Read Your Bible: a
challenge
As Christian
women we are often encouraged and admonished to read our bibles. There are reading plans, suggested reading
passages and guides to help us be consistent in our reading. These can all be very useful to us as we gain
a knowledge of God’s word.
With all
this, I still talk to wives who do not know what the Bible says about a
particular struggle or challenge they are experiencing. Often, what they do know is what others say the Bible says. They are trying to deal with their situation
with second-hand knowledge. I once heard
in a large women’s meeting that the Bible says a woman should only follow her
husband if her husband is a Believer.
There was no uproar of protestation from the audience. If that kind of misinformation goes
unchallenged it would certainly not help a woman who is struggling with
submission. Matters like this require
more than a cursory reading of the Word and ideas passed from person to person.
it needs a deeper study to know God’s heart. We may need to read more than one verse. Remember that God does not violate his own
principles.
Sometimes,
real scripture is misappropriated for the sake of expediency. Although I don’t object to applying a scripture
for instruction, this practice will sometimes cause distortion of its original
intention. (Many people, in and out of
the Church, use the phrase “the truth shall set you free” without defining any
of the terms like “truth”, or “free”, or knowing the context of the phrase.)
Here is a
challenge for you: Read Proverbs 4:23,
in context, in several versions of the Bible.
- Where have you heard it before?
- For what purpose was it used? Was it accurate to use it in that way?
- What else does the passage say to you? Had you thought of it that way before?
Please let
me know what you discover. We will be
talking about this again.
