If our goal is to prove our point, then that is exactly what we will do, no matter our field of study or discipline. As a scientist, your research will suffer. Google “academic fraud” and see how many articles you find; I found 1,260,000. It doesn’t matter if it is a scientist committed to proving the research he has vested ten years of his life in, or a preacher committed to voicing a pet peeve that has been a source of irritation for years.
If our goal is to prove our point, then that is exactly what we will do, but we will likely miss the truth in the process.
We blather on about the unbelievers, but too often our handling of truth is absolutely no different.
If you are bent on proving your point, you will bend the truth if necessary.
“We have the floor, and by golly, these people are going to hear the truth.” But we don’t because you missed God’s point, dummy!
Places to go, people to see. Bones to pick, axes to grind, soap boxes to stand on, personal agendas to promote, political agendas to forward – All in the name of truth. Please.
That is what we experienced this past Sunday at church. Our pastor was out of town, and we had a guest speaker. Too bad. He wasn’t up to the task of being God’s spokesman.
His biggest mistake of the day? You guessed it. He was determined to prove a point.
One of the worst mistakes we can make in seeking God’s truth in Scripture is to have an idea that we are bent on proving. This attitude makes us more vulnerable than we already are to our own opinions, to our way that seems so right. Our strong tendency is to believe what we want to believe and to believe what we already believe.
Our problem is there ain’t no trembling going on.
(Isaiah 66:2 NKJV) For all those things My hand has made, And all those things exist,” Says the LORD. “But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, And who trembles at My word.
In my observations most preachers have neither the proper respect for God’s word nor the humility and courage to faithfully share it.
The tragedy is (and tragedy is not an overstatement) that what we experienced Sunday is what passes in the majority of our churches for preaching the word. Because we use the Bible, because we say this is what God says, because we say we preach in an expository manner, we somehow think it to be reality.
Do you remember Gomer Pyle on Andy Griffith? Shame, shame, shame!
Shame on us when we use the God-words of Scripture to tell our own truth.
