The other day, I was looking up a word for my mom in the American Heritage Dictionary. As I closed the book to place it back on the shelf, I noticed this statement at the top of the dust jacket:
“The single source for people who need to be right”
Well now, that just hit me right in the funny bone, and I laughed, because I thought about everyone I have ever known (including me) that has had that disease: the need to be right.
I laughed because I thought of how stupid I have looked, arguing with someone to prove I am right and then being proven wrong. I thought of others I have watched doing the same thing, and it’s kinda funny to think of the lengths we will go to prove we are right. And the reactions we have when we are proven wrong are even funnier - when pride slides into humiliation and the certainty we were just speaking with crumbles into a red-faced, spitting, mumbling sort of spasm-like conniption fit.
It soon moved from my funny bone and punched me in the gut, because I have experienced the ravages of this affliction, and it’s dangerous, destructive, and deadly to relationships.
I have argued with people over the smallest of things, and had friendships end over the need to be right. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong. But pride kept both parties from meeting in the middle.
The sad thing now is that this is a disease that has invaded the church. The need to be right has superseded even the Word of God and is causing a great divide among God’s people.
But this shouldn’t surprise us at all: Remember the last post? How did Satan approach Eve?
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Hath God said? Has God indeed said? Did God really say?
Remember, that snake is real. Satan attacks by distorting God’s Word.
Maybe the cover of our Bibles should look like this:
Holy Bible
KJV
The Single Source For People Who Need To Be Right
As Christians, we need to know the Word of God. We need to be right. God reveals Himself in His Word, and it is our responsibility not only to read the Word of God, but to study the Word of God, to feast on it and live it.
God tells us in His Word how we should look at His Word:
Psalm 119:11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
We have already talked about the heart - what comes out of our mouths is what resides in our hearts. So, doesn’t it make sense that if we hide God’s Word in our hearts, then our mouths and our lives will show it? We hide His Word in our hearts so that we might not sin against Him.
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
There’s that heart thing again. The Word of God seeps into our minds and flows like a river to the heart to know our every thought and intent. Our inner secrets. We are unable to hide.
Matthew Henry’s Commentary says:
This sword divides between the joints and the marrow, the most secret, close, and intimate parts of the body; this sword can cut off the lusts of the flesh as well as the lusts of the mind, and make men willing to undergo the sharpest operation for the mortifying of sin. It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, even the most secret and remote thoughts and designs. It will discover to men the variety of their thoughts and purposes, the vileness of them, the bad principles they are actuated by, the sinister and sinful ends they act to. The word will turn the inside of a sinner out, and let him see all that is in his heart. Now such a word as this must needs be a great help to our faith and obedience.
God’s Word is the final authority on everything.
2Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
Remember the previous post? What did I need to deal with the snake in the Laundromat? A professional and the proper tools. The Professional is God and His Word is our tool. We must know it.
We have looked today at the powerful tool of Scripture. When quoting Scripture, we need to be right. When living a Godly life, we need to be right. When teaching others, we need to be right.
We need to know how to apply Scripture to our own lives and allow God to cleanse our hearts and minds and live a life fully devoted to Him.
Satan is gonna look at us and say, “Did God really say?” We need to be able to look back at him and say, “Yes He did”.
I want to be able to make Satan have one of those red-faced, spitting, mumbling sort of spasm-like conniption fits we talked about at the beginning of this post.
Join me tomorrow…let’s look at Eve’s response to Satan; and how Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.
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