There’s a new ‘buzz’ word.   We’ve heard it used recently by our four year old granddaughter.   Collaboration!   Not a new word as it’s derived from the Latin for ‘working together’.  The Berean Jews receive Paul and Silas with a genuine desire to give them a fair hearing.  Reports have been circulating, conflicting and confusing.  These noble Bereans receive Paul’s message with great eagerness.  But they also take everything Paul says with a ‘grain of salt’, checking it out, examining the Scriptures to ‘see if what Paul said was true’ (Acts 17: 11).  These people are not going to fall for any line that some new-guy coming to town would spin.  No,  they discuss, dispute and debate among themselves.    Kick around the ideas presented to them.  All the while turning to the Bible, the Old Testament,  for confirmation of what is true and what isn’t.

Where do we turn to for the truth?  On our own, we’re helpless.  Aimless and never quite sure.  We need the collaboration of the Lord,  with what He has given us in the Word of God.  I remember an old professor at the Moody Bible Institute, who taught in the pastoral studies department.  He was a part-time instructor and a retired pastor. Couldn’t be all bad if he was a retired pastor!!   He recommended to us what I never did in my ministry or life.   Nevertheless,  his idea was a good one!  Read your morning newspaper standing up.  What?  Yes, while standing on your two feet.   Who wants to do that?  Not me.  His thought was that we needed to spend less time in this world’s news so we that we had more time to spend in God’s Good News– like the Bereans did.

He was so right.  How can we collaborate with God?  Co-labor with Him?  Spend as much time as you can looking into the Bible so we can interact with all the messages, good and bad, that the world floods us with.  That’s collaboration.  Not an empty buzz word.    Checking out everything.  Check it out!

Prayer:  Lord, for your Word, which we trust and stand upon as on solid ground, we thank you.  It’s your gift to us….a rudder in stormy seas.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.