You place a lot of hope in what is written and that is not an evil thing. You also speak of the work of God in it all which is an even more necessary part. Just be careful not to put God in a box. You or I or the other guy may have adopted some method to serving God, but God can never be so contained although some try to do just that to Him.As I maintain, as long as there is another prescription for putting all our ducks in a row, for dotting all our i's and crossing all our t's, the opening of the Word of God to a naive Christian will mean he must sufficiently adopt a presumed methodology. Just read and let the Lord do as He has promised, to lead and guide into all truth, for it is God Who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is He that will make our way perfect, Who will perfect that which is lacking in our faith, and the One Who will arise from off the pages, for they testify of Him.
I would hesitate to say that every one here is learning as you say... although I hope that they are. Some here as perhaps on any Christian forum are stuck in one gear which they think is forward, but it is not. They have an agenda and they seemingly cannot hear anything else. They already have all of the answers [or act as if they do].One of the major failings of the church today is the insistence upon formulas and methodologies that will force God to move when all we need do is to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our MINDS. Within the soul is the mind, the heart, emotions, intents, imaginations, and will. I'm not assuming we are addressing atheists on this forum. The people here are Christians, if I have that right. They have regenerated spirits, are learning slowly to mortify the deeds of the flesh, lay aside every weight, run the race, and, through proper study habits will begin to understand what is not wood, hay and stubble.
Well I am no anti-intellectual, but neither do I believe that without intellectuals and their ways we will necessarily lose our way to God. Thinkers may also lose their way if they lead with their own head instead of recognizing that Jesus is always our Head.Ravi Zacharias' great effort to reach the world is through the intellect, the mind. It is the part that he rightly judges to be the least exercised in the body of Christ. There are huge pockets of anti-intellectuals throughout the body of Christ, which has slowed the ability to answer many of the hard questions posed by the world to believers. The mind is a terrible thing to waste, and he well knows this by the title of his programs, "Let My People Think".
You say the mind is a terrible thing to waste, but I would say that anything God has made is a terrible thing to waste by either not using it or misusing it.
As a young Christian I was very early told that there was no value to my reading until God breaths on it. Much time I wasted waiting for that breath to turn anything I read into flesh, or revelation. Instead, I learned that it is good for me to take His yoke upon me and LEARN of Him, partially by giving heed to reading, and let God be God.
I on the other hand long ago [no man told me this] learned to stop and talk to and listen to God between chapters whenever I am reading my Bibles. I am all for letting God be God, but does He not want to interact directly with us perhaps especially when we are reading what He anointed men of God to write? Is He such a impersonal far removed entity that we cannot know Him? Jesus spoke of both "eyes to see" and "ears to hear" so that we can see and hear God. Solomon wrote these words a thousand years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem:
"Where there is no vision, the people perish..." Prov 29:18, and then Paul wrote about eventually seeing "face to face". If we read the Bible with no vision, will we not then lead any who follow us into a ditch?