Parents, Be Careful Who You Believe!* Words From COVID 19 Delta

Parents, be careful who you believe! There I was standing on the wall of my childhood back porch, wearing my cape, shorts with pasty white spindly little legs sticking out and my red Keds tennis shoes, believing I could fly. The Wonderful World of Disney, by the way, had convinced me that all I had to do was BELIEVE and then I could fly. So, I closed my eyes, believed real hard and jumped. Thankfully I had not climbed to the top of the house, still it was about a 7 foot drop (thankfully onto grass, not concrete) … a long drop for a little boy. I hit the ground hard, landing on my feet. My legs folded up under me, my breath was knocked out of me. It hurt my whole body. I limped back up to the porch, thinking maybe I just didn’t believe hard enough. So, I climbed back up, closed my eyes and believed harder, but this time I was either smart enough not to jump or my legs were hurting too badly to try again. Or perhaps I realized that the law of gravity was one that was real and true regardless of my belief (no discredit to the Wright brothers who learned how to use some other physical laws and truths to overcome gravity temporarily). A similar thing happened to a hallmate in my freshman dorm in college. We were on the second floor of the dorm and it had started snowing. This young man had never experienced snow before, he lived in South Florida. As the evening went on, the snow began to pile up. Mind you, we were in Greenville, SC and there were only 3 inches of the wet white stuff, but this young man had been celebrating the snowfall with some inhibition reducing beverages (that weren’t, btw, allowed on campus at that time). He had believed that the snow was soft and that jumping into it would soften his landing. Despite some of his hallmates telling him not to do it, he, like many of us at that age, also believed he was made of steel and he jumped. He, however, was not made of steel and the snow was not deep enough to be soft and he spent the rest of the semester on crutches with a cast on his leg. Both of us had believed a lie or lies. We believed them earnestly and wholeheartedly enough to jump from high places, but we both hit the ground hard. Our sources of truth were unreliable.

The apostle Peter was really worried about the church. People were believing lies and being led away from the Truth. They were probably very sincere about their belief, they believed wholeheartedly and earnestly, but they believed in a lie that totally overstepped God’s boundaries and laws, His Truth. Peter knows the big tragic crash that will happen if they (and we) believe in these false teachings that aren’t from God. He tells them and us: “... there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.”(2 Peter 2:1b–3 ESV) When we love God, we will honor His ways, His truth, and His boundaries for our lives and they will protect us. Even if we believe harder in a lie, it never becomes true and if we continue to believe it, we are headed for hurt. I wish I could say that I always believed the real truth after jumping off that porch, but I didn’t. There were many other painful lessons from believing lies. And because I am prone to go my own way, I will probably mess up again (thank you God for your grace!). We all need to listen to Peter, however, and check the source of the truths we believe. Jesus says, “I am the Truth!” So, it's best to ask Him, listen to Him, really believe in Him and His truth and take captive those thoughts that don’t line up with His Word, His Character, and His Ways. We need to submit what we are believing for His review so we don’t jump off a porch or out a window to our own pain because of our strong, sincere belief in a lie.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!