Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord.

Zechariah 1:4

The biggest mistake we can make as believers is looking only at the good examples in the Bible. Jesus is amazing, flawless, sinless and our one and only Savior, but if you don’t learn from Peter’s big mouth, Paul’s stubbornness and the many many flaws of the early church, you don’t know what being a Christian really means. It’s one thing to follow Jesus’ good example as best we can; we’re all trying to do that, I pray. But it’s entirely another thing to see what lessons were learned the hard way and avoid having to hit up against those hard lessons ourselves.

Learn from history or don’t, but trust in this: one way or another, we all learn.

Ethan Kirl