I Don't Think That Verse Means What You Think It Means

A young and nervous bride planning her wedding was increasingly terrified about her upcoming marriage. To calm her nerves, she decided to have a Bible verse which had always brought her comfort (1st John 4:18, "There is no fear in love; for perfect love casts out fear") engraved on her wedding cake. So she called the caterer and all arrangements were made.

About a week before the wedding, she received a call from the catering company. "Is this really the verse you want on your cake?" they asked. Yes, she confirmed, it was the one she wanted, and after a few more questions they said they would decorate the cake as requested. The wedding day came, and everything was beautiful...until the reception, when the bride walked in to find the cake emblazoned with John 4:18: "For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband."

Well, that wasn't the right verse but we can see how the mistake was made. Most people however are not mistaken in finding the right verse but in applying the verse rightly. The verse is taken out of it context. A modern meaning is given to a word rather that the meaning it had originally. The verse is applied to a different audience than it was written to. Limiting the concept to one verse rather than seeing how the idea is expressed thought the Bible. They may quote it, but the true meaning is far from them.

Consider what Jesus said in Mark 12:24 "Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?” Rather than try to force a verse into our own preconceived idea, it is much better to allow the verse to shape our thinking. Take out the meaning rather than trying to put a meaning into it. So many false teaching today come when we try to justify our ideas with the Bible rather than letting our ideas come from the Bible.

God's Word is an amazing and perfect tool to improve our lives if we use it correctly. Make sure you have the right verse and make sure the verse makes you right as well!

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog