Last week I was washing my car and I bent over to clean the inside of the windshield. When I straightened back up my ear started itching. I had apparently caused something in my ear to itch by my upside down move to get to the far recesses of the inside of my windshield. Boy, it was annoying. I rubbed my ear until it finally quit itching. That’s when a light bulb went off in my head — the light bulb replaced the ear itch — we live in a world of itching ears!
Almost all of us want to hear what we want to hear when we want to hear it. If it isn’t what we want to hear, then we shut it out or change the subject. “Of course”, we cry out, “I want the truth” but very rarely do we want the “real” truth. In the movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson said the line, “You can’t handle the truth.” As harsh as that sounded at that point in the movie, he was stating a very true fact about a present day attitude in the church. We can’t handle the truth. We have truth right in front of us every day in the form of God’s Word, and yet we either don’t read it or try to follow it.
Sadly enough, even some called men of God want to make the truth more user friendly, but the power of God’s Word still seems to make it through their futile attempts to water it down. Their attempts to try and make Scriptural relativism replace scriptural truth have weakened today’s church. All of this is couched in the desire to make it easier to attract people to our churches in America. The end result is an anemic form of the truth, per our personal observations about what truth really is to me.
I know, personally, I continue to hear more and more excuses for not serving Christ with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Many of those excuses are the result of called men and women losing their desire for following Christ and forgetting what they were set aside to do. We are set aside to challenge God’s people to greatness. Greatness found through a passionate walk with the Lord that is ever increasing. Greatness that doesn’t make any excuses for living in a world-induced coma. Greatness that is not found modeled around any other example than Jesus Christ. We need greatness and that greatness will never be found in our relevant selves. That greatness will always be found in living a life through the power of the Holy Spirit.
I don’t have to turn my head upside down for my ears to start itching, but it worked last week. We may need to have our world turned upside down for our ears to start itching for the truth of God’s Word. Real truth. Not the user-friendly I’m-not-really-sure-what-the-Bible-says attitude of many churches today. With a fall out in heartfelt commitment by worshippers in our churches today, may our ears be open to what God is calling us to do. May our hearts be receptive to His voice.
Listen to Paul’s words in 2 Timothy:
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. —2 Timothy 4:1-5
It sounds like Paul is warning Timothy and us. May our lives be fanned into flame by a steadfast commitment to the TRUTH per God’s Word, not the truth per my impressions of the Truth. Are your ears itching for the real Truth? I hope so. The world just turned upside down!
The Pilgrimage continues….. David Warren