Return of the Eagles

The danger occurs when we fall in love with a portion of the Bible.

Now that I have your attention…

We can find ourselves going in the wrong direction if we fall in love with the doctrine of laying on of hands, or baptism in water, or in fire, or healing, or discipleship. It doesn’t matter that the doctrine or principle is right and true. We were never called to become devoted to a doctrine nor a principle. Once we do, we have begun to steer our ship straight toward the shallows and, like Paul’s ship in Acts, we are destined to run aground.

If our devotion is to healing or discipleship or baptism or any of the great doctrines that Jesus has taught us, then the deep water in which we set sail will eventually become too shallow to support our ship. Nobody much will care to listen to our message because we are stuck in the mud.

We can add onto our ship and make it look prettier and larger, but we really aren’t sailing anywhere. We aren’t bad people. We didn’t TRY to sail into the shallows and get stuck here. As far as we knew, we were doing this religion thing the way it was supposed to be done. We still love Jesus, but we stopped letting Him navigate our ship a long way back…

Jesus never intended for His life’s teaching to be broken into pet doctrines that men could use to build private empires around. Taken as a whole, they are intended to be absorbed by people who would humble themselves as little children who would take them at face value and simply live them out in the most loving way possible.

And when we weren’t sure what He meant for us to do, the best thing would probably be to err on the side of GRACE.

Back to today’s point…Jesus said the day would come when His disciples would, absolutely WOULD fast. Yet if we teach this as “THE thing to do” instead of “A thing to do”, then we may be missing the mark that He intended. This would be true in most all things "a" thing to do on "an" occasion instead of preaching it as "the" thing to do on "all" occasions. Jesus didn't spit on the eyes of every blind man did He?

Our Father never called us to fall in love with a doctrine or principle. As a matter of fact, anything that He sees which has replaced Him, He will be sure to withdraw Himself completely from over time.

If your quiet time, your read-your-bible-in-a-year, your pray-an-hour-a-day, your fasting one day a week, whatever it is that you have fallen in love with that has replaced HIM…even that which was once good and brought life to you, He will withdraw whatever life WAS left in it, to cause you to realize that you have attached yourself to a doctrine or a principle or a book or a person other than HIM.

He will remove Himself from whatever you trust to be the vehicle that He must utilize and then show up in another…”but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”