Sermon Central
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Harnessing The Power Of The Word Of God In Your Life
Contributed by Jim Butcher on May 4, 2004 (message contributor)
Summary: This sermon shares 5 steps toward more fully experiencing the power of God’s Word in your daily life.
- for too many, the Bible ends up being a coffee table decoration, but not something that is a powerful force in their daily life.
- v. 12a - “powerful” - the Word of God is powerful.
- I struggled at the beginning in writing this message about the power of the Word because I was looking more toward what the specific power is that it brings into your life/asked for God’s help.
- then I realized that really depends on your situation - there are so many different ways that it speaks to us.
- the Word can speak right to our situation: comfort, wisdom, challenge, encouragement, insight.
- the real question is not “What?” (what does the Word say?) because it’s a big book and different parts will speak to different people on different days because they’re in different situations.
- the real question is “How?”/how can I get into a position where I can hear what the Word has to say and can harness its power in my life?
- how can we see that power in our lives?
Harnessing The Power Of The Word Of God:
1. Approach the Word believing it lives and speaks.
- v. 12 - “living.”
- not just great literature/not just like every other book.
2. Desire to become skilled with it, knowing it’s your only offensive weapon.
- v. 12 - “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division. . . marrow.”
- becoming skilled:
- getting familiar with it/knowing where to find stuff/learning how to hear God speak/memorizing some parts/learning how to study it.
- don’t rely on the preacher to tell you everything you need to know about it/once a week is not enough and even then I may not preaching a sermon that touches on what you’re dealing with right now.
- offensive weapon:
- many of us are getting clobbered by the enemy, not because we don’t have a weapon to fight him with, but because we don’t know how to use the weapon.
- can you imagine a soldier going into Iraq without knowing how to operate his weapon?
- how often do we complain about a problem in our lives and ask God to give us the victory, when in fact the answer is right in our hands, but we haven’t checked the book.
3. Open the Word hoping it will get personal.
- v. 12 - “discerner. . . heart.”
- some read basically for trivia knowledge, but we must read for life transformation.
- v. 11 - be thankful that the Word was given to help us avoid sin and disobedience, not to tell us we’ve sinned and then leave us stuck in our sin.
4. Quit pretending God doesn’t know about that.
- v. 13 - “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him.”
- whatever your secret sin is, you’ve got to be willing to confess it if God is going to speak to you powerfully through the Word.
5. Treat what you’re reading not merely today’s word, but the final Word.
- v. 13 - “. . . Him to whom we must give account.”
- sometimes we can get caught up in “what’s the application to my life today”/application is definitely good and necessary, but the Word is much more than that.
- the Bible doesn’t merely speak to your situation, but it clues you in on Kingdom Come/it should ignite a vision for a life and a hope that is far different than what the world is proposing/a vision of Christ and His Kingdom.
