Thankful Thursdays - Spiritual Sweet Tooth

Laurie at Women Taking A Stand is hosting Thankful Thursdays for the month of June and for today's topic she chose "having a spiritual sweet tooth." What a wonderful analogy. You need to head over and read her post.

She references Psalm 19:9-10 ~ "The laws of the Lord are true; each one is fair.
They are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold. They are sweeter than
honey, even honey dripping from the comb."

Let that roll around in your mind for a while. While I was reading Laurie's post, I thought of how many substitute sweeteners are used in our foods - high fructose corn syrup, saccharin, sucralose (known as Splenda), aspartame and others (I didn't get a lot of time to dig into this so please excuse the lack of thoroughness in research) and how often do we deviate away from the simple, natural perfect sweetener - honey.

How much do we see and hear that "looks" like the truth but is really just the truth with some refinements (like Splenda starts with sugar...) so we can feel comfortable enough with it to trust it and use it? Sooner or later, though, we find it has its own problems and it isn't quite right. No matter how we try to cover it, decorate it or change its name - we do not process sugar well in any form. At some point there is a good probability we are going to have an issue with our substitute.

The same is true for God's Word. So many people have written book upon book, commentary upon commentary about the Word of God that we can become easily confused as to what the Word of God really says. Without matching it to the infallible Word of God, soooner or later we're going to have an issue with our substitute...

*Please don't misunderstand me here - there are a LOT of great minds who have put pen to paper interpreting the Bible. There are wonderful books written by wonderful people out there who come alongside Christians in their walk. I do not under any circumstance believe any book that isn't the Bible is hawking a lie.*

My thankfulness today runs deep and wide that the Word of God, the Bible, has been provided to us. I am thankful I have been taught how to read so I can see for myself what the Bible has to say. My Bible is written in English which means at some point someone had to translate it from its original languages. I am thankful that God has made that possible. I am also so amazed and overwhelmed by the fact that each time someone tries to prove the Bible wrong, God has a way of bringing us back to the fact that the Bible contains truth and only truth.

I've been thinking a lot about how I treat my Bibles (Yes - I have more than one. How many people out there have to worry about being arrested if found with even a page from the Bible and my biggest struggle is which version to use....?), how I read and study it. This isn't a fun story written by the latest craze writer. This is the living Word of God. All Scripture is God-breathed...

God breathed. How thankful should I be? How reverently should I treat this book? How much honey should I savor? More than I am... today, though, is a good day to start.

Have a blessed Thankful Thursday and head over to Laurie's to read more TT posts. Blessings!