1 Timothy 1:3-4 Release the Controversies....

1 Timothy 1:3-4

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.  These promote controversies rather than God's work-which is by faith.

Controversy.

What better way is there to attract others, to attract attention, to gather a gathering?  It doesn't even really matter the topic...as long as there is some sort of drama attached to it and ears will turn your way and time will tick by.  Useless information, much just speculation, yet, juicy enough to fill our minds and conversations.  "She doesn't seem happy."  "He's always at the office."  "She's away from her family too much."  "Their kids are just...well, different."   As speculation swirls as to why each of these might be, we spend precious, precious time on imaginative words....much as a child in imaginative play.

This is no less of an issue within the church.  While God's Truth is actually quite simple.  Salvation is offered, believe, repent and live having the blessed assurance of eternal life while living in a loving relationship with Him while on this earth.  Of course, the "devil is is in the details", yes?  And I am afraid that this is quite literally a statement when it comes to the seemingly "controversies" of faith.  But how? But why? But who? Women or men? Or both?  Where should we sit?  How should we sit?  Do we sing?  Should we sing facing forward or backwords?  Could we put the choir on the left side? Does it really matter? Yet, we spend time and time and more time debating these controversial topics within our church...digging into theology trying to support our preferences and trying to be right, creating committees, creating division. 

Creating a diversion.

Yet, those are some of the simpler topics of controversy within our church.  Some would say that the real topics of controversy are found within the fine details such as baptisms for example:  How to baptize, who can baptize, where to baptize?  Or....what about the after life?  I have been told more times than I can count, by well meaning Christians, myths and untruths concerning Taellor at this very moment.  Or, better yet, what about the Trinity?  How does that really work?  Hours and hours can be spent debating and discussing....sometimes arguing....trying to fill in the blanks. 

And in this whole process, we are loosing precious time.  Time that could be spent studying the Truth, studying God's word....listening for His voice instead of our own.... is instead spent on eternally irrelevant and worthless speculation.  Time that could be spent reaching out to the lost is spent holed up discussing differences between believers.  While due to our seemingly need to be politically correct, we allow others who aren't believers to even come in and stir up the water....thinking that if we just find the right point, the right verse, the right answer...we can lead them to conversion. 

Maybe sometimes we will.  But what if, just maybe, this is all part of satan's work creating diversions and divisions within our churches....within our faith.  God called us to be the peacemakers, yet, time and time again people have left the church broken-hearted and disillusioned.  False teachers exist within our churches even today and I don't believe they are the ones sitting idle by.  They are active in the quest to encourage as much controversy as possible....and we allow it to happen.  We take the bait and we go off on a tangent.  We loose our focus.

It is not that the study of theology and God's Word is wrong....but rather the mindless debate over speculated ideas may be placed just to occupy our focus away from what we have truthfully be called to do.





Choose today to live different.  Not to fall for satan's ploy whether it be controversy over a current event, friend's life or God's Truth.  Don't feed into the chaos with speculation....don't let our voice be the voice the muddies the water.  Let's be the peacemakers reading our Bibles and spending time in prayer so that when the time comes and we encounter a false teacher we will know the falseness of their words and will not even enter into the debate of Truth.  But rather, we will stand firm in our knowledge of Truth.