Do you know who the people were that were most offended by the things that Jesus taught? It was the very crowd of folks who were convinced they knew and understood God’s word better than anyone else. Let that sink in for a moment, if you would please.

Have you ever come across a particular Bible verse, or heard someone share a few verses, that just hit you in the wrong way and you found yourself ‘bowing up’, or snorting in response with maybe just the thought: “I don’t believe that!”? Did you ever stop to ask yourself why you bristled in such a way simply because you heard a few verses that might not have 'fit' with how ‘you believe’? Yeah...I would bet most of us have done that on more than one occasion.

Or how about this one- where we hear a few scriptures laid out that are pretty clear in what they are saying, but because it messes up what we had concluded about something, we then offer up any number of scenarios or examples that we are aware of to somehow suggest that what God said could not possibly mean that. Take this topic we have been on for a while now regarding sin, sickness, and disease. You’d be hard pressed to produce scripture in order to convince anyone that sickness and disease is a ‘blessing’ that God wants His people to experience. But the moment we show from scripture that God used sickness and disease to punish, correct, and ‘judge’ His people ...we immediately want to defend a dear friend or loved one who is/was afflicted with a horrible illness. And we usually do it by immediately listing all their ‘godly attributes’ and how ‘faithful they’ve been to church’.

So then, when faced with having to hold on to what we believe so firmly in light of what God’s word might say, we either have to make some adjustments in our ‘convictions’ and come back humbled to be corrected by the Word, or we seek to modify, chisel away, and even ‘water down’ what we read in our Bible so it is more palatable for our spirit to process. I mean, we sure don’t want people feeling ‘uncomfortable’ now when they hear God’s word, do we....sigh...

There’s a reason why I repeat certain things here on a regular basis. It takes a while for some truths to sink in. For example...going back to the beginning...we see how God gave a very clear warning to Adam and Eve- ‘Don’t eat off this one tree or you will surely die!”. (Gen. 2:17) Along came the serpent and immediately cast doubt on what God said, “Did God really say that?” (Gen. 3:1) and before you know it...he turned God’s word around completely to say just the opposite. And what did Paul express concern for in his second letter to the Corinthians ...that we might be led astray in the say way Eve was...even buying in to ’another gospel’ or following ‘another Jesus’? (2 Cor. 11:3-4).

Yeah...we need to be careful given he (the devil) is still on the prowl wanting to ‘steal the word from our hearts...lest we believe and are saved’. (Luke 8:12)

Believe me...there are plenty of preachers out there today (self included) who at one time or another had great and sincere intentions of going out and ‘doing great things for God’ while hoping and trusting that God would cooperate with them. I mean we read there how “the Lord went with them, working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs” as He promised to do till the ‘end of the age’. (Mark 16:20; Matt. 28:20). Let me just tell you that one can end up not ‘looking very good’ when God does not confirm our message.

Funny....how we can be slow to coming around and considering that just maybe, we’ve not been preaching the correct gospel that He wanted preached...so that He could confirm it.