Hung up on Words

We are so under attack by forces unseen that Christianity could lose its wholesome name. Too many spokesmen are fighting to prove their interpretations are best. It is not that they have found some new word from God. They only want to show that the others are all wrong. God´s enemies might be celebrating. But watching us squabble must sadden our Savior.

Dear Lord, give us spiritual discernment. Help us grow so close to You that we begin to see with new eyes. If we can learn to sense how You feel about our issues, it will remove our need to bicker. We will no longer need to push our opinions if what concerns us is You and what You are working on. Lift us to a higher spiritual plane, we pray. Amen

Titus 3:9 ESV / But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

2 Timothy 2:14-16 ESV / Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness,

1 Timothy 6:3-5 ESV / If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

James 4:1 ESV / What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

1 Corinthians 1:10-13 ESV / I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Romans 14:1 ESV / As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.

2 Peter 3:16 ESV / As he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.