I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Hebrews 12-13.

The writer tells us that God will discipline us because He loves us. As we go through life, some of the suffering we experience will be in order for us to learn to follow God’s will more closely. There will come times in our lives when we are less faithful than we should be, at those times we will experience God’s discipline in order to learn the value of being more faithful. At those times, and at all others, we must be careful to listen to what God says to us. And, in order to decide whether the voice we are listening to is that of God, we must keep in mind that Jesus does not change. He is the same today as He was yesterday and as He will be tomorrow. So, when someone comes along with a new, novel teaching which contradicts what the Church has taught since its beginning, you know that they are not speaking words which God gave them. This does not mean that all of the teachings of the Church today are God’s word. The easy way to determine if what sounds like a new teaching is God’s word, or some man’s, is to read your Bible and try to imagine Paul, or one of the other writers, including that thought in what they wrote. If you cannot imagine that, then the teaching is not the word of God.