Today, I heard someone commenting “That place is a hot mess. Everyone is doing their own thing!”
As I was reading about the Church of Thyatira tonight, a verse made me pause: “Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.” Revelation 2:20-21
In using the name Jezebel, we understand that her name may not have actually been Jezebel but John (the writer of Revelation) called her that because of the close similarity to Queen Jezebel who was the wife of King Ahab and proven to be an idolatrous and wicked queen. You can read more about her in 1 Kings 16 to 2 Kings. This Jezebel in Revelation was a ‘prophetess’ who misled the church into sexual immorality and eating food they never should have eaten.
So as I reflected on this and remembered the comments of today, I truly thought… “How did we get here?” And I said we because the meat of the matter is that we all like doing our own thing.
And if we dig deeper, not only do we like doing our own thing but we also listen and tolerate many things.
And funny enough, the one thing that centered on my mind was that we should never read the entire bible in one year! One year to read the bible means that we never actually study the bible but we just truly skim it.
If we never truly study the bible slowly, we miss the meaning, the soul and embodiment of the scripture. It is why so many things are taken out of context and people are misled by ‘pastors’, ‘prophets’, ‘evangelists’, ‘tele-evangelists’, ‘prophetess’ …. And we can go on but you get my point.
If you desire to read the bible in one year, go ahead! But don’t stop there… Continue to read the bible slowly after, study it, memorize it and start sharing the stories that you learn. No one can take that from you and the more you know the lesser chance that you can be misled!
Food for thought: If you have ever read the book of Judges, this phrase would be very familiar to you: “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes”. Let’s consider a change… Don’t look to yourself to figure out what is right… Look to God and HIS Word. Study it!
Prayer: Holy Father, the more I study your word, the sweeter it gets. The more I penetrate, the wiser I become. The more time I spend, the closer I get to you. A sinner like me, I am not worthy of any of these riches but how I thank you for your grace and mercy. Amen
May God’s grace, love and mercy be with you.