The Plumbline

“If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.” (John 8:31-32) A disciple is a follower, for sure, but with the intent of learning from the master. I read lots of woodworking articles, observe how things are made, and yet I am not a disciple of any particular 'woodworking master'. I just do it for a hobby. Christianity is more than a hobby - it is us committing to serve the master (Jesus), sit under his tutelage, and take what we have learned to others so they can learn it, as well. Too many may view it as a mere 'hobby' - calling themselves 'Christian', but lacking any real life change, spiritual power, or deep knowledge of how God responds.  Peter Marshall reminds us, "God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty." Discipleship doesn't assure...

In the past there were false prophets among God’s people. It is the same now. You will have some false teachers in your group. They will teach things that are wrong—ideas that will cause people to be lost. And they will teach in a way that will be hard for you to see that they are wrong. They will even refuse to follow the Master who bought their freedom. And so they will quickly destroy themselves. Many people will follow them in the morally wrong things they do. And because of them, others will say bad things about the way of truth we follow. These false teachers only want your money. So they will use you by telling you things that are not true. But the judgment against these false teachers has been ready for a long time. And they will not escape God who will destroy them. (2 Peter 2:1-3) We are living in a time when believers are bombarded on all sides by one teaching after another - in media of all forms, in personal contact, and even from our public 'pulpits'. We must kno...

If you were to tell me something today - something very important for me to remember - I'd do my level best to keep that foremost in my memory, rehearsing it until it was committed there. Unfortunately, if you were to just talk to me about something without really impressing the importance of it to me, I might not give it a passing thought again. I would just see it as 'information' shared, but not really see it as something I needed to hold onto very long. It was what we shared in the course of the day - something in passing - but it wasn't expressed to me in such a manner as to make me commit it to memory. Telling me what is on sale at the local grocer this week is only of use to me until the end of the week and the new ad being released. If I commit it to memory, it won't do me much good because it no longer applies - it was time-limited and specific to that store. When you tell me where you hide the spare key for your house in case I ever need to do a welfare c...

If you ever have a hard time understanding some spiritual truth, or truth in general, you aren't alone. There are hundreds and hundreds of us in the same boat! We are always on the lookout for the next scam these days, simply because the untrue has become so prevalent. We find it has become insanely easy to sway people into buying a product, or in believing we mean the best for them if they will just give us a little bit of their time and money. The truth is in there somewhere most of the time, but we just have a really hard time seeing it. No, Microsoft has not employed hundreds of people to call our homes from unknown numbers to tell us they have detected something terribly wrong in our computer because of messages it has been sending them! No, the IRS is not about to issue a warrant for our arrest for tax fraud. No, the city of New York is not in possession of warrants for outstanding crimes we have committed and we don't need to contact the 'unknown' caller to pay t...

You may have heard it said that people will believe anything they are told. Sadly, this is often the case as it comes to what we believe about our faith. Some never really go to the Word, examine it for themselves, and see if the "truth" they are hanging their hat on is really the truth at all!  Jesus often commended those who tested their faith by examining it against the Word. The Apostle Paul commended the Bereans for taking his teachings right back to their homes, discussing them with each other, examining the Word they had been given up to the time of the New Testament church and then throwing out anything which didn't line up.  I kind of liken this to chewing up the meat, discarding the bones and grizzle, and then allowing the meat to provide the nourishment we need to grow. Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother’s milk! There’s nothing like the written Word of God fo...