What happens when we neglect to learn about Christ?

John Snyder shares in this video that when he was first pastoring a small church, he didn’t understand how to help his congregation. This led to a lot of frustration. He neglected Scripture in his own soul as he prepared sermons.

He became dry and hard. He went overseas and determined that he would do something about this coldness that was creeping in. He looked at the lives of Elijah and John the Baptist, but he neglected to look at the life of Christ.

He determined that for the three years that he was in the UK, he wanted to learn more about Christ. He studied the book of Luke and John. He began to see the beauty of God in Christ that he had not had before. 

John 14:21 (NKJV) - "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."

If I were to give a personal testimony about the place of Christ and my own spiritual growth, when I was first pastoring a small church, I really didn't understand how to help the people very well and that led to a lot of frustration on my part and theirs. I was working and pastoring and very little time neglecting scripture really in my own soul as I prepared sermons for other people. And I became dry and hard. I finished that pastorate and went overseas to study the 18th century Welsh revivals. And I determined in my heart that I would do something about this coldness that was creeping in.

I was impressed with a man like Elijah. I was impressed with a man like John the Baptist. But really if I were honest at that point, I would not have said I was impressed with Jesus Christ. I knew he was God. I knew He was man.

I knew He was my Savior. But there wasn't anything that was captivating me at that point. And so feeling that wrongness, I determined that for the three years that I was in the UK doing research, I would also set my heart to get to know Christ in a way I'd never known him before. So I began to study the book of Luke and then followed John and that's as far as I got in three years. And the Lord was very kind to me.

I began to see the beauty of God in the person of Christ in ways that I had never seen before. I remember having long quiet times isolated just me and the Lord and weeping over verses where the simplest and most profound things were said about Christ. Along with that in the UK we were attending a church in the city of Cardiff called the Heath Evangelical Church and it was a it was a very helpful church. It was a church that demonstrated the sufficiency of Christ and for me as a man who was giving up on the pastorate, as a man who had become hardened as a minister to the things I was saying, it became a real oasis for my soul. You