"For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword"
The Bible is the singular most powerful tangible thing on the surface of the earth. I say this not just because it is written (although this is also sufficient reason) but because I have experienced this power in my life. I have partaken of the transformational, demon-chasing, life-breathing power in the word of God. The Holy Spirit also bears witness that, “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Now, in my opinion, that is raw power!
But, introspectively, how many of us, children of God are truly experiencing this raw invincible power in the Word of God? How many of us can truly boast – neither religiously nor fanatically but rather experientially and out of a revelation – that the Bible is the word of God? Do you believe the Holy Scriptures in its entirety – every jot of it? As I pen down these words, my desire is to remind you of the sacrifice of the men who gave their lives to ensure that this book gets to us. Do we begin to speak of the early Apostles, who were martyred in the most gruesome ways or the Reformers who suffered great persecution just to have the Bible in the languages in which we read it today? If we do not show reference to this Word of God, then their labor will appear to have been in vain.
The Word of God and the Move of God
The state of God’s people at any point in time has always depended on their attitude towards His Word. If any people at any time have ever experienced a revival or glory rain of some sort, it is because they either saw a replica or promise of it in the word of God. There is no generation that has truly experienced a lasting move of God that didn’t place great value on the Word of God. The less regard we have for the word of God, the less of His move we experience in our lives. And because we do not see His hand, we are tempted to believe even less of His word and then we have a vicious unending cycle. But in order to escape this cycle, there are three important questions we must ask ourselves.
Do I Believe Every Word of God?
It is alright to have certain doubts about the Word of God but to live a life of doubts is no life at all. A Christian skeptic is no Christian at all. There is a certain conversation in the gospels that sheds a lot of light on this dilemma. A sick child’s father replies Jesus saying, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” The truth of this matter is that there is too much spiritual truth in the Word of God that our time on this earth will not permit all of it to be revealed to us. And this is why we must pray this same prayer as the man in that Bible verse. We cannot afford to cherry-pick the word of God. We have to believe every tad of it; the fall of man in the garden of Eden, the tower of Babel, Noah’s ark – all of it! They are not fairy tales. You see if a book tells me that I will receive a new heart sealed by the Holy Spirit if I believe in Jesus’s death and resurrection and I did verily, the tendency to believe every other word of it is insurmountably high. Therefore, I believe every word of the Bible because it is the only book I know which contains such indomitable spiritual power that manifests itself each time it is invoked.
Do I Preach the Word of God?
The calamity of our generation is that we are striving so hard to expel God and His word completely out of our society. The resulting situation is a ticking time-bomb – it will one day explode right before our eyes. Religion might have done us some harm but God’s not to be blamed for this. It is man’s greed and wanton desires that give rise to the plague that is “religion”. And the only cure for this precarious circumstance is the word of God – the message of Christ. This is why Christ’s final charge to us is to take this word to all the ends of the earth. Will you be found wanting in this?
Do I Live the Word of God?
It is highly commendable to believe and to preach the word of God but the most praiseworthy of them all is to live according to that which you have believed and preach. St. Francis of Assisi is believed to have said, “Preach Jesus, and if necessary use words.” James also admonishes us, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” May we not be as the man who forgets what kind of man he is! Amen!
