I love a good question! When I was High School Pastor here, there were a couple of students who would wait around after every message, just waiting to ask a question. Sometimes they would be directly related to the message I just preached, and other times they would be about some completely irrelevant topic. It was great! I loved the relevant questions because they told me that they were paying attention, but I loved the irrelevant questions because they told me that they were contemplating things of God when they weren’t at church. That warms the heart of every pastor!
Sadly, at some point, adults seem to stop asking questions. Why is that? What happened to us? Are we nervous that someone might think that we should already know the answers? Are we afraid that people might think we are doubting? Have we gotten answers that we didn’t like, so we gave up? Or, maybe our lack of questions could be because we have been a part of a tradition that doesn’t value mystery? Or that we subscribe to a worldview that values answers more than questions?
No matter how you look at it, this means that we are no longer curious. And I am convinced that to lose curiosity is to lose something crucial to what it means to be a follower of Jesus. A person without curiosity is in a dangerous place! This was the mindset of the religious leaders at the time of Jesus’ day. They weren’t even curious enough to walk 5 miles down the street to investigate the Magi’s claims.
The truth is, if you’re not curious, you’re not paying attention. There is just way too much to be curious about when it comes to Jesus. So, let’s commit to being curious people who stay curious. Let’s ask questions with childlike curiosity. I believe that this is what we’ll be doing for all eternity. We’ll be asking questions and learning new things about how great God is. Even eternity will not be long enough to get all the answers, but I’m hoping that our questions will get better and better.
By the way, if you ever want to practice being curious, I’d like to invite you to join Pastor Ryan and me on our Vitalogy Podcast. This is an hour that we devote almost every week to answering questions. You can write to us with questions (relevant or not) at questions@efcc.org. Then you can find us live most Wednesdays at 3pm, on Facebook or YouTube, but if you can’t watch it live, you can stream the video on either platform or find the podcast efcc.org/podcasts. Hope to see you there.
Pastor Josh Rose
Teaching Pastor