Funny Little Word

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Really?

So often it's the one and only word God speaks into my heart.
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It may be that I've said or done something that probably should have had more thought than I gave it at the time. Along comes the nudge: Really?
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Or it might happen that someone else says something that lands sideways in my knower - as if a bad case of indigestion. Again His prompt: Really?
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In fact, it occurred just the other day when I said something that I had put the spin of certainty to. Within moments that question - Really? - began to form. I knew at once I was standing on shakey ground and, quite possibly, had lead someone else there too.
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Odd how one seeminly innocuous word can send me scurrying along the ponder path. Most of the scurry is associated with something biblically related (typically something unsound or untrue), but it happens with the common, garden variety stuff as well.
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Merriam tells us that the word itself is an adverb, and it's uses vary...

• 1a : in reality, actually
• 1b: truly, unqestionably -used as an intensifier
• 2a: used to emphasize an assertion

When you add a question mark to any of those uses, the word becomes something altogether different - as if a challenge to the reality, the intensifier, or the assertion..

For the time will come when men

will not put up with sound doctrine.

Instead, to suit their own desires,

they will gather around them a great

number of teachers to say what their

itching ears want to hear. They will

turn their ears away from the truth

and turn aside to myths.

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But you, keep your head in all situations ...

2 Timothy 4:3-5 .
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In everything set them an example

by doing what is good. In your teaching

show integrity, seriousness and soundness

of speech that cannot be condemned, so

that those who oppose you may be ashamed

because they have nothing

bad to say about us.

Titus 2:7-8

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God's mysterious ways never cease to amaze or baffle me. The holy, all-powerful Sovereign ... the profoundly majestic Creator ... the love-driven Savior ... comes near and resides in my very being - your very being. Incredible! But that He does so in such an intimate, personal way is beyond the beyond - - and that for my protection! . .

I tell you that men will have to give account

for every careless word they have spoken.

For by your words you will be acquitted,

and by your words you will be condemned.

Matthew 25:36-37

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Words mean much to THE Word, which is why I listen closely when a question mark follows His Really? ... I know then that truth has somehow been compromised (whether intentionally or unintentionally - by me or anyone else), and it's time to sift.
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In those moments I know the foundation and walls of discernment are being fortified. I also find it interesting that the enemy would use the same word to cast doubt on truth, while God uses it to expose untruth. Really!
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