Devotional for Friday Jan 11, 2008: The Real Thing
Greg Laurie Senior Pastor Harvest Christian Fellowship Riverside, Ca
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
"You must spend a lot of time handling counterfeit money to know what it looks like," Ruth Bell Graham once said to a man who was in charge of identifying counterfeit money for Scotland Yard.
"No," he replied. "We never touch the stuff. All day long, we just handle the real thing: genuine currency. And when a counterfeit bill comes our way—we can quickly detect it."
As a Christian, you could go nuts trying to keep up with the latest heresies and counterfeit teachings people spread in this world. But if you familiarize yourself with the Word of God and become conversant with it, you will immediately know counterfeit teachings. You will hear someone say something and think, This isn't right. You will know what God's Word truly says and what it doesn't say, because God will give you spiritual discernment.
Spend time today studying the real thing. If ever there was a time we need spiritual discernment, the time is now. In the words of the apostle Paul, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord" (Colossians 3:16).
