"...We may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes." - Ephesians 4:14
My son likes cantaloupe. He doesn't like getting up in the morning. Put those two together, and you get my son eating a nice, plastic bowl-full of cantaloupe in the car on the way to school. And when the cantaloupe is gone, the empty bowl gets tossed onto the middle bucket seat right next to the big, heavy, pillar candles, which are in the middle bucket seat because I have a wedding in the evening at someone's home.
So I'm just leaving Caden's school, and I go around the first sharp curve, and the candles do what round, pillar candles do when they're laying on their side and inertia kicks in. They roll. And if it's in the way, those pillar candles will happily roll right into the nice, now-empty plastic bowl and "toss it to and fro" right to and fro onto the floor, along with all that sticky cantaloupe juice and the fork that Caden used.
So I pull up to the next red light, and I, in all my brilliance, reach behind the passenger seat, grab the now "more-empty" bowl, and proceed to put it right back on the same seat and right next to the same ready-to-roll, pillar candles.
Well, of course, the next curve makes it happen; the candles start to roll "to and fro" and usually I don't recommend this, but I did it anyway. I threw my Big Ol' Bible at the empty bowl, and, lo and behold, it landed right on that bowl right before that bowl went over the edge a second time.
And ya' know what? I thought to myself, "I need to start throwin' Bibles at some people I know because they're gettin' 'tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes,' (which is today's verse from Ephesians 4:14). And what they need is a Big Ol' Bible to land right on top of 'em before they go over the edge another time."
I know y'all think I'm crazy, but I'm tellin' ya, we got this Bible class on Wednesday night, and it's chock full, jam-packed with people whose lives were cantaloupe-bowl empty and gettin' knocked to and fro and over the edge by every big and little thing that came along in life until a Big Ol' Bible came straight from Kansas, along with Dorothy and Toto, and landed right smack on their head.
Ya see, that's what God's word does. God's word grounds us. God's word is like an anchor. God's word is like a paper-weight. In the '50's, they probably would've called God's Word "heavy". And no matter what you call it, God's Word gives roots and a sure foundation to our lives. And I don't mean just knowing that it exists; I mean studying it and learning it and living it, just like Jesus talks about in Matthew 7 with the wise life-builders.
So, I know we've gotten long today. But c'mon people; stop exposing your life to the "elements", getting "tossed to and fro by the 'waves' and carried about by every 'wind' of doctrine" because you're glad to make time for everything under the sun except the Word of the Living God. Read your Bible, sit under God's Word, and see how God "gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers" (Ephesians 4:11) with the expressed purpose of "equipping believers for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes." (Ephesians 4:12-14).
God wants you to be grounded in Him and His Word so that you don't get knocked over the edge.
So make time for God's Word.
Or look up, and watch out for falling Bibles.
Praise God!
(For an archive of "Day of Praise", please visit my daughter Calley's website at http://dayofpraisepc.blogspot.com/?m=1)
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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