Ah, mid-terms... everyone loves midterms...

Ok so most of us don't actually like mid-terms, but they are a great way to show your progress. Sometimes we may not want that, but I like seeing ways that I can improve myself and tests are an extremely honest way to do that. The thing about it is that we only have mid-terms when we are in school; there is no "Christianity Mid-term" to let us see how we are progressing in our spiritual walk. So how do we measure how we are doing spiritually? The answer is simpler than some of us would like, that is compare ourselves to the standard of the Bible. There is the obvious comparison of, "are we displaying the fruits of the spirit?" But is there more beyond that? Because I have known some very obviously non-Christians who display the fruits better than some “Christians” that I know. Well to see how we are doing spiritually we can look at some examples in the Bible of people who were educated more correctly in the gospel and see how and why they grew.

We can look at Acts 18:24-28 where we see a man named Apollos who was educated in the scriptures, who eloquently and accurately taught about the things concerning Jesus. But he only knew the baptism of John the Baptist, so Pricilla and Aquila took him aside and taught him more accurately the ways of the gospel. After witch his was a great asset to the early church.

We can also look at Acts 19:1-7, here Paul encounters some disciples of John the Baptist. When he asks them about if they had the Holy Spirit, they told him that they did not know about the Holy Spirit. On top of that they also had only knowledge of the baptism of John. Thus Paul taught them about Jesus, His death and resurrection. When they learned the truth, they were immediately baptized, and after Paul laid his hand on them they were given the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

There are many other examples of people finding out that they were educated wrong, and after being properly educated, fixing whatever was wrong. They were willing to do this because nothing was more important to them than getting to heaven! That is a great lesson to us today; are we willing to put our pride behind us, and honestly look at our lives to see if we truly match what the Bible says a Christian should be? Are we willing to look at our Christian walk and see if there are traditions of men that we have been taught all of our lives that don’t match up with the Bible? And if we do find those unscriptural traditions of men, are we willing to get rid of them and follow the Bible?

If you are then congratulations, you are what is called a truth seeker! That is a person who wants to know the truth, and is willing to do what it takes to learn the truth. But if you are not willing to leave the unscriptural traditions of man, then you need to ask yourself what is more important in your life; heaven, or your pride? Because let’s face it, if you are unwilling to change because; “This is the way I’ve always done it” or “if I change then that means that all the people before me were wrong” or worse yet “I’m older than you so there is no way I will admit you know better than me.” If one of these is your mindset, can you really say that you are seeking fist the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33)? This is your Christian mid-term; will you pass and follow the example of the Bible, or will you fail and follow the traditions of the world?