Today's writing won't match the title at all.

Sometimes you will read or hear something that just doesn't make sense to you. Those are times that it will be easy for you to know to ask God whether you should believe what you are encountering, (even if it is from an otherwise trustworthy source). That is because we only have one totally trustworthy source of truth - God's word. Sometimes we might get a “tickle” in the back of our mind that suggests something might not be right about what we read or hear. Even then, it is fairly easy to know that we should seek God's counsel and, through prayer and the Holy Spirit, discern the truth of a matter. We may even need to seek the counsel of a Christian friend or mentor if God wants us to continue pursuing the truth of an issue. Sometimes when we hear words that specifically reflect the truth found in God's word, we are easily able to find peace and know that we can rely on and trust those words for application in our life.

The hardest times to know when to ask God for council on the truth of what we hear is when we are hearing “what we want to hear,” or “don't want to hear.” Because what we want to hear “sounds right” so, we don't feel like we need to ask God about it. But I imagine Eve “felt” hungry when the serpent told her what she “wanted to hear” about how the fruit looked good to eat, so she didn't give a second thought to asking God whether it was correct, or even her husband. Because it was what she wanted to hear, and it felt right. If David had failed to consider what God desired when he heard what probably “sounded right” as he came upon the sleeping King Saul who had been pursuing David to slay him, he would have listened to his servant Abishai who said, “Let's kill him while he sleeps.” Instead, David responded to Abishai in 1 Samuel 26:9 “don't destroy him, for who can lift a hand against the LORD's anointed and be innocent?”

Other times we don't want to hear something, so it sounds wrong in our ears, and we choose not to ask God about it. Pharaoh didn't want to hear Moses declare from God to let His people go. The Israelites didn't want to hear the prophets of God telling them to stop marrying wives from foreign lands who worshipped false gods. The spies who entered the Promised Land didn't want to believe they could conquer it because they had seen giants (Nephilim) in the land, and they (the Jews) were like grasshoppers before them (Numbers 13:31-33). So, they “didn't want to hear” Joshua and Caleb tell them that they could conquer Canaan, “don't be afraid of the people of the land, for we will devour them. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us. Don't be afraid of them!” (Numbers 14:9). They “didn't want to hear that” after the initial report (of giants in the land), and it sounded so wrong, that instead of asking God, or consulting Moses, the whole community threatened to stone them (v.10). The results of these examples were, plagues and drowning in the Red Sea, conquer at the hands of the Assyrians and later the Babylonians, and 40 years of wandering in the desert until the Israelites determined that they should have trusted God.

There are times that it is obvious to us that the Holy Spirit is leading us in one direction or another, and hopefully during those times it is easy for us to listen and be obedient. There are other times when it is obvious that what we hear doesn't have the Scriptural foundation for us to trust it without first asking God and seeking His truth in the Bible. We must be especially careful when our own desires are brought into the voices we hear or words we read. (I want to hear it – it feels right, I don’t want to hear it – it doesn’t feel right). Because it is then that we are less inclined to ask God where He is in the messages we should be receiving.

The prompting for this thought today was that devotion from Day 75 of the Munroe book isn't based on the scriptures it references, nor could I consider any of my personal experiences as remotely assignable to the gender-based norms he ascribes. This wasn't like other devotions of his previously in the book where he went in the wrong direction or took a passage out of context. This was more like he started rambling conjecture without presenting a legitimate foundation. Therefore, the above response was inspired.