Some scriptures are difficult to deal with. I don’t know if you’ve noticed like I have, but we tend to have a handful of verses that we all seem to gravitate around and then there are others that we avoid and we try to skip over. And if we have to read them we sort of try not to go deeply into them. We all have verses that we can quote because they become somehow our life verses. “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” “For I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.” “Delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart.” “Be still and know that I am God.” Why is that no one’s verse is ever, “If anyone does not abide in Him is cast out as a branch and is withered and they gathered him and throw him in the fire”? All these verses that I read are beautiful truths. They’re all divinely inspired, but also they are exactly what we want to hear and what we want to apply to whatever our current situation is. The question is, what do we do when we come to scriptures that don’t fit our desires? How do we handle verses that don’t make us feel good about where we are or comfortable with where we’re going? What do we do when the verses we are reading don’t give us answers but instead demand that we ask questions? Even worse when they seem to question us. The reality is if you’ve already decided what you want, you can find a verse to back it up. That’s the wrong way to use the Scripture. We use the Scripture to reveal God’s desire, not to affirm our desires. Today we come to one of those difficult verses, John 15:6.
“The Branch part 2” John 15:5-6
