The Power of a Word

A couple of days ago I posted a link to a video of Oprah that showed clips of her talking about her "spirituality" (or lack thereof). In that video, she mentions a time in her early twenties when she attended a church where the pastor was very charismatic. She recalls sitting in a service where the pastor was listing some characteristics of God - He is good, He is loving, He is omnipotent, He is jealous.......Oprah said that when she heard the pastor say God is jealous, a huge question came to her mind. In this video Oprah says that it was at that moment she said to herself, "God is jealous OF me?"


What Oprah didn't (and still does not) understand is that God is not jealous OF her but jealous FOR her. He is jealous for her to depend solely on Him. He is jealous for her heart to love only Him. He is jealous for her to give Him everything she has. He is jealous because He knows the other 'gods' or idols of this world can offer us nothing. But Oprah does not understand the difference between God being jealous FOR her and being jealous OF her. Although I am sure that there are many people who are jealous Of Oprah, God is not one of them.

Do you see the power of a word here? One word caused one of the most influential women in the world to question the God of the Bible. One word caused her focus to be shifted from God to what she wanted God to be in her mind. With one misunderstood word, satan has allowed millions to be misled through Oprah. There are people who will miss heaven because Oprah misunderstood the meaning of God's righteous jealousy.

That is how satan works. He uses the smallest, minute details to trip us up. He knows it doesn't take much for those who are weak in their faith to turn their backs on God. If Oprah had taken the time to study her Bible, she could have quickly learned the meaning of God being jealous FOR us. Instead of pulling out the Bibles, the concordances, and the commentaries and researching God's jealousy, she chose to conjure up a perfect god in her mind. Millions of people will be deceived because someone with huge influence did not study the word. Millions of people will bow down to Oprah's god because her god allows them to continue living the way they want to live. Millions of people have been and will be deceived by someone else's ignorance of God's word.

I know it sounds like I 'have it in' for Oprah, but actually I just wanted to use her as an example of how WE can be deceived and how WE can deceive others by not fully understanding God's word. I wonder how many of us have ever added to or taken away from God's word in order to fit our idea of 'a perfect god'.


Or how many of us have been deceived by pastors, friends, teachers, etc. that did not fully understand the Truth.


I have always wondered how the followers of David Koresh never realized that he was a false prophet. Did they not read the Bible for themselves? Or what about the followers of Jim Jones.....how did they not know that he was a liar? What would possess normal everyday people to throw common sense out the window and follow such people?

The simple truth of the matter is that people who do not know the word of God, who do not read the word of God for themselves are easily deceived. There are people who grow up in certain "Christian" denominations that refuse to acknowledge the false doctrine they have been taught all their lives. Or maybe it isn't that they refuse to see, but that it is easier to stick with what you know (even if what you 'know' is a lie).

There are so many different Christian denominations in our world that it would be difficult to even count them all much less decipher what each truly believes. There are denominations that claim the name of Jesus but deny His deity. Some churches call themselves Christian, yet say the Bible is filled with myths. Some churches claim to believe the Bible, yet ordain gay women as pastors. Others worship mere men over God. Some churches deny the Trinity while others say that Jesus was just a 'good man'. I could go on all day about false doctrine, but you get my point. This is why Bible study is so important to us. 2 Timothy 2:15 says it this way "Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God approved (tested by trial), a workman who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching] the Word of Truth".

If we do not study the word of God, we can just as easily fall prey to false doctrine as the people in Waco or the people who drank the red Kool-aid. Oh, I am not suggesting that any of us would go to those extremes (although I am not saying we wouldn't either). But when we do not know what the Bible says, we will never be able to discern false doctrine from Truth. I know most of us think we are way too intelligent to be taken in, but in reality, some of us are just a word away from buying into the lies of a false prophet.

Okay, now for some fun.......my bother-in-law and sister showed me the funniest guy on youtube.com last night. His name is Tim Hawkins (you may know of him - I am always the last to get word of things) and he is hilarious. You can go to youtube and type a serch for Tim Hawkins, but be sure to watch this particular video!