Holding onto God's Word

8/2/1997

What God wants to do with us is to deepen us. It’s not like God wants to show us new things all the time and somehow the Christian life is a matter of learning all the things that there are to know and then you are done. I really think that one of the keys to living a very productive, fruitful, valuable life in God’s sight is a matter of not having to know a lot of things. It is a matter of putting into practice and having a depth of understanding of even just a couple of things. You can go very, very far with just a few truths if you really take them to heart and apply them to your life. For example: the law of sowing and reaping. If you really understand that, if it’s really taken hold of your heart and somehow it’s renewed your mind to the extent that you can see situations, you can see opportunities and you can grab them, grasp them with your heart because you’ve learned something very deeply inside, you have an appreciation for when someone opens up a book and you realize that what’s about to happen is an opportunity for good seed to be sown into my life that can ultimately produce a crop.

The thing that struck me most was the illustration of God gave Isaac and then sort of asked for him back. So it’s possible for God to give a gift and then to ask for it back. That probably isn’t the way most of us think, “Well this is God’s gift, He gave it to me, and so I can enjoy it forever.” Well, maybe not. That’s not the way it was with Isaac. That’s a seed. That’s something valuable that we can put into our lives. God has a way of bringing up circumstances, practical situations to teach us these things, not just in a setting where we can learn the concepts, but in real life when we have the opportunity to put them into practice. You don’t have to know lot of things.

View things as coming from God’s hands, somehow see past the seen world into the unseen world. Know that the events in our lives are authored by God and He knows best. We can join Him in this life, we can embrace the things that come into our life, and we can be changed and approach everything with an attitude of faith. If we do that, it will change our lives. It will incredibly change our lives as we more and more apply that principal and find God in these things and know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and who have been called according to his purpose. We’ve all heard that. We know it’s true. But to what extent on a daily basis, with sticky, difficult situations do we continually put that into practice? I felt like I’ve been missing it. I’ve known these things in my mind, but I haven’t really been living in them.

I think that’s so much of what God wants to do, is to bring about a depth of understanding of some of the concepts that we already know. That we would really understand in a very deep way what these things are all about. And the power of these - just one little thought, one sentence that “God works all things together for good for those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose.” If that was the only thing you ever knew, you could go very, very far with that. It needs to be filled out, but that by itself just has a profound power if we really believe that from the heart, if we trust God and the faith that should inspire that if God is for me, who could be against me? If God is for me, and there are some difficult things to deal with in life, but if I believe that God is behind them and in control, and there is a way to walk through this in faith and there is a way to walk through this where I can honor God and please Him and God meets us there and somehow He is able to change us as we become soft and the potter works the clay, He creates something very special and beautiful that can bless the nations.

It’s an amazing thing, the power of a person who believes the Word of God by faith and will approach with an attitude of faith the real live, everyday practical situations of life. As he approaches those things, as he applies the Word of God that is how lives are changed. That’s how spiritual fortunes are made, so to speak, where you can become rich spiritually, and be able to give out of the overflow of what God has given you. It is just a matter of applying the Word of God and recognizing the seeds that come, recognizing, just being able to see past the here and now and being able to see past this thing in the seen world, this irritation, this difficulty, this whatever that isn’t particularly pleasant, and instead of just viewing it as a nuisance or irritation to say, “This is from God and I want to find God in this and I’m going to approach it with an attitude of faith and I believe God will work good out of this somehow or other. I don’t know how and I can’t see exactly why, but God is God and God never lies. This is what He said so it must be true.”

Do you see the power of that? Do you see how that could change your life? Do you see how there is power and strength and that something of Christ is breathed into that, and when you are living that way and when your life is full in that sense, it has an impact on other people as well. It rubs off. It can get contagious. It’s a marvelous thing. I was struck all over again by the power of the seed of the Word of God that is received into the heart, if the heart is soft, and the soil is good that is accepted by faith, that is heard, retained, persevered in, it will produce a marvelous, marvelous crop in our lives. And it’s not a matter of being so intelligent and learning all the different truths -- there are so many truths of God. It really isn’t a matter of that, but to be productive and useful and alive to God and dead to yourself it requires that attitude of faith. It requires some other things too, like repentance from acts that lead to death, and cleaning up your life and making things right and paying the price of humility. You can’t short-circuit any of those things. There are no shortcuts to being filled with the life of God. But if you take care of those things and if you will reach out in faith and believe that those things are true and renew your mind and slap yourself on the head and say, “No, I’m not going to believe that way, these thoughts, this path that I am beginning to walk down is not true. It is not true that this is bad and going to get worse. It is not true that... I refuse to believe those things. Instead I chose to believe what God said, because God doesn’t lie. The grass withers, the flowers fall, the situations come and go, the pain comes and goes, but the Word of God stands forever. Those words were written thousands of years ago. It has this power and it hasn’t ever changed.

When they buried pharaohs, they buried them with all sorts of things, including grain. Some of the grain that was buried with them thousands of years ago actually germinated later. The seed still had the life in it, even though it was thousands of years old it was able to spring to life again. The Word of God that was spoken by Abraham, by Moses, by Isaiah, by Jeremiah, by Daniel thousands of years ago still has that life. The things that we need to bring to bear to that are faith and a soft heart, and as we do that and God gives increase (God gets all the credit, of course) it brings life; it brings something that is special. It brings something that will last forever in our lives. It brings the eternal into our lives. And there is just no substitute for living that way. We need to renew our minds. We can’t just go on autopilot, get stuck in a rut. We don’t automatically live that way, renewing our minds. But left to ourselves, left without renewing our minds and left to our own devices, we won’t live that way. It requires some choices. It requires some encouragement. It requires some times where we can renew ourselves with the tremendous and wonderful truths of God. What we are talking about is the stuff of eternity. What we are talking about is the knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of heaven that have been given to us and that will change our lives and produce something that is eternally valuable in our lives that will enable us to provide gifts to God that can ultimately change the world. It’s putting into practice the Word of God. It has an amazingly enormous power.

I want to approach all things with a healthy respect and awe. I have gotten into the mindset where “Wow, look at all this to read,” and you start skimming over it. This stuff is valuable, very potent. This has the ability to change our lives. The word of God lasts forever. It has that innate power to it, but only if our hearts are soft, only if we are receiving it can it change who we are. It can change other peoples’ lives. It’s a remarkable, wonderful thing.