Can you solve the puzzle alone?

John 3:11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

Jesus was talking to a well-learned scholar who went in the dark to talk with the unconventional rabbi. There are many important statements in Jesus’ replies to this man. We can learn from them today.

Jesus was speaking from a place of knowledge and experience that Nicodemus was not aware. Nicodemus was first a student and later a teacher of a school of thought. He was respected because he knew a lot about the spiritual themes.

We are continually experiencing that. Many of us feel that what we know is not enough, so we continue to seek, listen, read and learn. There are others who feel that all that they should know, already is in them. They become either teachers without ears or indifferent individuals of our society who can stop others to become hungry for the truth.

What do you know? Where you get your current knowledge? Are you sure that your teachers did well their research for truth?

Most of us are not first-hand witnesses of revelations or experiments, we have accepted the truth that has come from one or more generations. Sometimes we check them out, but most of the time we eat our spiritual and philosophical food without any assessment.

People like me that preach every week from church platforms, have a burden. We speak the truth we know, being aware that there is still there knowledge that we are not aware. We see partly and we preach and teach others on what we see.

We hear God partly and we preach and teach others on what we hear.

That’s why every believer in Christ should be responsible to go to the word of God by themselves and read, and read, and meditate, and read without stopping. Like the Berean Jews who checked the preaching of Paul, we should be more educated in the Scriptures than the previous generations. We should build in the best foundations our elders have build on.

We should always be humbly aware that we don’t see fully and we don’t hear well. We trust God that in the end he will judge based on our motivation rather than the accuracy towards the perfect truth. More and more I am willing to listen other Christians, being aware that they might have received a better understanding of Scriptures for this time and place. How about you?

Can you receive the testimony of someone else who is slightly different than you? How different? How open are you to accept that you don’t see full picture so you need the support of other believers?

Together we might see better the puzzle that God has given to the universal church.