Good Morning Hearers and Doers of the Word! As we grow and fall more in love with God's Living Word we are led and changed. As we abide in the Living Word we are trained in righteousness and empowered to follow the examples of Jesus and other devout mean and woman that followed Him well. Amen.
Check out and meditate on 2 Timothy 3:14-16 from Our Daily Bread today. Something that God highlighted is a Word for many of us...verse 15: "It is from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures." That is the truth for many of us, including me. We grew up in church and learning our Bibles. The power comes when we move from being more than just hearers but doers of those Truths. God's Word is powerful and cuts to the marrow. And as we respond to what the Holy Spirit highlights as we spend time in the Word, we are changed. We are convicted and moved to repent. We become active doers of the Word we know. How's that going for you? Let's continue to work at abiding in and doing what God reveals through His Word. May we also look for the next generations to teach and help to ingest and bring alive God's Word in their lives. Yes, we are more than just hearers. We are doers of what God reveals through His Word. Let's focus on that as we move to come alive in '25 and find some friends to study with, pray in power through and live out His Living Word! It is active! Is it active in you? Thank God for His Living Word. Thank the Holy Spirit for bringing it alive. Ask to become more than just a hearer of it! Then go and live and love as we follow the example of Jesus and other children of God. Amen!
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How important is the Bible? It’s so vital that people in many countries risk their lives to translate it into their native languages. Often, these are ordinary believers in Jesus who face arrest for translating the words of Scripture into a heart language others can understand.
One female translator from a country hostile to believers in Jesus said, “I must complete this work. I want to see my beloved ones experience salvation in Christ.” And a man who organizes regular citizens to clandestinely translate Scripture explains that the Bible is essential to growing mature believers in local churches: “You can start a church, but . . . [without] the Bible in its heart language, it will typically only last one generation.”
Why are they doing this? Because there’s no other book like the Bible. Its preservation through the centuries is unique. Its authenticity and its representation of the human heart is accurate. It’s “alive and active . . . [and] judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). And “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), inspired by Him. And most important, it reveals the source and reality of “salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 15).
Let’s read, cherish, and live by the Scriptures. And as God provides, let’s help those around the world receive it and understand it.
By Dave Branon
REFLECT & PRAY
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What’s your favorite aspect of the Bible? How can you help others understand it better?
Dear God, thank You for the Scriptures and for the privilege of sharing them with others.
For further study, read The Hard Task of Reading Well.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
The inspiration of the Scriptures is an astonishing concept to consider. God, in His matchless wisdom, breathed out the words of the Bible by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16-17; see Matthew 22:43) while utilizing the personalities, experiences, and even vocabularies of the individual writers. Over a span of about fifteen hundred years, God used forty different writers to produce a book that has a single and clearly coherent message: God’s love and rescue of His lost and broken creation. More specifically, that message focuses on the rescuer, Jesus Himself. The Old Testament points to and prepares the way for Him, and the New Testament explains His person and work. The Bible is so much more than a collection of sixty-six random books of religious history. It’s a cohesive message of redeeming grace, accomplished through Christ.
Discover the full story of the Bible.
Bill Crowder |
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