Romans 12:9 Reads; “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. (ESV)”
My two sons are now grown and even serving in the profession of law-enforcement. When they were in school they combined two projects from school assignments in which their collaborative creativity produced a counterfeit, duplicated dollar bill. They not only created it by using techniques from art class they had aged it, by getting it wet and drying it, and passed it on to me for inspection.
To my surprise, believing that it was real, recognize there humorous trick when they giggled as they told me that it was counterfeit currency. I was shocked!
I took it from them and told them that this was wrong and even took the dollar bill to a friend of mine who retired from the Secret Service. Even more amazing was that he identified it quickly as a counterfeit without even looking at it but from how it felt in his hand.
Eventually my sons learned a valuable lesson as the retired Secret Service friend took the boys aside one Sunday morning after church and basically scared them enough to which they never tried that again.
My friend, the retired Secret Service agent said that he learned to identify counterfeit money by studying the characteristics of real currency. He told me that in all of his training they are taught to study what is real, not what is counterfeit.
In our lives we too must study what is true to avoid the counterfeit in our spiritual lives. A valuable lesson my boys learned we too can learn as we study the truth of God’s Word in order to have an authentic and genuine relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
First John 1:5 reminds us that God is pure light, in him there is no darkness. For you and for me, it’s important to recognize that in Christ, we too are a reflection of the hope we have through God‘s love for us. As we live out a genuine faith through Jesus Christ, be reminded that in Christ there is no amount of artificial light that will ever replace the glory of the true light that is in Christ Jesus and through His Word, we can reflect His light.
In order to know the truth of God’s Word begin by memorizing scripture this week and in weeks to come.
