From Sampler to Sower

OK, so maybe it wasn’t your mom, but chances are, at some point in your life someone tried to pass on this Bible “wisdom” to you.

There’s just one problem.  The verses they quoted aren’t really in the Bible.  Sometimes it’s something they thought came from the Bible but it came from somewhere else.  Other times it’s the result of taking a verse egregiously out of context.  Either way, these nuggets of Bible “truth” aren’t from the Bible at all.

Here’s my list of the worst offenders.

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Recently my friend and colleague, Matt Todd asked this question on Twitter:

If you had to pick just 6 Scriptures that every Christian should know by heart, which ones would you pick?

Here’s my take. Taking a cue from the awesome folks at YouVersion, in honor of the 400 anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, all of the quotes in this post will be from the New International Version. (By the way, did you know that between February 12 and March 1 you can download the NIV to your iPhone, iPad or Android phone so that you can use it with the YouVersion app even when you’re offline or in a place you can’t connect to the internet? Check it out here.)

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Weekend Teaching Series: You Decide

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 10 of 10, For the same reasons as the Junior High service, this was a difficult night.  Fortunately, by the time the teaching time came around in the service, the Excedrin I’d been taking all day finally began to kick in.  I really did think, going into this service, that there was a chance I’d have to cut the teaching short.  But God is good.

Message Summary: We’re in the fourth week of our You Decide series in which we’ve been answering the questions students ask. As I’ve mentioned for the past three weeks, we’re using a  Poll Everywhere poll to collect the questions teens have and I’m choosing the best to answer at Water’s Edge.  This weeks top questions included “Who is Legion?” “What’s the difference between the Old and New Testament?” and “Will all dogs really go to heaven?”

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Last week was a crazy week.  Didn’t get much done by the way of blogging unfortunately.  But I didn’t forget you all . . .

Here it is, the Week in Review for our second night in the Mythbuster’s series.

Mythbusters: Water's Edge

Weekend Teaching Series: Mythbusters

Message Title: Myth Two: God Doesn’t Speak to People Any More

Sermon in a Sentence: If we want to hear God’s voice, we need to stop reading the Bible and start eating it.

Text(s): Deuteronomy 11:18; Joshua 1:8;1 Samuel 3; Psalm 1:2; 2 Timothy 2:15; James 1:22; Revelation 10:9

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 7 of 10, now that our set is set, this service was fairly easy.  The only real challenge was making yet another episode of Mythbusters: Water’s Edge

Message Summary: We started with the story of the calling of Samuel, a young man dedicated to God by his mother Hannah, who grew up in the Tabernacle serving God and the High Priest Eli.  Late one night the Bible tells us that Samuel heard a voice calling his name.  He got up, went to the side of the aging Eli the priest, as he probably did fairly often, and asked “What is it you want?”  Eli tells Samuel that he did not call him, and sends him back to bed.

The Bible tells us this happens three times before the High Priest realizes what’s going on.  Finally it dawns on the old priest that God is calling the boy.

Now we can understand why young Samuel might be confused.  What doesn’t make sense is Eli’s response.  How can the High Priest of Israel fail to recognize the voice of God?

I suspect it’s because Eli fell for our second myth: God doesn’t speak to people any more.

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