In our world today, we are all about convenience. If something works for us and fits into our schedule then it is good and we will spend the time on it that is needed and required.

If something is not convenient and throws us off our game, so to speak, we would rather not take part in it.

So it is with God.

There are tons of times in the Bible when God tells us what to do and not to do. For instance he tells us "marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed pure", meaning that we should only have sex, of any kind, with the person to whom we will be married for the rest of our life.


To us, living in the world, this is very inconvenient and downright impossible. To God, this is his will. Which one shall we choose? Which one is right?

This is just one example of hundreds where our convenience and our wants and needs take precedence over God's will for our lives. Yet, we can see that because we choose our own will over God's will, time and time again. Our lives suffer greatly. Not just our lives but also the whole world in general suffers because of sin.

The thing is, we want God himself to be something we can handle and put in a box. We want him to be all powerful, all knowing and all loving, but only if he is going to do what I want him to do.

We want him to be understandable and reasonable, which, I would think, would go directly against any definition of what "God" is supposed to be. We want him to conform to our will, norms and rules instead of us conforming to his. We want him to be this nice grandfatherly type who gives us whatever we want whenever we want instead of the vengeful, just and sometimes angry God that we often see in the Scriptures. To sum this all up, we want control of God.

This goes with what he says in the Scriptures. If something in Scripture doesn't quite fit our ideal way of thinking we can do one of three things.

We can explain it away, saying something like, "That was only for that time and place. Things are different now", which in some cases might be true, but not all cases.

You can totally dismiss it as not really being God's word, which is what the "Jesus Seminar" and other fringe groups have so often done. But what does that do for this verse in II Timothy 3:16?: "All Scripture is God breathed and is useful teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." I guess if you want, you can take out that verse too.

Homosexuality is an issue, living together before marriage is an issue, divorce is an issue, whether Jesus is God or not is an issue, whether Christ rose from the dead or not is an issue, basically everything that is in the Scriptures can be questioned once you throw out the II Timothy 3:16 passage.

People, just because something in Scripture doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean that it isn't from God. Just because your sinful human mind doesn't want to acknowledge that something isn't from God doesn't mean it isn't.

It is a sin as old as Adam and Eve. We put ourselves above God. When God plainly tells us "You shall not", we say "He didn't really mean that." When one of the gospel writers tells us that Jesus rose from the dead, are we ready to say, "He didn't really mean that?"

You can pick and choose what you want to believe, but that doesn't mean what you believe is true, does it? If I believe, with all my heart, that the moon is made out of green cheese does that mean it really is? In the same way, my believing that Jesus rose from the dead doesn't make it true. The only thing that makes it true is that it really did happen.

The only thing that the people who wrote Scripture said about it is that it is all completely true, real and from God's mouth. Nowhere does it say that some of it is true while other parts of it aren't. It only claims to be true and real, nothing else.

Not only that, but the Scriptures have withstood the test of time. We have found no evidence that anything in the Bible didn't happen just the way it is stated. In fact it has always been just the opposite. Those trying to find evidence to prove the Bible false have always found evidence that only proves the Bible true.

The last thing you can do is simply believe the Scriptures to be what they say they are. Believe in God's word. Hold on to it, even when you may not like it too much. Trust in it to guide your life. Live by it so that you may be blessed instead of cursed.

My friends, I encourage you to let go and let God be God. Don't try to put him in a box, or to minimize him to your standards. Don't try to put your own conscience and your own reason above God's will and his word. If you do, you will only hurt yourself, and cause yourself years of bitter anguish pain and sorrow because of your sin.

I leave you with these words from Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understandings. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths."