The Unclean Vessel

I started laughing this evening thinking of a childhood friend of mine and the stories he used to tell when we were kids. It didn't matter what bizzare or outrageous stories this guy put out, if Jimmy told me I believed it was gospel. It took me years to finally realize that some of this stuff was, um, wrong.

Now, as an adult, I've looked up many of the "facts" I was told and have found that many of them are "urban legends" that have been disproven by research (on snopes.com or wikipedia.org and so on.) That makes me wonder: was Jimmy just passing on the stories he heard or did he fool that many people?

LOL! I'll never know.

An Atheist friend of my father once said, "You can make the Bible say anything you want!" Now, before taking offense at that, we should note that Satan used scripture when he was tempting Jesus in the wilderness. There's something to that.

I figure Satan is probably a better Bible student than I am, so I try to take things with a grain of salt when I hear the latest "great revelation". God has always seemed to me to be pretty patient with people who are sincerely seeking His will.

The book of Acts seems to be encouraging the same thing in Acts 17:11:

As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

Acts 17:10-12 NIV

I've always envied David for being called "A man after God's Own Heart" and I've also wanted to be called a man of "noble character" like the Bereans. They listened, but then they looked. (I suspect a little praying went on too.)

I suspect if I were to see Jimmy again today, I'd be willing to enjoy letting him tell me some of his stories. But today I know, when it comes to the Word and the Will of God, it's "Trust God and Love People", not the other way around.