bottom line there is no such thing as a miracle pill that can burn your fats and make you slim in a few days and even if that happens miraculously, remember that a greater miracle will follow very soon, you gain double the pounds in half the days.
There are no shortcuts to grow in our understanding of God or his word.
In a world where time is sometimes valued much more than money we are always tempted to figure out a quicker way to reach the destiny or produce a result. Well, as we gain experience in any field, we tend to become experts and come up with some of our own shortcuts that save both time and energy. Most cooks have a shortcut that can save time in the kitchen, most teachers have shortcuts that can save time in classroom and most parents have shortcuts to save time while doing chores at home. But there are some areas of life where we should beware of shortcuts because there are no shortcuts for building character and maturing as a person.
Our enemy masterfully, skillfully and constantly whispers into our ears that there is always an easier way to follow God without going through much hard work, pain and suffering.
Working with college students for many years I encountered many young people who would frequently ask me ‘what is the shortcut to understanding the Bible’. They presume that seminaries teach these secret formulas of understanding the Bible, if that is true every seminarian would start his own spiritual store supplying the secret formula. Many Christians purchase study Bibles filled with notes, commentaries and cross references hoping that they will solve all their questions and equip them for ministry. Please do not get me wrong, these resources are very helpful and necessary for a serious student of the Bible, but to expect that the buying of such material or just reading of such material will make you a better Christian may be just an illusion. There are no shortcuts to growing in our understanding of God or his word. Our understanding of God’s word or God is a gradual process and it takes a long time and so does building Christian character.
If we notice the Bible God rarely used short cuts, he often took the long route. Exodus 13 suggests that God actually avoids shortcuts. After delivering Israel from Egypt God could have taken them through the land of the Philistines which was a shortcut, but he preferred the longer route. Don Friesen notes “Jesus’ wilderness temptations (Matt 4 & Luke 4) represented ways for him to accomplish good things, but they were easy ways to accomplish them. Jesus was being offered some shortcuts. “Do it this way, and you can cut out all that preaching to crazy people on crowded hillsides. Do it this way, and you don’t have to personally touch so many sick bodies. Do it this way, and you waste less time trying to teach followers that are barely teachable! And best of all, you may not have to go through Calvary.” Our enemy masterfully, skillfully and constantly whispers into our ears that there is always an easier way to follow God without going through much hard work, pain and suffering. Let’s remember that there is no shortcut to heaven, eternal life, and holy living, the only way that works is the way suggested by Jesus “take up your cross and follow me daily” (Lk 9:23).
Warren Wiersbe in his essay “The high cost of shortcuts” wrote “Our ‘instant’ society has so invaded the church that we are constantly looking for shortcuts. All of nature bears witness to the fact that God takes time to accomplish great works, and all of church history, including the Bible, vindicates this witness. It is true that God can, and occasionally does, bring about some great blessing in a short time, but the usual manner of his working is deliberate and at leisure…We cannot use shortcuts when it comes to understanding spiritual truth, building Christian character, or building a local church. The emphasis in the church today seems to be on methods and goals. There is nothing essentially sinful about either of these, provided they are not manmade shortcuts to achieve man-exalting goals.” Beware of shortcuts; do not fool yourself with the appetite suppressing eyeglasses or the magic weight-loss earrings, they make your wallet thin, not your body.
“Our ‘instant’ society has so invaded the church that we are constantly looking for shortcuts.” – Warren Wiersbe
– – Author: Rev. Francis Burgula – –
