Equipping Eve: What Happens When We See Beth Moore Teach The Bible?

Is the Church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

The Word of God and the Role of Women in the Church

Well, hello ladies, welcome to Equipping Eve. I'm your host Erin Benzinger and today, as always, we are going to dig into God's Word so that we can be equipped with the truth of that Word and be able then to recognize the error and deception that is running rampant in the world today and even in the visible church.

That's what we do here at Equipping Eve because we love the Word, we love the written Word, and we love the living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are so thankful that our Father has given us both of them, aren't we?

So how are you ladies doing today? I'm taping this on a Saturday, it's early, early Saturday. I've got my coffee with me and my Bible and my notes and I'm kind of excited to jump into this episode. I actually had another show taped, ready to go, ready to send off to air today and then something came along that I decided I needed to talk about, I wanted to talk about, and I thought that it maybe should air before the other show.

So we're going to talk about that today, that particular article that I came across and you'll hear the other show next week. So that's the beauty of pre-recording, I can easily pre-empt things and it actually pushed out my schedule of things that I want to talk about in the coming weeks and it actually lined up my timing on certain show topics much better than I had previously planned.

So there you go, Providence of God. So definitely looking forward to the next few shows, so I hope you'll keep tuning in. So what I want to talk about today kind of actually piggybacks off of what we talked about in the last show and if you listened to our previous show, we talked about the role of women in the church.

We kind of looked at an article about Hillsong Church and the quote-unquote co-pastor there, Bobbi Houston, who is a woman, she co-pastors with her husband Brian. We just talked a little bit about why God has ordained different roles for men and women in the church and it is such a popular issue today, and popular doesn't necessarily mean good, not necessarily popular in a good way, but we are constantly seeing this issue come up in the world today.

Feminism is rampant and that's really what we focused on last show is this idea of evangelical feminism and how that has infiltrated the church, this idea that women should be able to do everything that men do, including pastoring, teaching, holding those authoritative roles within the body of Christ.

What's really important to recognize is that God in His Word, in ordaining specific roles, is not trying to squelch women. He's not saying women aren't gifted to teach or anything of that nature, but what He's saying is the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church.

We have a model set forth in Jesus Christ and that's been given to us by God and so we need to respect that and we need to understand that God has done that for a reason and it's not just on His divine whim.

We can see why He has ordained those roles so that women and men can serve the body of Christ as equal partners in spiritual status, but with differing roles. It does not mean women are less than men.

So often it's kind of presented to us as, you know, well, you conservatives, you complementarians, you just don't want women to do anything. You just want them to sit and be quiet and never say a word.

That is not at all the biblical position. And so I kind of just opened up this morning in John MacArthur's book, God's High Calling for Women, and found a rather relevant couple of lines that I'd like to read to you.

He says, Teaching and having authority contrasts with silence and subjection. Women in the church are not to be in a position where men are subordinate to them. Now he's discussing here the passage of 1 Timothy 2, 12 through 15, and he says about these verses, he says,.

This verse does not indicate that women are never to teach. Under some circumstances, a woman, along with her husband, could instruct another man. For example, Priscilla and Aquila instructed Apollos in Acts 18.

However, such instruction would not take place in the public worship service of the church. Okay, and that's really important for us to remember that. He says, God ordained women's subordinate role in his order of creation.

He created Adam first, then Eve. In 1 Corinthians 11, 8, and 9, Paul writes,. The man is not from woman, but the woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man. She was made to be his helper.

That's in Genesis 2, 18. So John MacArthur makes it really clear here that there are instances where women teach, and it's not to say that women are to just sit in the corner, but we need to exercise any sort of teaching or anything like that in its proper role and context.

And that role and context is not in a position of authority in the church over men. So we talked about that last week. We're going to, as I said, piggyback off of that this week. I came across an article in Christianity Today, which again, Christianity Today, like the Christian Post, is probably not a place you want to go for a sound doctrinal thought, especially in the section that is called hermeneutics, which is really a section that's geared toward women.

So the articles that appear there are definitely addressing women's issues, women in the church, et cetera, et cetera. So this article, it's written by Sharon Hody-Miller, I don't know if I'm saying her name right, and it's called What Happens When We See Women Teach the Bible?

And we're going to come back to that title actually at the end of the show, but let's just skim through this article a little bit because this article talks about one particular female evangelical quote-unquote Bible teacher who is very popular, and we need to begin addressing some of the problems with this person's teaching.

I'm not here to attack a person, I'm not here to attack, period, except to stand against those things that are attacking the Word of God and the truth of God's Word. So this article is actually about Beth Moore.

I've received a lot of questions since starting this show, when are you going to talk about Beth Moore? This isn't about a person, I want to make that so, so clear, ladies. I don't know Beth Moore personally, she seems very nice, however there are a lot of concerning things that come out of her ministry, and we're going to just touch on some of that today, and it's probably going to push a few buttons, and I'm not doing it for that purpose, I just want to take you back to the Word of God, because it is so easy for us to follow a person, whether it's Beth Moore, whoever our favorite teacher is, it's very easy for us to jump to their defense, because we think that they are being attacked personally.

We need to measure everything against the Word of God, no matter how much you like your favorite Bible teacher, you still need to test them and what they say against the Word of God. That is the measuring stick, not your favorite teacher, and if you are quick to jump to the defense of a person over and above the Word, you need to step back and re-examine, and it's a natural tendency for us, so I get that.

So I want to make it clear, I'm not out to get anyone today, I just want us to begin to examine some things of concern. And the issue here, that this really goes back to, is the role of women in the church, it's not about one person, one teacher, one particular teaching, it's about this broader issue of the role of women in the church.

So that's what I want to make really clear today, as we get started. So this article, What Happens When We See Women Teach the Bible? Sharon Hody Miller writes, Sometimes I wonder how many women in the church have the gift of teaching, but will never use it, or even entertain the possibility of possessing it.

When roughly 90 of evangelical pastors and 80 of evangelical seminarians are men, it can be hard for gifted women to find role models in the church. With such a void, do some women even consider the thought?

Now first of all, does your role model have to be a woman pastor? I don't understand that. Does the gift of teaching have to mean preaching? So I think she's kind of beginning to set up a bit of a straw man here already in her argument, but it's an opinion piece, so we'll run with it for now anyway.

She goes on to say, As a college student, I was confused about the direction of my call and the place of my gifts. At my church, women mostly occupied administrative positions. Even in my college parachurch organization, we rarely had a woman speak.

Given the scarcity of female role models, I wasn't sure where to turn. However, my life was forever changed when, in my early 20s, I attended the annual Passion Conference, a popular worship and teaching gathering founded by Pastor Louis Giglio.

Okay, I'm going to stop there. I'm not going to go off on a tangent of the Passion Conferences. There are a lot of concerning things that happened there. I only became aware of them a couple of years ago myself, thankfully.

However, I would encourage you, if you know any young people who have attended the Passion Conference in the past, or who will be attending, I think the main one just took place in early 2015, but there will be some regional ones coming up, I would encourage you to look into that a little bit more.

You can start by going to my other blog, not the Equipping Eve blog, but DoNotBeSurprised .com. If you search for the Passion Conferences, you should find some information there. We're not going to talk about that today, but I would encourage you, if a young person who you know and you care about is attending or is really excited about these, I would encourage you to study up a little and perhaps maybe warn them lovingly about some of the concerning things that have happened there in the past.

Beth Moore, Direct Revelation, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

So this article goes on to say, Beth Moore took the stage at the Passion Conference here, and though I was only vaguely familiar with her at the time, I won't ever forget that moment. When she opened up her Bible, she taught the word like I had never heard a woman teach it before.

She spoke with power, competency, conviction, and most of all, anointing. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I would never be the same again, says Sharon Hody Miller. She goes on, what she goes on to say is that seeing Beth Moore teach inspired her, and so she went on, she got her PhD, she did some teaching.

She has interviewed a lot of women who have similar experiences. She says that maybe it wasn't Beth Moore, but they had epiphanies when they saw a woman get up to teach the Bible, and that inspired them to maybe do the same.

Now to her credit, she says, the women I interviewed were enrolled in seminaries that do not support the ordination of women, so most did not aspire to be pastors. Instead, they felt a call to teach the word in some capacity.

In contrast with pastoring or preaching, she says, teaching is more widely accepted in conservative circles. I'd put a little caveat on there, but, and say, you know, teaching, but we're still not teaching men.

We're still not teaching, taking authority over men. But to her credit, she does make that point here, and so I want to give credit where credit is due. And then she goes on in the article and says, women use their gifts when they see other women use their gifts.

And that made me wonder, how many women had been similarly impacted by the Passion Conferences? How many women had been similarly impacted by Beth Moore? How many women are now in ministry or seminary because of experiences like mine?

Just a couple of side opinion notes. She says, how many have been similarly impacted by Beth Moore? What I don't see in here is that Beth Moore, hearing Beth Moore teach impacted and inspired this woman to love God more, to know His word more, so that she can share that word more.

It's just, hey, Beth Moore spoke with conviction and power, and she got up there and was speaking with authority, basically, is what she's saying by these words that she uses, power, competency, conviction, and anointing.

She's saying Beth Moore got up there with authority, and hey, I can do that too. I don't see that she's been inspired to rightly handle the word of God and teach it in the context and in the role in which God has ordained that women teach and share the word.

Has she been impacted by Beth Moore or by the word of God and the God who Beth Moore claims to serve? That's a little concerning to me when I read this article. And so, let's look at a few ways that Beth Moore impacts her followers.

But Beth Moore's teaching, I want to make that clear, again, I'm not out to get a particular person here. What are some of the things? Beth Moore, she's been popular for, I don't know how many years, she says she's been doing this for, I don't know, 30 years, something like that.

She is one of the most popular teachers in the Southern Baptist Convention. You can walk into any Lifeway bookstore and see basically a shrine to her and her books and her Bible studies. You know, when you hear misuse of the verse, touch not mine anointed, really the teachings of Beth Moore are probably at the top of that list.

But there are some concerning things that I have seen with Beth Moore's teaching over the years. And first and foremost among those really is her claim to receive direct revelation. Back in 2003, in the book The Beloved Disciple, Beth Moore tells the story of God speaking to her.

She says that God spoke to me about capturing what he and I are calling, quote, Sabbath moments. Like many of yours, my schedule right now is particularly tough and I see no time in the near future for a number of days off.

God spoke to my heart one Saturday morning while I was preparing for Sunday school. My child, in between more intense rests, I want you to take Sabbath moments. And so in this book, The Beloved Disciple, Beth Moore is claiming that God spoke directly to her and told her to take these Sabbath moments.

There's nothing about a Sabbath moment in this type of context in the Bible. She goes on to tell a story of how she had a Sabbath moment with God at the zoo drinking a mocha looking at, I don't know, koala bears or panda bears or something.

It really trivializes the way God speaks through his word. And what we have to consider here is why Beth Moore? Why whoever is claiming to hear directly from God? Why them and not me? God has never spoken to me and told me to take a Sabbath moment.

Why not? Am I not spiritual enough? Do I not pray enough? Am I not anointed enough? What's wrong with me that God has not spoken to me? This is the first problem with these claims of direct revelation.

Back a year ago, actually, in January 2014, Beth Moore posted a blog post called A New Year, A New Time. And she talks about a word from the Lord that she received in November of 2012. She writes, in mid-November of 2012, God dropped a word so convicting on my heart through another teacher's lesson that my face instantly burned.

This was the word. And she quotes God Almighty, apparently, stop sewing over and over in the exact same field. That was the word from the Lord that Beth Moore received. She says she knew God was talking to me.

She says a year after hearing from God so clearly, so then in November 2013, she had a very disturbing dream. She writes, I can count the significant dreams I've had through the decades on one hand, so I'm not prone to look for messages in my sleep to keep from having to actually pray and read the Bible.

So, see, she's kind of trying to make it seem like, no, no, no, prayer and Bible reading, that's really, really important, that's the primary thing, but the implication is God does speak to you in your dreams.

I don't know about you, but if God's speaking to me through my dreams, we have some serious issues because depending on what you snack on before you go to bed, you can have some really strange dreams, and that is not God talking.

You know, that's the, you know, I don't know, potato chips or whatever you decided to eat before you went to bed. But Beth Moore writes that God can speak through dreams, it's clear in our own Bibles, of course, but for many of us it is unusual, and again, we go, it's perhaps a minor issue, but we go back to, okay, she says for many of us it is unusual, but the implication is that it happens, so why isn't it happening for me or for you?

Why does she get to have the dreams? What's so special about her? And then you start to doubt your own faith and your own relationship with the Lord, which is not what God has intended. He has spoken to us through His Word and has provided our tests of assurance through His Word, and one of them is not, are you receiving dreams and visions and personal revelations from God?

That is not a test of assurance of our faith, but yet hearing people like Beth Moore talk about their dreams and visions and words from the Lord can make us doubt our own faith. She goes on and writes, I don't feel the release right now to describe the dream, though I may someday.

What I do feel is a strong compelling to share with you what I knew beyond a doubt it meant. I believe that I can either be obedient to God in the faith walk He is setting before me, or He will take my voice.

I do not feel it was a rebuke, I felt it was a warning. So that was what Beth Moore wrote in January of 2014. And we'll just pause momentarily on that again, and go back to the issue of why it's a concern that someone claims to have received direct revelation from God.

Think about 2 Peter, okay, Peter is writing, Peter witnessed the transfiguration. He saw Jesus Christ in all of His glory. This was before Christ's death, before Christ's resurrection. And Peter writes, 2 Peter 1, 16 to 21, he says,.

For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the majestic glory.

This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. Peter continues,. So we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

But know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

The word of God, written word of God is more sure than Peter's experience on the mountain at the transfiguration. Therefore, the word of God is more sure than Beth Moore's dream that she had in November of 2012.

The word of God is preserved in scripture, will never pass away. First Peter 1, 24, 25, all flesh is like grass, all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord endures forever.

That is why we don't need personal revelation from God, because if you own a Bible, you've got it. You've got your personal revelation from God. Beth Moore and her claims to direct revelation through dreams, personal words from the Lord, she is saying that the word of God is not sufficient.

She's not saying that literally in word for word. That's what she is implying. That's what everybody is implying who says that we should be receiving personal messages from God. Okay, it's a problem. It's becoming more and more prevalent.

But Beth Moore now claims that God is speaking to her. God has given her words. Later last year in March of 2014, after she described that dream, she would go on to appear at James Robeson's Awaken Conference.

And in that conference, she gave a prophecy. I will be linking additional resources at the Equipping Eve blog so you can see this for yourself. I have video, I have audio so that you can see for yourself and hear for yourself what I'm talking about.

It's gonna be a lot easier than just taking my word for it. I really want you to hear it for yourself. And again, I'm not out to get a person. I'm out to defend the word of God that's being maligned and, you know, the implications that it's not sufficient and that we need to listen to people like Beth Moore and others who are claiming to hear directly from God.

Because when they say that they are hearing from God directly, you can't question them because God has told them. So if you question them, you're questioning God. That's the natural progression of these claims.

And that's a problem. And that's why we are talking about this today. So actually, let me go back to her January 2014 post. And Beth Moore talks a little bit about previous encounters with God. She says she was saved in childhood, but when she was 18 was the first time she had a vivid encounter with God.

And it accompanied my calling, she said. And I have rarely, if ever, received clearer orders from God. So she says she received a calling from God. That calling apparently was, in her mind, to teach the word of God.

But would God call someone to twist his word? Would God call someone to cause people to doubt his word by adding to that word, by sharing dreams and prophecies and visions? Okay, so after Beth Moore talks about receiving her calling, she goes on and says, I share this with you because I love and esteem you so much and want you to know that I haven't lost my footing or had a dramatic change in my theology as I tread into a wider perimeter than I've served before.

This goes back to the word that God supposedly gave her that said, stop sowing over and over in your own field. She says we all must be willing to exceed denominational boundaries. Revival is at stake.

Nearsightedness will trip us and disunity will slay us in the perilous days to come. She says we can be left out of a coming awakening that could one day be recorded in the annals of Christian history.

So that appeared on her blog. Not long after that, she is speaking at James Robeson's Awaken conference. James Robeson would not be someone you want to follow. I can go off on that tangent, but we run way over time.

And she delivered a prophecy here, and she talks about a downpour. She believes this downpour is coming. It's coming from God. But she puts out there that scoffers are going to come. And it's not the scoffers from the unbelieving world, says Beth Moore.

She says the bigger threat will be the one within our own brothers and sisters, our own family of God. This will come from bullies and from the mean-spirited. What God began to show me, says Beth Moore, is that it would not just come from the mean-spirited.

It will also come from people who are just genuinely concerned about us. The scoffers, she says, I believe that God put on my heart. So this is something I think this was God. I think God put this on my heart.

She's not sure, but she's prophesying it anyway. She says, please test the spirit. Pray and see if this is confirmed to you in prayer and study of the word. We'll give her credit for that. She says, I believe he placed it on my heart that the scoffers will have an alternative answer for everything, an alternative for everything we see.

They will not see it as the hand of God. Unity will be called defection. Brokenness will be called instability. Grace will be called compromise. The genuinely prophetic will be called false teaching. You see if this does not happen.

Because of those things, defection, instability, compromise, and false teaching, because those things will be simultaneously in effect, you and I who are believing God for a vivid downpour of his spirit and recognize that as it comes, we'll have to be taking the risk of being lumped in with the ones that really are defecting.

It will be hard for us because we don't want to be mixed up with them. This came at a time when unity is being espoused by many people, including such men as the Pope and her warning of scoffers sounds very much like what we are seeing by those who want us to compromise truth, sacrifice truth at the altar of unity, which we cannot do ladies.

And we know that. And I know you know that, that the word of God can never be sacrificed for the sake of worldly earthly unity. But yet Beth Moore has received a call from God, she says. And God laid this on her heart, a call from God to twist the scripture.

In December of 2013, she put a video blog up called a 12th month that redeems a year. And again, you can see the video online. And I'm not going to go into it in detail. But what she does is she talks about second Kings and Esther, and the whole thrust of her teaching, it's about a 17 minute video, is that in the final month of the year, God will redeem the whole year.

God will reverse your fortune in the in the 12th month, because she looked up every instance of the 12th month, the phrase 12th month in scripture, and found that many of them, not all, but many of them describe a reversal in circumstances.

So God must offer reversals of fortune in the 12th month of the year. So she tries to universally apply a principle that really isn't in scripture, and apply it back to you. You know, have you had a bad year, God can redeem it, God can reverse it, because he did it here and here.

But it's at the point of the passages, you know, one of the passages she talks about a second Kings 25, 27 to 30, which reads, now it came about in the 37th year of the exile of Jehoiakim, King of Judah in the 12th month on the 27th day of the month that evil Merodach, King of Babylon, in the year that he became king, released Jehoiakim, King of Judah from prison, and he spoke kindly to him and set his throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babylon.

Jehoiakim changed his prison clothes and had his meals in the king's presence regularly all the days of his life. And for his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, a portion for each day, all the days of his life.

So the first thing is in this passage, the 12th month at that time on the Jewish calendar was March, not December. But Beth Moore wants you to have a reversal of fortune in December. So already she's disregarding the basic rules of Bible interpretation in order to fit her own agenda.

This is a descriptive passage. This is describing something that happened historically. This is not a prescriptive passage that says that this can be applied to everybody universally. And what she ends up doing is turning the focus of this descriptive passage of biblical text, turning the focus back to you.

If you had a difficult year, pray God will redeem the year for you. When in reality, there's so much more in this passage, there's so much more historically that's really important in this passage that trickles all the way down to our Lord Jesus Christ.

And I would encourage you to take a look at that passage and take a look at the link that I will provide on the Equipping Eve blog, because we'll just get off on a tangent if I start to explain some of that.

But I think you'll find it really interesting. And you'll see why it is so unfortunate to see people take the biblical text and turn it back on themselves when God is giving us so much more with just the plain meaning of the text and so much more that we can see into the history and the way that he has perfectly woven the thread of redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ through the entirety of scripture.

But Beth Moore is anointed and has a calling from God. Surely her teaching must be right, right? See, this is the danger, ladies. This is the danger. Would God call someone to twist his word? Would God call someone to disobey his word and to usurp the role that he has ordained for men?

Now you say, well, but Beth Moore is not a, she's not a pastor. She's not a, she's not a pastor. She's not, you know, taking authority over men. No, she does not hold the title of pastor, but she does teach mixed audiences at the Passion Conference.

She's done this in the past at Louis Giglio's church during a Sunday service. So she's still taking on those roles when she is teaching men on her show, her television show. She's on James Robeson's show, I think once a week.

There are at times men in that audience. So she is disobeying the word of God by doing that. Would God call someone to disobey his word? Would God call someone to teach others that his word is not sufficient, which is what is implied when she is sharing these prophecies and dreams and visions that God has supposedly given to her.

When Women Teach the Bible Rightly

So you see what happens when we see women teach the Bible. Two things can happen, depending on how you teach the Bible, depending on how you revere the Bible. What happens when we see women teach the Bible by usurping the authority of men, by overturning the God-ordained roles, by standing opposed to scripture?

Well, what happens when we see women teach the Bible that way is the word of God is reviled. And this actually popped into my head because a friend of mine, Elizabeth Prada, over at her blog, had a very brief but interesting post about Titus 2 .5.

And let me read you the broader context of Titus 2. Titus 2 .3 reads, And at her blog, The End Time, Elizabeth makes the point, she says, have you ever considered the opposite of Titus 2 .5? She says,.

And I really appreciated her input on that because that is what happens when we teach the Bible the way that we want it to apply to us, not the way that it does apply. When we teach it for what we want it to say, not for what God has written it to say, we dishonor the word.

That's not okay. And I don't care how popular you are, and I don't care how much time you spend reading the Bible, if you are not applying it and reading it for what God has written it to say, you are dishonoring the word.

That's not okay. Now, what happens when we see women teach the Bible rightly? Well, we see God honored. We see the other meaning of Titus 2 .5. We see that when women are sensible, pure, workers at home, etc., etc., that the word of God is honored when that happens.

We see women equipped, which we also saw in that Titus 2 passage, the older teach the younger. When the Bible is taught, when women teach the Bible to other women, women get equipped with the word of God, and they know their rightful roles within the body of Christ.

What else can happen when women teach the Bible rightly? We see our children raised in the fear and the knowledge of the Lord. And I go back to 2 Timothy 1 .5 for that. I am mindful, writes Paul, of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well.

As I said in the last episode, I think it was, you know, where would the early church have been and where would we be if not for the faithful teaching of Lois and Eunice to Timothy? And so, as John MacArthur points out, Scripture is not saying women cannot ever teach the Bible, but there are, I don't want to say rules because everybody bristles at that word, but there is a time and a place and a proper context for it.

And it is not in roles of authority within the church, and it is not at the expense of the truth of God's word. And women, if you want to teach the Bible in a rightful context, you teach the word. You don't teach your dreams, and you don't teach your prophecies, and you don't teach your visions.

You teach the word of God. Okay, but first of all, you need to be equipped with that word yourself, and you need to understand what God is saying in that word, not what you want Him to say in that word.

Because sometimes what we want Him to say and what He's actually saying are not the same thing. Because the Bible not only comforts and encourages, but it convicts. That's the beauty of it, and that's why we love it.

And if we have truly been saved by God, we long for that conviction, don't we? It stings and it hurts, and we may, you know, kind of bristle and kind of push back against it in our hearts and in our minds at first.

But if we've been saved by God, we know that He's challenging us through His word and that He's convicting us of our sin because He is continually sanctifying us in this life, conforming us and molding us and polishing us to look more and more like His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, so that one day when we meet Him face to face, we will be like Him.

And we will be glorified. There will be no more sin. And oh, what an amazing day that is going to be. But that day is not today. And that's okay because God has given us His word, and He has equipped us through His word.

And so we love that word, and we turn to that word, not our favorite Bible teacher because we like her personality and we like her stories and we like her anecdotes. We test it against the word of God.

And I don't care if she's had a dream, and I don't care if she's had a vision, and I don't care if God told her to go get a mocha latte and go look at panda bears at the zoo. I don't care. I want to know what the word of God says, not what you think.

Maybe, kind of, shoulda, woulda, maybe it was, might have been God said to you. No, the word of God does not stutter. It's not, I think God placed this on my heart. Open up the Bible. It doesn't stutter.