One of the most amazing things about God’s Word is that we can read it repeatedly throughout our whole lives and all at once a passage of scripture will become real to us in a way that it never has before. It’s the same book and the same words but now, because God’s Word is living and powerful, it is able to penetrate right to the core of our being and imprint itself on us in a way that moves and changes us. And the more time we spend in God’s Word and the more we focus on studying it the more God reveals himself to us in it.
From my own experience, when this happens it does several things. First, it gets me excited. It produces joy and encouragement and a lot of positive energy. It makes me want to take what I have just internalized and ponder over how good and amazing it is and out of that I offer praise to the Lord. And this is not a hard praise that I have to wrestle out against the will of my flesh but a natural, free-flowing praise based on God’s revelation and goodness to me.
Secondly, I want to share it with someone. I want to encourage others with the good news of God’s Word and tell what I have learned and experienced. I want God’s Word to become real to someone else the same way that it became real to me because I know that if it does, they will want to do the same and so it goes and the process can be repeated for the benefit of many.
But the opposite is also true. When we aren’t studying God’s Word and we aren’t making it a priority then we are missing opportunities for growth and for blessing others. Our neglect not only causes us to miss out on chances for God’s Word to become real it also removes that impetus to share and encourage someone else. In that sense our focus, or lack of, can either start a very positive chain reaction of encouragement and excitement or can completely block what God is trying to do in us and through us. It’s that serious.
To conclude, I want to share a few verses of scripture that God caused to be very real to me this week. They are familiar but so powerful and I pray that they would become as real and as amazing to you as they are to me.
For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, 10 and you have been filled by Him, who is the head over every ruler and authority. 11 You were also circumcised in Him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of the Messiah. 12 Having been buried with Him in baptism, you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses. 14 He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; He triumphed over them by Him. Colossians 2:9-15 (HCSB)
In salvation, God takes our entire sin debt, with all of its obligations and penalty of death, and nails it to the cross of Christ. There it is covered with the blood of Jesus and it is erased forever! What does that mean to you? Every day I learn more about what it means to me and I look forward to the completion of that knowledge one day when I meet my Savior.