Have you experienced someone’s words blessing you at just the right time you needed it? “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24 NIV).
What a gift God’s own words are to his children! He blesses us with his wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and perspective. With anything we are going through, we can hear from the Lord what we need by reading and meditating on his Word.
When we do not feel challenged by our society to stand for Christ, it is too easy to sit with them and become complacent. We forget whose we are. Take a moment to listen to and read the lyrics of “The Word” by Sara Groves, a song which poetically describes what we can be too quick to do with God’s Word.
We can learn so much from persecuted Christians about the value of having God’s Word. In The Voice of the Martyrs April 2023 ‘Bibles’ issue, we learn about believers in remote villages of India (ranked 11/50 on the World Watch List of countries hostile to Christians) who walked 25 miles to receive their own copy of God’s Word! Is your own Bible within arm’s reach? Are you eager to read from it each day?
In the article, an Indian pastor reports, “Sometimes the pastor is the only person with a Bible… They just keep in their heart what they heard from the pastor, and the whole week they survive on that Word. They need to wait for another Sunday to hear the Word of God again” (p. 8). Do you meditate on the Word of God that you hear and read? Do you attend church eager to worship and learn teachings from God’s Word?
The article continues, “while persecutors may try to prevent Christians in India from receiving physical Bibles, Christians ‘can keep [the Bible] in their hearts’” (p. 9). How are you doing at hiding God’s Word in your heart? Do you have it at the ready to use throughout your day?
As our own culture becomes more antagonistic toward the gospel of Jesus Christ, let’s take a stand for God’s truths and have his words close at hand. There is present and eternal value for us personally in God’s Word!