Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Everyone is born with faith; life is a series of faith choices, both good
and poor. When we place our faith in a
chair, by sitting on it, we exercise our faith that the chair will hold us
up. If it does, it was well-placed
faith. If we place our faith in a man
who whispers to us on the street corner….psst, buddy…you want a great
deal? I got these Rolex watches worth
twenty grand each; sell ya one for $75.
Chances are rather strong, our faith in that guy will rust as fast as
the watch.
It's one thing to be naïve about the worth of a trinket; it’s quite
another matter to allow preconceived notions about God shipwreck our faith. Faith, in spiritual matters. is supposed to
guide our choices towards God’s open arms.
Misplaced trust in anything other than God’s will and way leads to a
shipwreck of our faith. Sometimes we
cling to a hope that is ill-founded merely because it sounded good, or real
when we first heard it from a friend. We
didn’t run it through the God-filter; instead, we just believed it (placed our
faith in it), and couldn’t believe how badly it turned-out. It’s like the story of the man who worried
himself over the question of whether life wasn’t fooling him, and he began to
think he was dead. He started believing
it and telling everyone he was dead. No
friend or family member could convince him otherwise. Finally they got him into therapy. The psychiatrist had no better result; the
man thought he was dead. Frustrated, the
shrink decided on a graphic, undeniable test.
He asked the troubled man: Do
dead men bleed? The man
said: No, dead men don’t bleed. With that, the shrink pulled out a pin,
pricked the man’s arm with it, and it started to bleed. The shrink pointed to the man’s arm and
asked: So what do you make of
that? The man, now puzzled,
finally offered: Well, I’ll be
durned…dead men DO bleed!
What Apostle Paul was telling Timothy is a stern warning for any one of
us to beware of letting our faith settle on anything that won’t pass the blood
test. There is so much heat these days
on television news, social media, blogs and vlogs galore, which promote hatred,
violence, and rebellion, as well as perversity as a normative good choice, if
that’s what you want. That kind of stuff
conflates a small amount of truth about political and sociological problems,
with isolated Biblical verses to create a wedge of doubt between your
conscience and the good sense given to you by God’s kindness. We can fall victim to good sounding, but
false theories of how to view the world.
We can be like Eve who heard the serpent whisper did God REALLY
say that? Satan even used that
tactic, quoting Scripture to Jesus (way out of context, of course); the devil
was tempting Jesus to abandon the Father’s mission and serve the darkness of Hell. In all three of the temptations recorded in
Matthew[1], Jesus denied Satan’s offer with Scripture, appropriately interpreted,
countering Satan’s use of twisted Scripture.
For You Today
We must use our faith, nurture our
faith, and grow in our faith. But we
must be careful to grow straight, rather than crooked. To grow straight requires bathing our
worldview in the Word of God. There is
nothing about popular worldview opinions that can match the strength of God’s
Word to avoid shipwrecking our faith.
Paul gave this advice to his young ministry student, Timothy:
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a
blessed day!
There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons
in the Rocky Road library.
Title Image Pixabay.com Images without citation are in
public domain or cited via weblinks.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT©
