You Can't Pick and Choose

It saddens me to think of all of the people who have accepted Christ, but who don’t believe that the bible is completely true. But I do understand where they are coming from because at one point in my life, I was in the same place. I don’t even know for sure when my mind was changed. Perhaps it was when I started hearing God speak to me through His Word. It was during the time when I was really questioning things because I was making my faith my own. I finally came to the decision that if God is God, then He was big enough to protect His Word through all of these years. If God can’t keep the errors out of His Word, then what kind of a God would He be? I also realize that there are some stories in the bible that can seem to be hard to believe. But when they’re hard for us to believe it shows just how little faith we actually have. But that’s what this is all about…faith. If I have to see everything before I can believe it, then there is no need for faith. If everything in the bible was simple, there would be no need for faith. I need God to challenge me to help me grow spiritually. I don’t want it all to be easy. I want to continue to learn new things from the Word of God the rest of my life. When it comes to hard things in the bible, why can’t we just say, “I don’t understand how God did that, but He’s in control and I don’t have to figure it out.” There are things that I don’t understand in God’s Word, but He continues to teach me and help me to understand who He is.

Why do we try to limit God? Sometimes it seems we prefer to put God in a box so that we can feel we’re in control of our life. But are we really in control of our lives anyway? No, God is. What I see is that by not believing the bible is true, it helps us to feel like we’re in control. When we pick and choose what parts of the bible we believe are true, we feel like we have some control of our life. We can pick out all of the promises of God in the bible because we like those. But the hard parts of the bible, like sexual immorality, greed, gossiping, and whatever else we don’t like we throw out because we think that doesn’t apply to us today. We know what’s right. Ummm… Do you realize who you just pushed off the throne? We set ourselves up to be God when we start picking and choosing what is true and what’s not true in the bible. God has set our standard, and we have no right to change what He has put in place.

I’ve experienced that when you read the Word believing that it is all true, it brings a whole new light to your spiritual understanding. When you see the miracles and how big God shows Himself to be, you will be changed forever! God can use the Word to change your life when you believe it’s true. But if you don’t believe it’s true, then it’s not going to be effective to renew your mind. And when we’ve believed the lies that the enemy has told us, the Word is exactly what we need to renew our minds.
The question is, “Is my God big enough?” Is he big enough to keep the Word intact and to perform the miracles described to us in the Word? Is my God big enough to send two of each animal to Noah to live on the ark while the earth was flooded? Yes! Is my God big enough to part the Red Sea? Yes! Is my God big enough to bring down a giant with a sling-shot and one smooth stone? Yes! Is my God big enough to send His Son to the earth through a virgin birth? Yes! Is my God big enough to send His Son to the cross and then raise Him from the dead? Yes!! If He’s not big enough, then we’ve got a crisis of faith.

I just wonder if there’s a correlation between those who believe the Word is true and those who have a personal relationship with Jesus, because that’s how it was for me. When you love Jesus, you love His Word. He tells us that He is the Word. (John 1:1-2) Now, if that’s not hard to understand, I don’t know what is! But I still believe it’s true! And I know He will continue to reveal Himself to me and to you in different ways as we continue to stay in His Word, knowing that every word of it is true.