NOW that you've gathered a crowd of listeners, and spent countless hours in prayer and study, it's easy to be excited about sharing the nuggets gleaned from your efforts. And many in your audience will be enthralled with the depth of your perception and the profound and heretofore hidden truths you've unearthed.
So what?
What is the application of this profound knowledge?
Knowledge without application produces pride and arrogance--Pharisees, in fact.
Certainly any attempt at application without right knowledge is foolish. Hypocrisy, often demonstrated in extreme standards of dress and behavior, can be an indication of zeal without knowledge. But the opposite error is no less egregious, no less wrong.
Let's be careful to encourage our hearers to apply in some practical way the results of all our study. Let's give them a "so what" to which they can immediately respond.
"Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only ..." James 1:21
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