Tornado in Moore, OK and Twisting Scripture

Moore, Oklahoma

Forty minutes! That is all the time it took for a tornado to devastate Moore, Oklahoma. As one responder put it, “The only safe place to be was underground.”  A woman who lost her home said, “My husband called me and said a tornado was headed for our house. He called back and said, ‘The house is gone.’” At the time I write this, there are reports of a dozen schoolchildren who drowned in their school’s basement trying to seek shelter from the storm! The devastation to property and personal lives is nearly immeasurable. What do you say to people who have lost nearly everything? Do you say anything at all? The knee-jerk response is often to say something like, “Everything is going to be okay.” But, while well-meaning, it is usually an empty comment that doesn’t really bring much comfort. When disaster strikes a person’s faith can be shaken to the core.  It is in the midst of the suffering and uncertainty that the heart of an individual can be opened to what it needs most; God. “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).” One thing that happens in these situations is people can be humbled. 

When their lives are all, but wiped out in an instant, the reality hits that they are really not in control of much and what they held on to for meaning and purpose to their lives was fragile, undependable and not all that important. In the aftermath of tragedy a focus on God becomes clearer because you realize just how quickly life ends and just how unprepared you are for eternity. The genius of God is that He uses these circumstances to show people that what they really needed all along was Him. Next to the need to find assistance for the physical losses suffered when a tornado wipes out your town, is the need to have inner peace and strength to move forward after something like this happens. That is where faith in Jesus Christ comes into the picture. Having placed saving faith in Him, not only gives you peace with God, it gives you strength to move forward in the recovery process because you have the loving faithfulness and guidance of the Holy Spirit of God to carry you through what lies ahead. My prayer is that if your life changes in the next forty minutes, you will be prepared for what lies ahead because you have put your trust in God because of your faith in Jesus Christ. 

Twisting Scripture

It is sad to see so many Christians who claim to know the scriptures continue to live a life in direct opposition to those scriptures. I am not talking about people struggling with a particular sin that they understand is wrong, but need help in overcoming. I am talking about those people who appear to ignore the obvious teachings of scripture in an effort to live a life of fantasy. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble (John 16:33),” but there are Christians who act like trouble is the byproduct of their lack of faith, punishment for a sin or some demon in their life. Jesus also said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth (Matthew 6:19),” but we teach and believe that God wants us living like kings and queens  with the most expensive and highest quality materials money can buy. Jesus said, “if you have faith and do not doubt… you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done (Matthew 21:21),” but we not only act like we can muster up enough faith to tell a mountain to throw itself into the sea, we change the meaning of mountain from a literal rock formation to mean obstacles in our life. All of this is a flesh-focused spirituality that blatantly ignores the truth of scripture. You have to ignore scripture in order to try an accomplish all of this. It is a selfish and evil theology that God does not support and His word does not teach. Besides, even if all of the error we believe were somehow true, would we ever consider getting to know Jesus Christ? No, we would not. We would be more concerned about maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, accumulating more treasure that we can’t take with us and obsessed with what kind of “power” we could conjure up in order to try and move more mountains. That is why the Bible goes on to say, “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires (Romans 8:5).” If you want to indulge your flesh instead of getting to know your God, then go right ahead. I only ask that you not misuse scripture in order to do it and put out a false message about Jesus Christ that other Christians and the lost will consider to their detriment. There are plenty of godless teachers and philosophies you can refer to instead of the Bible if your goal is to “gain the world.”