"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful" - 2 Timothy 3:16
Can you believe it?!?!?
Yesterday, somebody gave me a whack on the side of the head.
Really! They did!
And I love it.
"A Whack on the Side of the Head" is a 1983 book by Roger von Oech, Ph.D. It teaches creative and innovative thinking.
With humor, the book teaches about having or losing creative thinking with quotes like "we start school at a young age with question marks, and we end it years later with periods."
Or it shakes us out of our REAL (Realistic, Exact, Adult, Logical) "Hard" way of thinking with quotes like "there are two kinds of people in this world: those who divide everything into two groups, and those who don't."
"Hard" thinking is REAL (Realistic, Exact, Adult, Logical). "Soft" thinking is more playful, humorous, childlike and hunch-filled.
According to today's Bible verse, God uses both Hard and also Soft thinking: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful" (2 Timothy 3:16).
According to the proverbial surveys, most people prefer Soft thinking. That leads to people saying things like, "A good sermon always has stories in it. Jesus was a story-teller." Well, yes, Jesus told good Soft stories, but he also did some Hard talking. In fact, have you ever read the Gospel of John? Yes, there are stories in John, but Jesus isn't telling them. There are no Soft, story-telling parables in John.
One guy once told me that I didn't preach real sermons because I didn't tell a joke in every sermon. I joked in response, saying, "Have you asked my kids about my jokes?" Just like my kids, the guy didn't laugh.
I also have to chuckle at all of you who are the group of readers of this devotion. When I tell Soft, humorous, childlike stories, I get a landslide of "reply" feedback. When I share a Hard, logical, adult teaching, well, let's just say in a Soft way that it's easier for me to hear the crickets.
In sum, the encouragement is for all of us to stop and think about what we listen to. Most of us, including yours truly, not only are listening for what we want to hear. But even if it's what we want to hear, if it's not shared in a fun, Soft way, then we're very likely to dismiss it, no matter how wise or important it may be. If that's true, then we're missing out on some mighty important stuff that God wants to tell us through the Gospel of John and other Hard and logical scriptures.
No, neither my kids nor any of you have to listen to anything I have to say let alone everything, no matter how funny I might be.
But God's Word? Let's all tune in. And let's all tune in to all of it because "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful" (2 Timothy 3:16).
After all, it's not a laughing matter.
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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