For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Acts 20:27
It would be difficult to find someone that doesn’t like cake. And, you would be especially hard-pressed to find a kid that doesn’t absolutely love cake. I still remember how much I loved cake when I was a kid. Honestly, it wasn’t so much the cake I loved; it was the icing. Lots of it. I always wanted the piece of cake with the huge icing flower on top. And the more sugary and sweet, the better. I knew my mom would never let me have just icing, so I put up with the cake in order to get it. Have you ever seen what a lot of little kids do with a cupcake? They lick all the icing off and leave the rest of it behind. As I’ve gotten older, however, I want less and less of the icing. It’s just too sweet for me, so now I would rather have more of the cake. Everyone has their favorite parts of the cake, but the cake is baked and created to be eaten all together. If you eat only the cake, it can be too bland. If you eat only the frosting, it can be much too sweet. Eaten together, however, it tastes just right – especially if my wife makes it.
The way kids eat cake is the way a lot of Christians treat the Word of God. They want to pick and choose which things they like and don’t like, and then ingest only the things they do. In Acts 20, Paul writes of the importance of declaring the whole counsel of God. In other words, it is important that we take in all the Bible, not just the things we like. We can rally around things like not killing babies through abortion, not lying, not stealing, not murdering someone, or not committing adultery. Those are portions of the Bible that we love, so we will believe them with our whole hearts. But, when the Bible says we shouldn’t love the world, that we shouldn’t follow the world and imitate it, that we should proclaim the gospel, or that we should not be dishonest even in the slightest way, we start to make excuses; and, even though we wouldn’t say it with our mouths, we shun those parts of the Word of God. We begin to reason within ourselves why we don’t really have to follow those parts exactly as they are stated. But the Bible was never intended to be read and followed in that way. We are to obey the things that we get excited to follow, as well as things that may go against our sinful nature.
We all have our favorite parts of the Word of God; but, living the whole counsel of God means that we do our best to follow every little part of it. If all you did was eat the sweet parts, you would soon find yourself spiritually fat and out of shape. Enjoy every part of God’s Word. That is the way it was intended to be enjoyed.
Read also: Acts 20:18-31
Quote of the day: "Knowing the Bible is one thing. Knowing the Author is another.”