Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: “All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.”
Goethe echoes the Preacher who says there is nothing new under the sun. It has all been thought and said before (Ecclesiastes 1:9). However, we keep looking for new ideas believing that when we discover them our problems will be solved. But our problem is not acquiring new ideas. With our technology we have access to more information than we can possibly use. Our problem is that we do not put into practice what we already know to be true. God has made known to us the essential truths (John 16:7-12). The question is whether that knowledge will remain simply an intellectual exercise or whether we will apply that knowledge to our personal experience.
