Test Everything!

There’s a phrase that I’ve been repeatedly hearing recently, like God is highlighting it to bring to my attention for a reason, and it’s this: “but I’ve always been taught…” That phrase usually comes from someone rejecting a new revelation or idea on the basis of what somebody else (usually a leader) told them.

When I turned to God to ask why He is highlighting this to me, I heard the reply, “Why are My people so quick to be suspicious of and test My prophets but so slow to question their teachers?“

And I suddenly saw what appeared to be a gaping chasm into which people were falling into – it’s like they walked right up to it and didn’t even see it there because they were just following the way they had been told to go. It reminded me of the time we were using a Sat Nav to direct us to an unfamiliar destination, and as we got close the Sat Nav directed us to drive into the middle of a lake! (the destination was on the other side of the lake) Thankfully we had the sense to ignore the Sat Nav and use our experienced understanding to find the road that went around it… but why don’t people do that with church teaching?

As my regular readers may remember, in January last year God asked me to lay everything down that I thought I knew about Christianity. All I knew for sure was Him as my loving Father, Jesus was His Son, our Saviour, and He had sent his Holy Spirit to live in me and be my faithful Guide. Everything else that I had built my faith upon was dismantled and stripped away.
And the bricks that had formed my old understanding were tested against the gold standard of His Word, through the refining fire of the Holy Spirit. Some of my old understanding has been proven to be gold, formed through genuine revelation from Him. Quite a bit was burnt up as straw – things I had been taught in church and had taken at face value, but were missing the mark of God’s truth. And the process is ongoing. I am now used to living with questions, and still regularly find myself questioning the most basic of things, frequently turning to God and asking “Is that really what You said and meant, or is that just popularly accepted tradition?”

Because as God has been warning us for a while now: “Beware deception! It is running rampant – guard yourselves!” And the things that are most dangerous that need guarding against, are the traditions of man and religion: the things we believe because we were taught to, rather than because we read it in God’s Word and it has been revealed to our hearts. The teachings of man – like Sat Nav systems – can be helpful if you have no idea where you’re going. They will get you close. But if you depend on them unquestionably and do not use discernment, they can also send you off on unhelpful diversions that can get you lost or stuck.

Back in the war era, nobody had Sat Navs… they didn’t even have road signs, because they had all been removed so they couldn’t fall into enemy hands. People had to know for themselves where they were going. We the Church have become lazy, relying on the systems of others to show us the way, and have forgotten that we are at war. There is a deceiving enemy prowling around wanting to make us lose our way, or to get us stuck in empty religion. Our best defence is to know for ourselves where we are going. And as Christians, that can only happen when we depend on the God we KNOW, rather than the God someone else told us about.

So when we receive a teaching or make a decision based on something we have previously been taught, in just the same way as we test all prophecy, so we must test everything we are taught: ask first, is this in God’s Word? Then ask, does this interpretation line up with what I know to be true of God’s character and promises? We have to keep reading God’s Word for ourselves, to get a clearer picture. And we have to be able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit within us, telling us “this is the way, walk in it” (Isa 30:21)

So please, Church… test everything. Not just prophecy, but all teaching too. In these days of increasing darkness and deception, we must be like the Bereans who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). Note that they received the message with eagerness – this is not an excuse for worldly cynicism – and then they immediately and daily checked the Scriptures to confirm the truth of the message, so it could take root in their hearts and grow into a strong, unshakeable faith. We serve an amazing God Who loves to lead us into all truth (Jn 16:13) – so let’s turn to Him again today and ask for His help to test everything.