Investigate

Ever seen one of those “Bible referral” things? Here’s an example.


For us as Christians, the Bible fulfills many varied roles in our lives. It’s a worship book. It’s the Law of Liberty where we hold ourselves up to The Light, It’s Marriage counseling, Child-rearing 101, Money management and the like and it exposes the intricacies of human tendencies better than our best psychoanalyst. If it pertains to life, God’s Word has it for us. As we learn, grow and become skilled at handling such a remarkable resource, God’s Word is also an investigative resource and it gives us a clear command to Investigate.

Here’s The Word;

1 John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

Revelation 2:2(b) …and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:

The logic of much of our lives is linear. It starts at a point and as it moves forward, it proves what it is. Like making a cake, you start with instructions and ingredients and in a particular order and particular quantities, things are combined and subjected to methods that produce….Viola! Cake. But what if someone set 3 cakes before you and told you that 2 of them are poisoned and only one is genuine yummy goodness. What would you do (other than disregard the situation altogether….that’s not an option here)? We didn’t see the cakes being made and we don’t know who made them. Sometimes we don't get the source first and move logically forward from there. Sometimes we stumble upon the evidence first and have to work our way back to discover the source.

This is where we need to realize how important it is that we have a good understanding of testing. First thing to realize is that since God Himself requires it, He’s also given us all that we need to become good testers, and He uses situations to help us get better at it. Another thing to realize is the impressive ability of our enemy, he’s a master deceiver and unless we’re capable and carful investigators, we’ll all fall victim to poisoned cake. My last point, although I’m sure there are many others, is that being a good investigator provides way more benefits than simply identifying (and choosing) good over bad.

Here’s The Word:

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Since it’s obviously pertinent, as a test – let’s look at this verse forensically.
If we walked in on the “shame” of someone’s walk habitually being misled, what could we surmise? Of course, there may be more going on, but the easy things we can put into right alignment is helping someone study The Scriptures better and to DO what they learned that hopefully their life would show more ‘favor’ or approval with God. 2 Peter 3:16 -18 talks about the benefits of steadfastness when we study The Word.
When we’re serious about our studying, we will also employ the same critical observation, careful investigation and deductive reasoning that we use in “Examining, testing and proving” like the Bereans who, according to Acts 17:11 “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things (presented by Paul & Silas) were so.”

Final test,
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
Let’s investigate – Now torment is not the same as torture. It’s important to really flesh out certain words that have, through years of ‘assumptive’ reasoning, developed misleading connotations. Torment can mean truly horrible situations or something as light as correction or penalty. Just like certain symptoms require different types of medicines, it’s important to identify the symptoms rightly because if we mis-identify torment, expecting something big, dark and dangerous – we won’t know that we’re dealing with the underlying root of fear. See how that works?

So I pray that we would take the investigative portions of our Christian walk more seriously. That God would help our eyes to see past the linear and the obvious. There’s SO much more in the Bible than what comes out easily on the surface and many more distractions and dangers in our daily walk designed to misdirect and confuse us. I pray for the desire and stamina to wrestle with The Word that we would be approved & unashamed as we look at ourselves, prove all things and test the spirits.

In Him,
Cros