Hebrews 4:12-13 (MSG) - “God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it-no matter what.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (MSG) - “There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another-showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.”
We end this week with the powerful ‘workings’ of the Word in our lives. The transforming power of God’s Word works like a scalpel in the areas of our lives that need masterfully cut away. Only the careful hand of the Master Surgeon (our Lord) can perfectly cut through the things that have hindered, marred, and maimed our lives and relationship with God and His people. As a patient spends time in an operation so that they can get well or live more fully, we also are invited to spend time in God’s Word daily, under the careful surgical hand of the Holy Spirit revealing, cutting free, and healing our lives.
And like a breath of fresh air, God’s Word will bring us to life and continue to strengthen us in all that ways that help us become more and more like Jesus. The Word will show us that ‘bad air’ of our rebelliousness, it will exhaust the mistakes, and pump in all that we need to live more true and faithful to the wonderful things he has planned for us. Our life depends on God’s Word.
We all have a calling to live fully, passionately, and faithfully for the Lord. We all have the calling to love and lay our lives down for others to know Jesus. The Word is a grace-filled means to all of this happening in our lives. Today let’s thank the Lord for giving us the Word so that we can know Him better and be powerfully transformed into the likeness of Jesus. And let’s pray that we will be ’students of the Word,’ ‘lovers of God and His Word,’ and ‘witnesses and proclaimers’ of this wonderful Word that brings us into relationship with God and life (awesome life) forever and ever.
Now, joyfully, go live the Word out in the power of the Holy Spirit…and love like Jesus has loved us.
-TR
