Get It Out

Steven Furtick post:  Saturation Point

In chemistry, every substance has a saturation point where it can’t take anymore. Nothing has unlimited capacity. For example, a sponge can absorb only so much water. Eventually it will get to the point where it will not be able to soak up any more until it gets wrung out.

The same is true in our lives when it comes to absorbing teaching. That includes teaching from sermons, leadership conferences, podcasts, blogs, books, retreats, or any other venue you can think of.

Obviously I don’t mean that we have a point where we won’t be able to consume and remember new information. But I do believe there is a point when the teaching we’re receiving will stop having the positive transformational effects on our lives that we desire.

Not because we’re not hungry for biblical teaching. Or for that moment when someone says something that completely rearranges our conceptual paradigm. But because we’re not just as hungry to apply biblical teaching. We’re not just as hungry to rearrange our practical paradigm.

I think many Christians have reached their saturation point. Many of us just want to get fed. We want to collect the latest and best “deep” teaching we can get our hands on. The best quote that we can tweet.

What we really need is to wring out what we’re absorbing.

A mind-expanding thought doesn’t become a life-changing one until it becomes reality. The best teaching you’ve heard recently is the teaching you’re applying right now. Deep teaching is teaching that bores through your mind, into your heart, and out through your hands.

Don’t hear me wrong. I wholeheartedly believe in the idea of consuming as much good teaching as you can. I usually have 3-4 sermons running in the background of my office. I study the Bible intensely. I’m constantly reading new books.

So by all means, take in the best teaching you can. Listen to every podcast you can. Go to the best conferences. Read twenty blogs a day.

But whatever you take in, you’ve got to get it out. Or else you’ll soon run out of space to take in anything else.