What God Has Made is Good

Reading through Acts 11:1-18 today, a section of scripture I have read many times before, I realized I never really read it.  I only looked to it for justification for eating what food I wanted.  As I read and made some notes to myself I kept coming up with new questions.  Questions like:

Do I use this scripture correctly in my interactions with others?

Do I focus on being able to eat whatever I want and not on being led by the Holy Spirit?

Do I use it to justify myself or to uphold what God has established?

I really don/t like these challenging questions.  I would much rather think that I have it all figured out and just go forward from there.  I like the idea that I do everything right but the reality is that I rarely do anything perfectly.  I took apart these questions in my own heart and began to digest the bitter pill that they are for me.  I am praying about them and trying to answer them in my own way for my own better understanding.  So far this is what I understand or don’t understand.

I try very hard to use all scripture in the proper context and to look at it from the beginning to the end as a complete thought not a patch work of ideas stuck together.  However, at this I do fail from time to time and fall into what is easy and not go the distance to make a complete understanding of what I have read. 

I do focus this set of scripture toward eating whatever I want even though that is not what it is teaching at all.  I hardly even recognized the Holy Spirit was so involved in this section of scripture before and that God might be saying something more than what is made by God is clean.

I don’t think I have ever used it to justify God only to uphold my own justification.  I am not sure that I ever looked at it as anything other than a justification for eating food.

As I pull this apart in my own life and pray about it I ask you to do the same.  Is there a verse or section of verses that you use for your own justification and not the upholding of who God is?  I challenge you to look for that scripture which you use the most and see if you are using it not only in context but to hold up God, raising Jesus up for His glory?  I pray that we can all do this for our betterment and closer walk to our Lord and Savior Jesus.