You guys ever hear of the party game called “Mad Gab”? You get these cards that have words on them that appear to be jibberish when you read them AS WRITTEN . …but you read them anyway and LISTEN to what they’re actually saying. I think it’s God’s sense of humor coming through when he inspired whoever it was to invent the game. Because that’s so how God works!!
Eye mull of mashing!!! A great example. Say this is a Pastor’s sermon for the day. “Thus saith the Lord . . .EYE MULL OF MASHING!!!” So the preacher sits down . .eyes all scrunched up . . .“Eye mull of mashing?? What the heck am I supposed to do with a message like that?” And he does what we all do . . he breaks it down. “Eye” . .well, we all know that God’s watchful eye is always upon us. This must mean that God is telling us that he’s been watching us! That’ll preach.
Eye . . MULL . . .hmm . . .mull . . .to ponder, to contemplate . . .God is watching and he’s contemplating. Contemplating what?? OF COURSE!! He’s watching us and he’s contemplating of mashing us!!! The day of judgment has come!!! And the more the pastor studies this, the more he convinces himself that God is giving him a stern warning to preach to others . . so the next Sunday comes, he gets on his pulpit and with all of the confidence in the world, he brings the message to the church. He pounds his fists, he get’s red in the face, he becomes emotional at trying to turn his church around to save them from the coming mashing . . .
When he’s finished stripping them down and the congregation is bug-eyed and bewildered . .even starting to quiver a bit. The preacher, in the middle of his full strut as he’s berating them . . .he hears God’s voice “Repeat to them what I told you.” and without missing a beat, the preacher prances up and down the platform "Eye mull of mashing!!! “Again” God says . . .“Eye mull of mashing!!!” Again!! EYE MULL OF MASHING!!! Then God says . . ."now listen to your own words from your heart!! And the preacher repeated it one more time and immediately froze. Then it dawned on him, the message was the exact same message, but when listened with his heart instead of his mind, the emphasis changed. It went from judgment to love . . .and the “EYE” became an “I” and the MULL wasn’t a mull at all . . .the “m” was actually still connected to the “eye” making it “I’m” the “u” in mull wasn’t a “u” at all either, it was an “a”. “I’M A . .” and the “l” in mull wasn’t the end of the word, it was the beginning of one. and of? It wasn’t “of” it was “ove” and with the L at the beginning . . .it became “I’M A LOVE . .” and the mashing? it wasn’t mashing at all . . . it was “machine”.
The exact same message that God gave him wasn’t about death, doom or gloom at all. it was about the infinity of God’s love. Instead of it saying “EYE MULL OF MASHING”. What God was actually saying was . . .“I’M A LOVE MACHINE”
Can you see how great the message changes once the emphasis is put in the correct order? So it is in how we intrepret Scripture. When we walk in the attitude of a slave master to others, our interpretation is one from a slave master position with the emphasis on what our identity is . . .a slave master. So we can easily take a passage that God was actually saying something entirely different because we’re not reading it from his perspective, we’re reading it from ours.
It is for this reason that I no longer walk with an attitude or assumption that I have an authority to bring correction to another brother. For all I know, what I “think” is correction to be given to another is actually an anouncment that the other is “in” correction already. So . . .I listen for the sound of life. If I feel life coming out of me into what I’m writing or saying, then I know God is using me to plant his seed of life in others. But if I’m bringing restriction or control . . . no matter how strong and offensive, or subtle and disarming . . .if life isn’t coming forth, my emphasis is all out of order and it will change the message of life every time.
