All too often we allow ourselves to be shifted, shaped and blown about by the world around us. That is the opposite of grace through faith. Distractions from morally-bankrupt leaders, outbreaks of violence, twisted social issues and our own personal dramas can take our focus off our love of God and our love of others. Keep your eyes on the top of the mountain. This is where you’ll find peace in the storms of life.
Ever wonder why the luster to life fades, no matter what it is? Whether you’re falling out of love with your job, your family, your friends, your church, your mission… have you ever considered this might be by design?
It’s not that the work or the people aren’t fulfilling anymore. It’s that you aren’t fulfilled by them. You’re not supposed to be fulfilled by them. Their effects on us are temporal. The warm feelings this world brings us are short-lived.
“Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14 KJV)
We are not carnal creatures, though we have carnal bodies while we live on this planet. We were made in His image (Genesis 1:26;) we are spirit (John 4:24.) Therefore, nothing in the flesh will ever fully satisfy us. When we eat, we get hungry again. When we drink, we get thirsty again. Memories fade. History fades. Our physical lives fade.
So what are you chasing? Who are you living for? Who are you worried about pleasing more?
“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” (Mark 12:30 KJV)
There are at least 40 Bible verses that teach us to seek God. If you’re feeling unfulfilled by your life, I recommend you start here.
A new article from Tim Branch continues to build on this concept! Yes, God really does want deeper intimacy with you!
“One in God is a Majority”
The power of God goes way beyond our understanding, so why is it we allow people and events to shape us and our experiences instead of He who called us into being? Our identity is in Jesus; not the world. If we understand this, we will not be moved by the world, but by He who moves.
P.S. – Enjoy this message by Dan Mohler and let it mess you up in a good way.
Even after decades in (and out of) the church, I’m only recently beginning to understand this truth. That God so loves us that He sent his only Son to die for our sins. I suppose I’ve never really meditated upon that. I’ve never realized that this kind of love means we have massive value in our Father’s eyes. Endless value? I’m not going to try to quantify that truth, but I certainly need to recognize it, accept it and learn to step into it.
Those were the devastating words that rifled across my mind as I finished internally scoffing at a pedestrian for his appearance. It was a beautiful sunny morning as I was driving to work. I was feeling pretty strong in the Spirit, actually. Well, until that happened, anyways.
Just the evening before, my wife and I had an unpleasant exchange with a parent at our gym’s pool, where we let them know their child was behaving badly. The child wasn’t doing anything too naughty—just haunting our children, saying mean things, sticking her tongue out at them and my wife—typical attention-seeking nonsense that deserves ignoring. Since we would want to know if our own children were behaving like this, we decided to let the mother know. This is what we explained to her. To our surprise, she completely rejected the notion her child could be in error and said maybe it’s best our children stay away from each other.
What?
Well, while this didn’t bother me very much, the unsavory exchange ate at my wife for hours afterward; even into the next morning. I had the benefit of having soaked in Dan Mohler’s message of our identity in Christ’s love for a couple weeks now, so I was relatively unphased. I understood the Christian response was to love and pray for that family—not fret over their defensive response. I was in a good place, I thought.
That night, during bedtime prayers with the kids, we prayed for the Holy Spirit to work on that family and ourselves, that we may grow in our own capacity to love others the way Jesus loves us. As Pastor Dan points out, can you imagine if God loved us the way we love others? Can you imagine Jesus complaining to the Father about us? Because we mistreat each other? Use harsh words? Lie? Carry lust or envy or contempt in our hearts?
Ridiculous.
So why—if we’re following Christ and keeping our eyes on God—do we let anything or anyone in the flesh knock us off course. The very fact we can be distressed by the world around us is evidence we don’t know who we are in Christ or how great our value is.
Can you imagine Jesus scoffing at someone moving down the sidewalk happily minding their own business?
No. Neither can I.
Fortunately for us, He doesn’t love the way we do. He calls us to love the way He loves us.
But in a flash, I noticed this stranger and compared them against a social model for what it means to look “proper”. Then I failed them. They were cut off in my own eyes. In an instant. I didn’t even know them. Judgment. Based on appearances. Based on the physical. I was operating from the flesh. I was not in the Spirit as deeply as I hoped.
That was when those words separated my thoughts:
Crushing words. I had been praying for greater capacity to love. To be emptied out and made a larger vessel for pouring out His love. With hours of soaking in Dan Mohler videos on YouTube, I was doing better on this wavelength, I thought. I was weathering things better at home, and at the office—even at the pool. I thought I was getting it. And maybe I am.
But in this moment, I was not love. I was a wretch, thinking wretched thoughts.
I won’t even tell you what the guy looked like. I don’t want to allow you to step into judgment with me on this. But I do want you to listen to your thoughts and confess the thoughts that are unworthy of His holy presence.
Years ago, after I had lived out-of-state for a few years, I came back home to visit for the Christmas holiday. Prior to the visit, I had been shocked and appalled to see my thoughts from the outside. I noticed how judgmental I had been, how I had been assessing everyone and myself. I noticed the critical eye through which I was perceiving the world. When I realized how polluted my thinking was, I became frantic. I was disgusted. As I said back then, I carved that thinking out of myself with a dull spoon. The first step to healing our blind spots is to bring them into the light, right? Awareness.
However, when I came home that holiday season, I gained new insight. I saw judgment everywhere. My own family would even see people on the television screen and make critical comments. Again, I was appalled. I told them so. While my observation wasn’t appreciated at the time, it did end the public feast of criticism.
Fast-forward to this morning. After days of successfully loving on people through their issues—through their conflicts and tantrums—in one brief moment of silence, the fallen me peeked out and made its presence known. My prayer looked like this:
Thank you, Father, for loving me enough to correct me. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, for speaking into my awareness and for showing me the gravity of this sin. Please forgive me. I would ask that you send your Holy Spirit down upon me to purge and burn of anything in me that is not of You. Please take this thinking from me—this spirit of hatred—and burn it at the foot of your cross. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I ask this in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
Of course, I’m not 100% sure the criticism came from within me. Sometimes things are whispered into our thoughts, but really, I’m pretty sure it was me (unfortunately.) So I’m pleased I was pained over it. That tells me my heart is on the right path. I thank the Holy Spirit for pointing it out and I’m asking the Holy Spirit to continue His work in me. Thank you, Father.
In extreme King James Only-ism, the bible-believing Christian pins all authority on the King James Version (KJV) bible, turning a wary eye toward the “new age” versions, which usually includes anything other than the KJV, but specifically:
KJV Only assertions include beliefs that
“To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a ‘new work’ or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a pre-existing work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes.” (The Derivative Copyright Law, per Ecclesia.org)
In her book, New Age Bible Versions, Gail Riplinger attempts to highlight many of the errors and omissions propagated by the newer books. One example that merits mentioning is the contortion of Isaiah 14:12, where the single biblical reference to the name Lucifer is removed by the new age versions, replacing the reference with “morning star”–a title given to Jesus Christ in Revelation 22:16. King James Only opponents argue this whole passage is obviously sarcastic in tone and that “morning star” or “shining one” are “perfectly acceptable translations of the Hebrew word.” (White, The King James Only Controversy, p.180-181.)
Riplinger establishes the newer versions are taking liberties with the original Hebrew in this case. She writes:
“An examination of the original Hebrew will dispel any illusion that ‘morning star’ is an acceptable substitute for the word ‘Lucifer.’ The Hebrew is ‘helel, ben sharchar,’ which is accurately translated ‘Lucifer, son of the morning.’ The NIV and NASB give an English translation as if the Hebrew said, ‘shachar kokab, ben shachar‘ or morning star, son of the morning (or dawn). Yet the word for star (kokab) appears nowhere in the text. Also ‘morning’ appears only once, as the KJV shows, not twice as new versions indicate. The word kokab is translated as ‘star’ dozens of other times by NIV translators; morning or dawn is likewise used hundreds of times. New version editors know boqer kokab is ‘morning star’ since it is used in Job 38:7. If God had intended to communicate ‘morning star’, he could have repeated hit here. The word he chose, helel, appears nowhere else in the Old Testament, just as Lucifer appears nowhere else.” (Riplinger, p.42-43.)*
According to Revelation 13:4, Satan’s ambition to be worshiped will be realized: “and they worshiped the dragon.” As Riplinger points out, for this to happen, the world will have to be confused on Satan’s true identity. As in the Garden, this begins with corrupting God’s Word, which–as a King James Only supporter–Riplinger eagerly defends.
Unfortunately for the KJV Only cause, that eagerness turns overzealous in places and Riplinger–like many vocal KJV Only advocates–falls into a number of traps and errors along her way. One example is when she attempts to use acrostic algebra to reduce (NASV-NIV)-AV=X into SIN=X. Even her use of NASV disrupts her own pattern of referring to the version as NASB everywhere else in her book. Still, if even 50 percent of Riplinger’s work is accurate, it becomes impossible to refute there is a corruption of God’s Word taking place.
However, the KJV itself is not without its errors. For instance, KJV Only advocate Dr. Terry Watkins asserts the ESV has removed the word “hell” 40 times and removed the words “devil” or “devils” 83 times. While this can and should be alarming to anyone looking to rest in the truth the Bible is God-breathed, Watkins leaves out the fact that the ESV largely corrects the term “hell” to the words that actually show up in the original Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew: Hades, Sheol and Gehenna. The KJV Only argument is that most the public won’t be familiar with the terms Hades, Sheol and Gehenna, however this is certainly not a sound argument. Are we to bend the Scripture to the ignorance of the people (as many have tried) or are we to elevate the people to the level of God’s Word? (Of course, this argument could be pushed to the literal end and lead us to abandon all English versions since the Bible was originally written in ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.)
Another example where opponents to KJV Only state the KJV translation is inferior is in Genesis 50:20. On page 287 of Dr. James White’s detailed analysis, The King James Only Controversy, he compares the passage as it appears in the KJV and in the NASB:
KJV
20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
NASB
20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about [a]this present result, to preserve many people alive.
Here is how the actual passage looks in Hebrew according to the Masoretic text:
For reference, the definition from Strong’s Concordance:
2803 chashab khaw-shab’ a primitive root; properly, to plait or interpenetrate, i.e. (literally) to weave or (gen.) to fabricate; figuratively, to plot or contrive (usually in a malicious sense); hence (from the mental effort) to think, regard, value, compute:–(make) account (of), conceive, consider, count, cunning (man, work, workman), devise, esteem, find out, forecast, hold, imagine, impute, invent, be like, mean, purpose, reckon(-ing be made), regard, think.
The word in question here is chashab (
) and it is clearly repeated in the Masoretic example. (Notice how accent marks change between the two instances.) White tries to make the case that it would make more sense to mirror the intent of the original author and use the same word in repetition. To that end, it might. As he does with regularity, White stops short of diving into actual textual analysis to explain the context surrounding both usages to reverse engineer the KJV authors’ decisions. He may be quite right in his assertion, but he–like Riplinger whom he sarcastically attacks–often expects the reader to swallow his sortie of arguments whole.
Many intelligent people stand committed on both sides of the KJV Only issue. Both sides have done their homework. For every superstitious, paranoid KJV Only advocate, there seems to be an equally apathetic, callous new age bible advocate. Both sides lean to intellectualism and textual criticism to make their points, however neither side is faultless when advancing their perspectives through their prejudices. To a serious student, it becomes painfully apparent that even learning ancient Greek and Hebrew won’t fully help you discern truth; even those experts disagree!
Still, if half the KJV Only case is true, it remains irrefutable there is an erosion game being played on God’s Word. Inversely, if half the new age bible defense is true, the pattern of corruption entering the newer bibles still isn’t satisfactorily addressed.
And so, this student is landing on a position of KJV First; not KJV Only. I can acknowledge we have many more supporting documents and copies on which to base solid translation work than the Hampton Court Conference had during their work in the early 1600’s. The KJV could be made more accurate, certainly. At the same time, I can look at the assertions by the KJV Only camp and recognize there is absolutely a targeted devolution (alt. devil-ution) occurring in the contemporary versions. If we look at the Enemy’s attacks in the Garden and on Jesus in the desert, it is plainly evident the Enemy favors the tactic of undermining God’s Word.
* I found it interesting to discover for as much as White attacks Riplinger in his book The King James Only Controversy, his 2009 revision glosses past Riplinger’s more thorough analysis of the Hebrew text in this case. Certainly, if her textual criticism on Isaiah 14 was errant, he would have been sure to dismantle it.
Anthony, Richard. Bibles are only Milk. Ecclesia.org. Retrieved from http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/bibles.html
Genesis 50:20. Blue Letter Bible. Retrieved from https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/gen/50/20/t_conc_50020
McElroy, Jack. Which Bible Would Jesus Use? AV1611.com. Retrieved from
http://av1611.com/kjbp/articles/mcelroy-nkjv.html
Riplinger, G.A. New Age Bible Versions. 1993. AV Publications Corporation.
Strong, James. 2010. The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Thomas Nelson.
Watkins, Terry. The Fruit of the ESV. AV1611.com. Retrieved from
http://www.av1611.org/kjv/ESV_Fruit.html
White, James. The King James Only Controversy. 1995. Bethany House.
White, James. September 1, 1996. New Age Bible Versions Refuted. Alpha and Omega Ministries. Retrieved from http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php/1996/09/01/new-age-bible-versions-refuted/
Wikipedia.org. List of Bible verses not included in modern translations. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bible_verses_not_included_in_modern_translations
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