What do you go by?

Yesterday Galen was taping the walls in one of the halls to be painted.  He was taping a line in the middle of the wall down a 40 foot hall to paint below the line.  It was obvious after the first three feet that his measuring with two yard sticks taped together were not going to be sufficient.  He retreated to his truck and came back with a laser.  Since he had that laser with him, I wondered why he was trying it with the two yard sticks.

The laser is great for horizontal lines.  A plumb line is great for vertical lines.  A plumb line is a string with a weight at the bottom hanging from a point.  Gravity pulls the string straight up and down.  In the book of Amos, God had pronounced a judgement on the people for failing to live up to God’s standard of righteousness. Amos pleaded with God to forgo the punishment so God placed a plumb line to give them something to go by.

God has given us the Bible to go by… to teach us right from wrong.  Do we all agree with everything in the Bible?  Of course not.  But how can we, who are so prone to wander, who are so prone to ebbs and flows of society and our own desires, how can we trust anything else?  What else is there to go by?  Do we go by the rules of presidents?  Do we listen to modern day prophets, popes, or pastors opinions?  I hear people say all the time, I do not agree with the Bible on (fill in the blank).  There are things I find troubling.  But what else is there?  So we are to go by our own opinions?  We can all look back on times in our lives we were wrong about things we thought we were right about.  And without a doubt, one day down the road we are going to look back on things we believe today and realize we were wrong.

The Bible is never wrong.  The older I get, the more I realize that any time my opinion differs from God’s Word, I either do not understand it correctly or I am flat out wrong.  He has given us something better than two yard sticks, better than a plumb line, and even better than a laser.  And what we need to do is do our best to believe and live by His Word and as we do, He will work in us to help us better understand and accept what is right.

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