“Jesus answered, ‘I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'” (John 14:6-7)
If you have ever experienced the loss of a family pet, you will understand, at least in part, what my family went through when we lost two baby birds, each one after having been in our care for only three weeks! Needless to say, we are being a bit cautious about replacing them! We have been in contact with a variety of bird breeders, investigating the deaths, and it seems that there are as many opinions as there are breeders to ask! But in general, we were getting somewhat similar direction for the majority of the breeders we spoke to. Until last night, that is. Last night I had a phone conversation with a breeder who seemed to be quite knowledgeable. After telling us that he is one of the top breeders in Canada, he went on to negate just about everything we had learned so far. Needless to say, we got off the phone VERY confused and VERY discouraged!
Does this scenario sound familiar to any of you, say, from the Spiritual realm? In the search for Biblical truth, it often seems that there are as many interpretations of the Bible as there are ones to interpret it, and though many interpretations may be pointing in the same general direction, there are others who have very different points of view! These are often the ones who claim to be experts, but what they say negates everything that we have come to believe as truth! You leave the encounter feeling VERY confused and maybe even a bit discouraged!
As confused as I was after my phone conversation, I had the foresight to take it all back to God in prayer. As I prayed, was impressed to open my Bible to Ps. 49:13, and my eyes were drawn to these words: “This is the fate of those who are FOOLISHLY CONFIDENT”! The breeder had been confident, all right! In fact, he considered himself to be quite the expert! But now God was telling me that he was “foolishly confident”! That meant that I shouldn’t take everything he said at face value. Suddenly I felt MUCH better! But my task had only just begun. Foolishly arrogant people often have a few vital truths tucked in with their babble, and I needed to check out each of his points with other experts. Any other course of action could potentially close the door to hidden “keys” in discovering what really happened to our two baby birds.
It is the same when we deal with Biblical truths! We must not accept any human opinion at “face value”. However, there may be a small amount of key truth hidden in what they have to say! It is our job to take each and every point before the Lord, ever praying that the eyes of our hearts will be enlightened to Truth.
But there were some REALLY disturbing points this bird breeder made — ones that I really DIDN’T want to be true! What if I just wrote those off as out of the question, and only checked into the things that I WANTED to be true? I’m afraid this wouldn’t have been a responsible option. I would have limited my search for truth.
How often have we all said, after such an encounter with “different” theology: “But there’s no WAY he could be right on THAT point! His answer is just TOO different! And he’s so definitely wrong on most of his other points . . . Maybe I’ll just stop here and not investigate that possibility at all!” Beware! You are playing a dangerous game. In simply writing off what you hear as being impossible, without first checking it out with “Truth” — Jesus — you are seriously limiting your search for Truth!
My friends, don’t blindly take anyone’s opinion about Biblical interpretation. Check it out — and that means ALL of it! — with Truth! Jesus Christ! He will NEVER lead you astray.
“Jesus answered, ‘I am the Way and the TRUTH and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'” (John 14:6-7)
Love in Christ,
Lyn
Lyn Chaffart, Moderator, The Nugget, Scriptural Nuggets ( www.scripturalnuggets.org), Answers2Prayer Ministries, www.Answers2Prayer.org