When You Interpret the Bible.

Recently heard someone re-define the word "fruit" in John 15 as "answered prayer".
I went to my trusty concordance and online dictionaries to see if fruit means "fruit". That made me look at Rules for interpreting Scripture. There are different lists 8 and 16 rules etc.

Here is a list that may or may not help. Try it and see.

1. First ask what does the words mean?  Does the grammar change the meaning? What was the common use at the time?
Figure out what the real meaning of the words are. Ex. When the Bible speaks about "dogs" (Rev 22:15) it is not speaking about fourfooted mammals but about perverts.

2. Ask what is the context? Read the whole chapter or book. Ex. The 4th chapter of Ephesians is about the unity of the Body of Christ yet, the 11th verse has been pulled out of context, used to divide and grade the Body of Christ.

3. Ask: Who wrote it? To whom? What is the Historical background? Ex. When Paul writes that women should be silent in church,  he was addressing a culteral issue of women making a raccus in meetings by yelling at their husbands because they were not sitting together. 1 Cor 14:34

4. Ask: When is the first time this was written in scripture? Let Scripture explain scripture. Make sure that your intrepetation is consistent with the whole of scripture. Ex. God is love. But the rest of scripture also show His other attributes such as holiness and righteousness.

5. Do not make doctrine/teaching based on one single verse. A minimum of 3 unrelated verses are required. You cannot use the same thing repeated in three of the "Gospels".
Do not make doctrine that contradicts scripture. If it contradicts even one verse, it is out.
Ex. We all know cults that use one obscure verse to justify a practice or doctrine like snake handlers based on Mark 16:18.

6. Ask the Holy Spirit to explain what it means? He is the original author of it all. He is with us to help us. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is our Helper and reminder. John 15:26

"Have you learned to love yet?"

Her tears splashes from her face like a gush from an elephants trunk. The story involves pain. She seems to have dozens of friends and all are intense, intimate relationships. Yet, a large percentage have been rotten, hateful at times. The pain of the tale did not start the waterworks. What did?

It was when she begun to explain why she could forgive and love again with no trace of offense.
 " I figure, I am God's child. He is my Father and He loves me."  This made the waterfall. "And He forgives my mistakes. He even gets me out of the pickles I caused for myself. What they do is not my business."
Internally I gasped. How does a person come to such a place of total abandonment?

Later we are sitting around the piano, singing some old hymns. The presence of God is thick in the atmosphere. My inner ears are pitched to hear His voice. He spoke only one sentence: " Have you learned to love yet?"

O How do we miss it when we try to force the work of God even in our own lives. We read the words:"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as yourself" and set out determined to make it so. Our will and determination runs out. Pretense and hypocrisy only covers so far. The rosebud can never be forced to open.

How little do we really, truly know this God we portend to know and serve. He judges sin and declares the verdict of death but then He provides His own sacrifice. That is how He works. He commands and then enable us to do as He commands.

What does He requires of us? Where is our part in it? Do we have a role to play?
"Have you learned to love yet?"
My hart and soul, my very being, yearns to love with forgiveness, with NO offense at all. I want to love like He loves giving of self until every last drop of blood is spend. I want to, I desire to, I try to. I am willing.

But I turn back to the tear stained face, to the bloody man hanging on a cross and I grasp that there is a price. O, open my heart for the love and the pain. Let God pour His love in my heart, His love is not fake, plastic, 90 minutes on a big scream. His love is in 21 years of loneliness, learning to lean. His love is in 30yrs, 50yrs of not reckoning the injury as an offense. His love is to keep short accounts and to embrace the entire human being, thorns and all.

Could I, would I love like that?  When His love oozes from every pore of my being and fills the atmosphere like expensive perfume. O, that He would change my heart, enlarge my soul so that I can know the width, height and depth. So that I may be a dwelling place for Him, a comfortable place for His home.

Let my heart, my life be His love; pain included.