God’s Word: How Do You Relate to It?

How do you relate to God’s word? And I am not asking, “How do you read God’s word?” or even “How often do you read God’s word?” I asked how do you relate to it? Do you welcome God’s word? Do you let it have impact on you bringing to light things you had not considered? My concern as I think about God’s word is how we “treat” it and “relate to it.” Because I am often working with people in some sort of difficulty I often hear them say, “I just need to get into God’s word more,” as an answer to their pain. When we are hurting we want something to do to feel better. However, the answer more often than not to our pain is to digest more fully what God has already said.

Genesis records how sinful man first related to God. When God went looking for Adam and called out to him Adam replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked,” (Genesis 3:10, NLT). We often relate to God the same way. Instead, God’s word should help us move from Adam’s posture (naked and ashamed) to a posture where we are naked before God experiencing his acceptance and love. God’s word is a doorway back to that type of relationship with him.

In the book of Hebrews it is recorded, “So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall. For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable,” (4:11-13, NLT). Notice that the passage starts with the call to find rest and ends with us exposed and naked giving account to God. If we always relate to God like Adam did the chances are that we will not find rest in our nakedness. What is in between those two ideas (rest and accountability to God) is a Word that is alive, powerful, sharp, cutting and exposing. When we finally give account to the Lord we will not be describing were we went right and wrong like it is some kind of performance review. Instead, with gratefulness we will be connecting with Him over all he did for us and in us and how we were graced with participating in his coming kingdom. We will be talking with him about how Christ in us did more than we imagined. If we are going to relate to him like that when we see him than our relationship with him here and now ought to help us move in that direction. God’s word is the doorway into that reality and we must learn how to relate to it in a way where that kind of change is facilitated. In his love for us the Lord wants to keep moving toward us with grace and truth and therefore the message of the Bible is often like a good surprise party – it takes us out of our daily routine and interrupts settled beliefs we have about how good or bad we are. To let God’s word stir in our hearts we must become more receptive. For the word of God is alive and powerful. Too often we approach the Bible not to encounter God but to use him or to solve a problem in our life. This undermines its aliveness and power. If you always approached a friend that way what kind of friendship would it be? Consider for a second how you respond to a friend. Can you drink in a good compliment from a friend? If they say something hard to hear or that you don’t agree with can you contemplate and consider what they are saying? The scriptures note that if, “We don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see,” (1 John 4:20). To some degree how you relate to God and His word is exactly how you relate to those around you. Three times in the book of Hebrews prior to the mention of the passage about God’s word this refrain is recorded, “Today, if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts” (v. 3.7, 15; 4.7). Often when a word that is alive and powerful is moving toward us we harden. We have to grow in welcoming God’s word. Then when it disrupts our settled beliefs it is good to say, “Yes Lord I hear you!” Responding to an active word means learning to embrace its message when we hear it. In fact, I would suggest there is a correlation between our experience of Christian community and our experience of God’s word. There are three large ways God transforms us: through his word, the Spirit and Christian community. I have found that it is easy to confuse what God’s word and His Spirit are saying with our own agenda. We manipulate them. However, when we invite another believer to speak into our life they will often say things that surprise us. Christian community should help dislodge the “deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13) we all wrestle with. We often get stuck because we think we are worse than we are (shut down in condemnation) or rest too much in our own efforts (hardened through pride and self-reliance). Community should soften us up so the other ways God is speaking to us (through His word and Spirit) we can hear more clearly. As we learn to welcome the word it is good to vulnerably let it “work on us.” After noting that the word is alive it is recorded that the word is sharp and piercing. It works on us and cuts through the deception and rigidity that keeps us deadened. This is not a quick process. Let me give you an example.

Early in my Christian life I read this scripture, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:28-30). The 23 years prior to reading that I felt that everything rested on my shoulders. As a result, I became an extremely hard worker and loved being responsible and coming through for others. So when I read that verse it did not seem true to me. It was awkward to read it. From a distance, I accepted that it was true and decided that there must be something fragmented inside of me that made it hard for me to embrace its truth. That started a 20-year journey toward accepting all the beauty those scripture verses communicated. One early encounter on that journey occurred walking out of my 3rd quarter calculus class. It was another class where it seemed the professor was speaking Greek. I had no idea what he was teaching. I had this thought walking back to the barracks, “At least this helps me look to you God.” I had never had that thought because I was so self-reliant. I could tell you story after story about how the truth of that passage settled into my heart. Through the years as I awkwardly contemplated the meaning of that passage and tried to receive it, God’s word was cutting through many lies I believed and moving into deeper recesses in my heart. Try to imagine having surgery without anesthesia. That is how God’s word works on us. It cuts “between soul and spirit” and “exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.” As we welcome God’s word and let it work on us it begins to divide us from the lies and deceptions we believe that keep us from embracing God in love and worship. We often attach to lies in moments of pain when we are vulnerable so it really hurts when they are cut out. Instead of putting bandages over infected wounds, our encounter with God through his word needs to clean them out. We forget how slow and painful and beautiful sanctification can be. We often trade vulnerably chewing on things God has spoken to us for the excitement of gathering more information. Consider what the book of Hebrews records later after the passage on God’s word. “You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right (Hebrews 5:12-14, NLT). There is a huge difference between a baby suckling at a mother’s breast versus an adult eating a full course meal. We hinder our path of maturity in the Christian life when we stay in the stage of taking in refreshing information instead of participating in a full bodied encounter with God’s word where we are: contemplating, meditating, wrestling and digesting the word in a fuller more developed way. It is easy to hide behind acquiring information in a way that does not help us form in the Gospel. God’s word is alive and powerful. It is sharp and cuts. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. As we walk through the doorway of God’s word it humbly opens us up to God’s light and love as we let it reveal the deceptions and false comforts we have trusted. I hope as you think about God’s word it becomes more of an encounter with a person that wants to separate you from all that is not good so you can welcome and receive all that is.