Jack’s Winning Words  5/3/22

“The unhappy truth is,  learning is hard.”  (Tucker Carlson)  I did well in school, but grades were never a priority for me.  In researching Tucker’s quote, I discovered that learning is hard because learning involves making mistakes, and being told that you’ve made an mistake erodes our self-confidence.  Yet, it is by seeing the error of our ways is often the way we learn.  This can happen in school, on the job, in human relationships…even in writing and rewriting laws.  It’s said that much learning takes place in the College of Hard Knocks.  Is there some hard lesson life has taught you when you weren’t in school?  ;-)  Jack 

FROM JU IN NC:  Much of learning involves unlearning.===JACK:  I've found that it's not so much--"unlearning"--as it iis the new learning pushing out some of the old.  Same thing, I guess===JU:  I agree.

FROM WILLMAR REV:  "for ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . ." is a very humbling realization for those of us brought up in church who feel we might be better than others (Luke 18:9-14)!?!? I'm still learning of my many shortcomings and I'm very, very grateful of God's good grace towards and in my life!?!? 0;-/===JACK:  Does Satan ever get you to thinking that you're a little bit "above" the "lowest of the low" that you minister to?  Winning Words is not meant to be a confessional booth.  The words are just meant to help keep us humble.===REV:  "Winning Words" is an excellent way to start my mornings as you are always giving me questions to ponder . . . the timing of it comes right during the time of my devotions . . . currently studying the first chapters of Romans and was pondering another question when reading your post: What has Christ saved us from?  A room full of church folks would have similar answers as: "a broken marriage" - "an overwhelming addiction" -- "a bankrupt life of sorts" -- etc . . . and all would be correct, but the true answer we must never forget, "from the wrath to come" (1 Thessalonians 1:10) . . . this is what I heard this morning from my pre-devotions before reading "Winning Words" . . . you asked the question, and I answered the first thing that came to my mind! I was thinking solely of my own life and what I had gleamed from my Biblical truth this morning. 0;-)===JACK:  One of the thing I like about our relationship is that we can each come from a different way of teaching the Bible and understanding it...and yet arrive at the same truth: Jesus is Lord.  I so appreciate the way that you make the Bible come alive for the people you minister to.  

FROM SHARIN' SHARON:  This quote is so true.  I think I am dealing with some kind of hard lesson trying to do Bible studies with others.  It has to do with this higher criticism which people learn and which evidently disproves a bunch of stuff in the scriptures.  Then I get some commentaries from amazon questioning the credibility of higher criticism, written by Professors in the Old Testament at Princeton and everything.  The problem is, when people discuss, if we all haven’t had the same training and background, people can pigeon-hole others either for naively accepting the scriptures or being sceptical of the veracity of the scriptures and particularly, I believe, what is impacted is the supernatural viewpoint in the scriptures, the witness to miracles and so forth and so on.  This stuff doesn’t happen in school, logic and reason reign, but it happens all during living and certain teachings make it more difficult to deal with God’s ways of doing things in this world.  I still enjoy reading Luther’s commentaries though and find some solace in his thinking and reflecting.===JACK:  In the study of the Bible, many of too the words literally.  That's all we knew.  We knew little about figurative speech and the history of the times that was in other books.  "Higher criticism" does not necessarily mean "being critical" of the Bible.  It means that there is more to the story which enhances the message.  Someone who didn't like new translations of the Bible said, "If the King James Version of the Bible was good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me.  In Bible days it was believed that the earth was flat, and the Bible was written with that in mind.  Heaven was up, and Hell was down.  That doesn't mean that the Bible was wrong.  It means that there's more to the story.  The basic truth remains.  No one has all of the answers, but the Bible helps us to better understand God and our relationship to Him.

 

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