If you only have a couple minutes for scripture today, I got you.

Welcome to today's bite size Bible cast.

I have been gone for a minute.

I've been dealing with some really intense stuff, legal stuff, health stuff, other stuff.

And so I have been not doing these for a minute, but that is okay.

We serve a God who is a God of redemption and rhythm.

And we are getting back into the rhythm.

And I'm actually going to back that up a little bit when we read, and then I have some thoughts on it, because this is.

This is one of those verses that can get weaponized if we don't read it the correct way.

All right, we're just going to start off in the beginning of chapter 10.

And I am reading in the NRSVUE, which I know is a mouthful, but it's my favorite version right now, starting in chapter 10, verse one of First Corinthians.

I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses and the cloud, and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

Now, these things occurred as examples for us so that we might not desire evil, as they did, did not become idolaters, as some of them did.

As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.

We must not engage in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and 23,000 fell in a single day.

We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents.

And do not complain, as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer.

These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us on whom the ends of the ages have come.

So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.

But with the testing, he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

Now moving on into verse 14.

Therefore, my beloved, flee from the worship of idols.

I speak as to sensible people.

Judge for yourselves what I say now.

It Goes on for a bit, but that's kind of the chunk that I want to talk about.

Let's debrief.

This is one of those verses that can very easily get turned into.

Well, God knows your heart.

Your.

Your actions don't matter because grace covers them.

God knows your heart.

We all make mistakes, and he's not going to give you more than you can handle.

So if you fell, it can really, really easily get turned into an excuse to not confront sin and differences between our standards and God's standards in our everyday lives, Especially as Christians, especially as people who claim Christ, we can honestly be really good at using Christianese to.

To justify the things we want to justify and to really hone in on the things that we think should be focused on.

And this is a huge, huge problem in cultural Christianity particularly.

I have been a member of very conservative of evangelical American Christianity for my entire life.

And as I have gotten older, I've started to depart from that quite a bit.

But this is something that I have seen and that I have experienced and I still have trouble detangling in my own life.

In.

It is very, very easy to use scripture in bad faith without even realizing you're using it in bad faith.

And a verse like this, specifically the part that says no testing has overtaken you, that is not common to everyone.

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.

But with the testing, he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

We tend to hone in on that little part that says, God's not going to test you more than you can stand.

God is not going to give you more than you can handle.

And that's why it's so important to go back to the original text, because that's not actually the word that's used.

Let's look into it together.

Okay?

So the word that is used here for beyond your strength or what is common to man is the word anthropinos.

And yes, I did have a little chuckle because I am only human and that was more than I can stand.

See, that was bad application of this verse.

So anthropinos is essentially, when you dig into it, not so much like you're not gonna encounter anything that's not the common experience for everyone.

Like what everyone else is getting doled out.

Everyone essentially gets the same level of temptation, the same things that they need to stand up to, and it's.

It's all good.

It's not going to be more than you can handle.

It's more of adjusted to the weakness of man or after the manner of men.

So this verse isn't saying, hey, what you're dealing with is common to everyone.

Everyone has to go through this in some way or another.

And it's not going to be more than you personally can handle.

It's saying, hey, so the temptations you're going to encounter are actually already adjusted to your level of strength as a human being, particularly in.

In one of the definitions and one of the concordances I was looking at.

Adjusted to the weakness of man, it's already been adjusted to what we can handle.

And so when we attempt to use this verse to go, okay, it's not going to be that hard because God's gonna.

God's not gonna give to me more than I can handle.

It's not more than we can handle on our own.

It's not more than we can handle as a human being.

And that's pretty different from just, okay, nothing's gonna come across my plate that is not able for me to withstand on my own, which then also kind of takes some of our excuses and throws them out the window.

And I am very much speaking to myself here, just as much as I am attempting to encourage you on this.

So this comes back to this idea that I keep exploring in my content of integrity in the faith.

And what does it mean to be a Christ follower who is actually following Christ, the real Christ, not this politically convenient mascot that's been created for us to bow down at as a proxy for.

For worshiping things like greed, money, power, et cetera.

Because that's a real problem we're facing as we see the rise of Christian nationalism here in the United States.

And it's really scary, but it's also very, very easy to look at that go, aha, that is idolatry.

And I am not engaged in that.

Therefore, I cannot be engaged in idolatry.

They are off track, and I am not them.

Therefore, I must not be off track.

That is the playbook that we, as cultural Christians tend to walk into.

Especially here in the US in evangelical conservative Christianity, we tend to use what another group is doing as our barometer of what's right and wrong.

And go, if they.

I can so clearly see that they are wrong, and I am not doing anything that they are doing.

I am so far from them, therefore, okay, I'm good, because they are the definitional wrong, therefore I must be doing what's right.

No.

And I also see this idea expressed a lot on social media.

I'm in many, many, many Christian groups on Facebook.

Some of them are Christian mom groups, some of them are Christian wife groups.

I'm still in some Christian single mom groups, some Christian divorce groups.

I am in a lot of groups on Facebook.

And part of that is because I have a lot of questions and part of it is because it's really interesting to see what other people are wrestling, wrestling with in their faith.

And I also really enjoy providing encouragement where I can slash, feel called to and something that I see often.

I saw this verse used recently to justify some behavior that a poster was really struggling with.

And it was some very clearly non biblical behavior.

And a lot of the responses were basically like, girl, God's got you.

God understands we're not under any condemnation.

So.

So you don't have to worry about this very clear sin that you in your post said you know you are committing.

So just take the pressure off of yourself.

You don't have to worry.

Grace covers it.

Therefore, without directly saying this, the commenter was saying like, you don't have to worry about consequences to your actions because grace covers all of it.

And while that's a really comfy, cushy sentiment, that's actually a complete and total abuse of the cross if we're being very honest with ourselves.

And there have been plenty of beliefs of mine that I have held so firmly to, that I have argued for on the basis of my faith and that I have come to realize this flies in the face of the cross.

I am blaspheming Jesus name when I proclaim stuff like this.

And it's uncomfortable.

It is.

It's a lot easier to use religion as the cushy blanket, as the comfort, the empty, fluffy comfort that a lot of the world tends to think religion is.

Honestly, a lot of the criticisms are very valid.

I was just talking to my husband about this yesterday when we were on a walk with our pup.

I have to be careful not to say the W word or she will come running and she will scream.

She's a mini Aussie and she doesn't whine, she screams.

And it's really uncomfortable when I have to like take her to a gas station or something.

But anyway, we were talking about how a lot of the criticism that you see from atheists, from people who've fallen away from the faith, from insert group that does not align with religion.

There's often a lot of of criticism that you see of like, okay, you need like a fluffy sky daddy to make you feel better about the world because you can't deal with reality, you have to use an ancient text written thousands of years ago in order to justify your control of other people.

And when you are inside the group that they are technically talking to, it's really easy to just bristle and reject that as completely invalid criticism.

But friends, scripture actually backs that up.

If you look at the end of Matthew 25, Jesus is talking to a group of people who did miracles in his name.

They didn't just proclaim his name, they did good works in his name.

And what does he say to them?

He says, depart from me.

I never knew you.

Because when the actual tests came along, when the actual opportunities to exercise your faith came, when the things that required your effort and didn't result in your glory came up, like feeding the hungry, tending to the sick, visiting the prisoners, taking care of the widows and the orphans, because that's what Jesus Christ himself says is true religion.

When those things came up, you were too busy doing the fluffy feel good stuff.

So depart from me.

I never knew you.

And that should terrify us as Christians.

This is something I talk a lot about.

And so it's incredibly important to make sure that we are looking at our faith through the lens of Christ.

And that can only happen by asking the Holy Spirit to make that happen.

Human beings are terrible at being objective about themselves.

I am not a good critic of myself.

I do not have an accurate picture of my strengths, my weaknesses.

That's why it's so incredibly helpful to have other people that we can turn to that can mirror back to us what we actually look like.

And we have the Creator of our souls to help us understand our souls and our hearts and our actions and our minds, and not just to understand them, but to change them.

And that is the process of sanctification.

And that is incredibly uncomfortable.

And it's something that we can only withstand when we have the Holy Spirit on our side and when we are operating from a lens of truth, which often requires us to hold some really uncomfortable things to wrestle with some really uncomfortable things.

The Bible Project is one of my absolute favorite podcasts.

It's fantastic.

My husband and I will listen to it together separately, discuss.

It's fantastic.

They talk a lot about how scripture in some places is written ambiguously so that you have to wrestle with it.

That was the original intent.

It's not supposed to be packaged up in a neat little bow and.

And able to be handed down and followed black and white.

That's just not how Scripture was originally intended.

We have to have a functional relationship with the Holy Spirit.

In order to be able to be objective about ourselves, in order to be objective about our faith, in order to be objective about other people, in order to properly proclaim the name of Jesus.

Because if we're not bearing the name of Jesus, well, we are bearing the Lord's name in vain.

We are taking the Lord's name in vain, which I can spider web out into a billion different topics.

So I want to wrap it up here.

But what I want to challenge you with today, sit down with your journal, spend some time in prayer, read through this verse again, it was First Corinthians 10.

We got through, I believe, verse 15.

And ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you might be living out your faith the way you want to live it out.

Where you might be using scripture in ways that don't feel like you're cherry picking, that don't feel like you're applying them in bad faith, but where you might be just even without noticing it, fudging things a little bit or twisting a concept just enough to make it fit what you're hoping it does.

It's really difficult not to do as humans, but sit down with your journal and ask the Holy Spirit to show you some of those gaps today where maybe you are relying on an interpretation of scripture that doesn't actually work, that wasn't actually intended.

And when we ask for the Spirit to work in us and when we surrender to that work, even though it's uncomfortable, it gets done, it is incredibly uncomfortable.

Sometimes the process of sanctification is a doozy.

And there's another word I wanted to use there that started with not a D but a B.

But we're going to move on from that.

But take some time in your journal today and ask the Spirit to reveal those things to you and then stick around here because we talk a lot about that, especially from the lens of adhd.

So if you've not seen my face before, my name is Rachel.

I'm an adhder and a Jesus follower, and I help fellow women with chaotic brains seek, find and live the abundant life that Jesus offers.

I upload all of these videos like this as podcast episodes.

You can find the link to all of that over in the bio because TikTok doesn't like when you send people off their platform, so that's why I'm spelling it.

But I've also got some other resources over there in that link that I would love for you to stick around for.

So if you listened to this on your favorite POD podcast platform, I would love to have you subscribe and leave five stars.

That helps me reach more people and I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments or via email.

I'm always available via email.

My email is rachel rachel grit.com so so that is all I have for you today.

Thank you so much for spending this time with me.

I encourage you to sit down and do some of this difficult but honest work and I will see you in the next one.

Bye.