Seeing Something You Haven't Before in Scripture

 It's easy to become familiar with a part of a verse or passage in Scripture - especially when it speaks to something in your life at a time when you read it. We reference either the exact words or the concept regularly. This is a good thing, but it can also mean with miss things sometimes.

My attention recently turned to a verse that I'm quite familiar with. As I read the whole verse, I was actually a bit surprised to discover that two truths I often quote were in the same verse. And linking together gave a fuller understanding of both.

I know I've read this verse many times all together in the past, But, this time I noticed something I hadn't before. I love how there's always more to learn, even when we go back to a familiar passage.

Hebrews 13:5 says:

"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you'."

In conversations about money and possessions the first half of the verse if often mentioned. We use it to remind ourselves that loving money is a problem. That we need to learn to be content with what we have.

We take comfort in the second half as a reminder that God never leaves. That He is always with us - no matter what we're going through.

All of that is good and true and helpful for our lives. As I read this verse recently, it was the word in between these two parts that caught my eye:

BECAUSE

That word links these together.

Because God is never going to leave us or forsake us, we can be content with what we have.

Because God is never going to leave us or forsake us, we don't need to love money.

We can be content with what we have because God is never going to leave us or forsake us.

We don't need to love money because God is never going to leave us or forsake us.

Yes, I know I said the same thing twice there. When we've separated two things for so long, I think we sometimes need the repetition to get it to sink in.

When the writer of Hebrews put the word "because" here, they did it intentionally and we need to take notice.