When You've Been Wrong About Something Important

In the late 1960s, a teenager in Mobile, Alabama,

decided he knew exactly what God wanted, and what God wanted was

a fight. His name was Tom Terrence. The South was in an

upheaval over desegregation, and Tom was angry and looking for

somewhere to put that anger. He found it in the literature

passing around his high school, the pamphlets about a secret

plot to destroy the white Christian America he thought he

was defending. He met the man behind those ideas, and before

long, he had joined the white knights of the Ku Klux Klan,

which the FBI called the most violent terrorist group in the

country. In his mind, he wasn't a He was a soldier doing the

Lord's work, and the people he hated, black Americans and Jews

alike, were the enemy. By 1969, Tom was one of the most wanted

men in Mississippi, and late one summer he pulled up outside the

home of a Jewish businessman in Meridian with a bomb, certain he

was right where God wanted him. The police were waiting. There

was a shootout. Tom was hit four times at close range, nearly

killed, and hauled off to Parchman Prison with a 30-year

sentence. And here's the thing. Even then, bleeding and caught,

he wasn't sorry. He was still sure. So how does a man that

certain ever come to that he had it all backward?

Welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Léger. If

you've recently discovered you were wrong about something you

were sure of, there's a strange grace hiding in that. And I'll

tell you where I stand. I've been a Christian for 56 years.

For much of it, I held some things simply because I'd been

taught them. And then I started reading the Bible as if for the

first time, and some truths leaped off the page, making me

rethink what I'd believed for years. It left me humbled. And

there are things I'm sure of today that I'll get to heaven

and probably find out I didn't have quite right. And that keeps

me teachable. The one thing none of us can afford to be wrong,

though, is about the gospel. That we're saved by grace,

through faith, alone in Jesus Christ. You can't afford to get

that wrong. Your eternity depends on it. There comes a

point in most thinking Christians' lives when you

realized you were wrong about something you were certain of. A

position you'd defended for years. The discovery can make it

feel like the earth is shaking beneath you. It isn't only that

one belief that shifts. Suddenly, you're aware that if you were

sure and that you were wrong here, you might be wrong about

things you've never questioned. The most famous is in Scripture.

Saul was so certain he was serving God that he was hunting

down Christians and dragging them off in chains. Listen to

Acts 9, verses 1 through 9. Meanwhile, Saul was uttering

threats with every breath and eager to kill the Lord's

followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested

letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus asking

for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the

way he found there. He wanted to bring them, both men and men,

back to Jerusalem in chains. As he was approaching Damascus on

this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down

around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying

to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who are you,

Lord? Saul And the voice replied, I am Jesus, the one whom you are

persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be

told what you must do. men with Saul stood speechless, for they

heard the sound of someone's voice, but saw no one. Saul

picked himself up off the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he

was blind. So his companions led him by the hand to Damascus.

blind for three days and did not eat or drink. Look at how Saul

was turned around. He didn't reason his way to it. He was not

flat and made to see what he'd refused to see. And I believe

that was a mercy. That was God's mercy on the Apostle Paul. He

was sincerely, religiously wrong and certain that the harm he was

doing to the followers of Jesus was holy. And the most loving

thing God could do was stop him cold. For someone who loves

truth more than being right, the moment you see your error is a

door, the light shining into a room you'd kept locked up. The

people who keep growing hold their certainties with an open

hand, sure of Christ and humble about the rest. The change in

Tom Terrence didn't come in a courtroom or the hospital. It

came later, after a failed escape landed him alone in a

six-by-nine-foot cell with nothing to do but read. Tom read

everything, and eventually he picked up the Bible, the book he

thought had been on his side all along. Reading it again, he met

a Jesus he had never paid attention to, one who told him

to love the very people he had spent his life hating. The

certainty he had carried like a weapon finally cracked, and the

hatred started to fall away. The man who left that prison eight

years later went on to co-pastor a church of the very people he

once called enemies. It's the oldest pattern of grace there is.

On the road to Damascus, Saul was breathing out threats,

certain he was doing God's work as he hunted down Christians,

until a light put him flat on the ground and a voice asked,

Why are you persecuting me? Being knocked down was the most

merciful thing that could have happened to him. Sometimes, the

kindest thing God does is stops us dead in our tracks and let us

see, finally, that we're wrong. Here's today's challenge. Think

of one thing. Think of one belief you hold to tightly.

Maybe one of the tertiary, what we call the tertiary beliefs.

Then, ask God a brave question. Lord, is there anything here

I've gotten wrong? Open the scriptures and read the relevant

parts slowly, as if, for the first time, willing to be

corrected. on Christ, only on your certainty so that his truth

can teach you and allow the Holy Spirit to bring things into the

light of day. Father, thank you that you love us too much to

leave us comfortable in our errors and that your correction,

even when it knocks us flat, is really mercy. Give us the

humility to want to be right with you more than to feel right.

Keep us anchored in the gospel of your grace and teachable

about everything else. Open the rooms we've kept locked and let

your light in. In Jesus' name, amen. This podcast runs on the

generosity of listeners just like you. If Daily Devotions for

Busy Lives has encouraged you, would you consider supporting it

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support. Thank you so much. And thanks for joining me on Daily

Devotions for Busy Lives. Remember, being wrong and

finally seeing it as one of the doors God walks through. Come

back next time for more encouragement to help you live

grounded in God's truth. Until then, God bless and have a great

day.