Day 2002 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.


1 Corinthians 14:33 NIV

So I saw this one earlier today and I just marveled at the simplicity of it. You know, Crowder Music has this little verse in one of his songs and it's stuck with me ever since I first heard it. "I don't think everybody's right, I think we often get it wrong. I think that when we get to Heaven, we're gonna laugh when we can see, how hard we try to make it, and how easy it should be." If you can't see the truth in that, then I'm sorry to tell you that you're broken! I'll drop a link to the song below, it's amazing!

We've managed to take something simple, powerful, and beautiful and turn it into this chaotic mess. We're so divided up and confused that many don't even know which way is up anymore. Not to mention what we talked about a week or so ago about how so many inside of our faith are far too focused on the silly battles our world has gotten started. I love that this verse in Corinthians is aimed at "all the congregations of the Lord's people." It's not talking about the worldly chaos that we're surrounded by every single day. It's talking about how we should all be united in this simple power of our God's peace.

All these rules, qualifiers, requirements, and reasons for exclusion that we've come up on our own has made faith look like a gigantic puzzle that people have to search to find their place within. We've complicated faith by making religion with all these different little rules and slightly different beliefs. I just don't get it. I don't understand the need for it. Like I talked about over in today's Random Thought on my blog, we're all about labels. Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Protestant, Assemblies of God, and the list of different groups goes on and on.

Does it need to be that hard? Do we really need to take something that should lead us to a peace that we can't find anywhere else and twist it into something that leads us to pulling our hair out? It's all about who's right and what everyone else gets wrong. But in the process of trying to line everything out in a way that makes sense to us, we're missing the point. In the effort to split everyone up into these fancy-sounding groups, we're running away from the peace that God created our faith to be.

With all of the chaos spreading throughout our cities and towns, people are desperate for peace. People are searching high and low for calm in the midst of disorder. They're searching for hope, the hope that faith offers. Our God is a God of peace. He's a God of hope, joy, healing, promises, and order. Those things should all be our top priorities as well. Not the arguing and debating that has taken the world by storm. Not the brainstorming new ways or rules that we think are important. It's about God and what He's already told us is important! We gotta stop adding, taking away, or spinning it around to fit our ideals.

It just doesn't need to be hard. It's actually mindlessly simple. Follow Christ. Obey God's commandments. Love God and love others. Read the Bible. Pray continually. Just live by example by following His. Our faith is the only answer to all of the world's problems, and people need it more than anything else. We have to stop complicating things, because after all, complicated is a pretty stark contrast to peace.

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