I just sat on my couch in Snyder, TX, USA and watched a live (and powerful) sermon streamed over YouTube from Australia. I got to watch and hear the same message preached that my brothers and sisters in Christ are hearing on the other side of the world at the same time they were hearing it. What a time we live in that the Word of God can be transmitted in such a way.
And yet it worries me that we don’t take the Word of God as seriously as we should. We have more opportunity to interact with the Word than any other time in human history. Our access to Scripture is unprecedented, the resources we have to study Scripture and access to quality teaching us seemingly unending. And I think therein lies the problem.
Can you imagine living in a world where every sermon you ever heard was in a language you didn’t understand? And there was no copy of the Bible in your own language? I’m reading a biography on William Tyndale and it’s reminding me of the immense blessing God has given us through having the Bible in our own native language. Tyndale died because he dared to translate the Bible into English, and yet we often find it a bother to carry a Bible around. It’s “inconvenient.”
Can you imagine for the first time in your life hearing these words in your own language for the first time:
“For God so loved the world that he hath given his only son that none that believe in him should perish, but should have everlasting life.” (Tyndale New Testament)
Friends, don’t ever let interacting with the Word of God become routine. Don’t ever let it become so “common” that we don’t take it seriously. About 10 hours from now I’ll gather with brothers and sisters and we’ll open God’s Word once again. I pray you do the same, wherever you are, whatever is going on in your life. I pray you stop and open God’s Word again with the same excitement and passion as if you were hearing it for the very first time. Because for some of you reading this, the Word just might come alive as though it were the very first time.
May God bless you as you gather with the saints and as you dwell in His Word.
That is great brother