Personal, habitual Bible reading saved my life. During a long space of my teenage years I relied on the euphoria of meetings (that meaning the emotional experience that comes from attending church), and the attraction of the “youth group” social atmosphere to keep me from falling. Personal Bible reading was a practice, but it was not habitual, and it did not influence my life. Please let me pause for just a moment and say that I am not against church or the gathering of youth, only that like Martha, when you begin to put secondary things primary……problems arise. Blessings and emotion that come from attending church are the byproduct of a strong spiritual experience, but not the very experience itself. Likewise, the social experience that comes with spending time with your brothers and sisters in the faith is beneficial to your walk with God (I believe); however it is not the bread that will sustain the spiritual man. Due to the fact that meetings and “hanging-out” were the pillars that supported my house of cards, I frequented both, testifying and preaching not to save the lost, but because it was “what we did”. However, if you could x-ray my spiritual man you would find a heart that burned with but a little flame……So, why am I bringing this up?
I believe that many Christians today are in this same condition. Salvation is not in the social, nor is it divorced from it. What brings about solid soldiers for the cause of Christ is…..no surprise here, a commitment to God’s Word; a commitment to taking time for it, to studying it, and to living it. If this is done, I believe it will “iron out” a lot of the fringe issues that plague the Church- i.e. church attendance, relationship incompetence, gossip, clicks, church participation, decline in evangelism, watered down preaching, pride, politics, etc. Not only that, it will do more for the Church than we probably can imagine. The Word of God saved my life; and the lives of countless others. The Word strengthens the inner man, the inner man is the individual, and the individual is the Church. If your inner man is strong, the Church is strong, if you’re inner man is weak, the church is weak. “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.” (Matthew: 24-25)
How do we hear God? We hear him through the Word (among other avenues). Jesus was the Word and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He was the messenger when we hear him, we hear God. He speaks the will of the Father; through the vehicle of the Holy Ghost, and when you get the Holy Ghost inside it will open the scriptures to you and teach you all things (1 John 2:27). But we have to read them, we have to hear them, we have to do them; or the house will not stand. So I ask you, as I ask myself: What are we emphasizing in our own lives? What are we standing on? What are we stressing to those that come behind us? Not with our words, but with our lives.
Jesus said:
“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” John 6:63
The Word of God saved my life.
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