Part Two: Gaining a Passionate Desire for God’s Word
By Leslie Ludy
The entirety of Your Word is truth, and every one of
Your righteous judgments endures forever.
Psalm 119:160
When Eric and I first stepped into full-time ministry, I was completely unprepared for the spiritual attacks that hit us full force. Financial difficulties, false accusation, health problems, discouragement, and exhaustion became a normal part of our lives. Spiritually speaking, I couldn’t see which end was up. I felt like I was standing on unstable ground. I began to question God’s love for me and to wallow in confusion. The trials we were facing only drove me further away from God and made me feel uncertain about His promises. I would try to work through my confusion by talking with others or to seek advice through self-help books or counseling. While I sometimes received a good suggestion here or there, I never found the unshakable clarity I was craving.
Finally, after I had spent many years repeatedly returning to this discouraging pattern, God awakened us to a principle that altered the way we responded to difficulties: accepting God’s truth as fact and commanding our feelings to agree with it. Whenever we were hit with confusion, uncertainty, or difficulties, we began to search the Word of God for answers. And when we found them, we learned to reckon them as fact, no matter what our current feelings, past experiences, or present circumstances might say.
Instead of asking the question, “How do I feel about this situation?” I began to ask a new question: “What does God say about this situation?” Learning to reckon God’s Word as fact has revolutionized my life and given me victory even in my most difficult situations.
Just as Corrie ten Boom knew that with her little Bible she could face even hell itself, I have learned in my own life that I can face anything triumphantly when I make His unchanging truth the anchor of my soul.
I would like to share two important principles that can help us reckon God’s Word as fact and shift our perspective toward the Bible from passive to passionate.
1. God’s Word is the solid rock beneath our feet.
The Bible will never become outdated or irrelevant. It will never lose its power or efficacy.
Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away” (Matt. 24:35 NIV).
And in 2 Timothy 3:16 we are told: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”
Questioning or doubting God’s Word is becoming more and more common today in some Christian circles. Disillusionment toward God’s truth is even being celebrated as authentic and honest.
But questioning God’s Word or doubting its relevance is an extremely dangerous trap of the enemy. Just think about the phrases, “Did God really say that…?” and, “Does God really mean that?” Do those words remind you of anything?
Remember in the book of Genesis, Satan slithered up to Eve at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘you must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1 NIV).
Satan convinced Eve to question God’s unchanging nature and to wonder whether He really meant what He said. He deceived her with his subtlety. He didn’t brashly tell her, “You should disregard what God said and disobey Him!” Rather, through cunning and creativity, he stripped away the solid rock of truth beneath her feet and replaced it with springy, moldable mushiness.
Tragically, he is doing the same today through many of the mushy postmodern ideas that have crept into the church. Many people are stumbling around in confusion and doubt because they are pausing to listen to the serpent’s insipid questions and doubting whether God really meant what He said.
To replace doubt with certainty, we must settle this crucial truth in our hearts once and for all: God’s Word is unchanging. The Bible is not meant to morph and shift in order to complement our constantly changing culture or fit with our own preferences. We are not meant to judge God’s Word by our own feelings or even our experience. The Bible is our solid rock that never alters. It was not inspired by “good men” but by the Spirit of God. (See 2 Timothy 3:16.)
When we fail to make His truth the solid rock beneath our feet, our spiritual lives are vulnerable to collapse as Jesus explained in the parable of the house that was built upon sand: “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall” (Matt. 7:26–27).
Yet by the same token, Jesus tells us that if we build our foundation upon the solid rock of His truth, even the most violent storms of life will not cause us to crumble.
When I am confused or concerned about something, I have learned to search God’s Word for specific scriptural rock to stand upon. For example, if the enemy is baiting me with a looming sense of doom or fear over finances, there are some wonderful and simple scriptural promises that I can stand firmly upon:
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” 2 Corinthians 9:8
“And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19
This exercise of finding scriptural rock beneath my feet has been invaluable in keeping me unwavering and strong during difficult times and far less vulnerable to the insipid lies of the enemy. Instead of basing my perspective on circumstance, experience, or emotion, I am choosing to build my reality on God’s unwavering truth.
I encourage you to make the unchanging Word of God the solid rock beneath your feet, no matter what. Choose to stand upon His Word as irrefutable truth, even if your emotions or experiences try to argue otherwise. His Words will never pass away. We can bank everything on what He says. As we are reminded in Numbers 23:19: “God is not human, that He should lie, not a human being, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?” (NIV).
2. The more we explore God’s Word, the more we fall in love with it.
The Bible tells us that God’s Word is sweeter than honey and more to be desired than fine gold. (See Psalm 19:10.) We are not meant to trudge through our Bibles, but to earnestly desire to be in His Word. I have found that when I am inconsistent in studying the Bible, it’s harder to keep my passion for His Word alive. But when I put a priority upon searching out the priceless treasures of truth in His Word, studying the Bible becomes a genuine delight.
Even something as simple as listening through the Psalms on my audio Bible can become exhilarating to my soul when I take time to meditate on God’s extraordinary attributes and promises.
Here are a few simple ways I’ve found that have helped to spark my desire for more of God’s Word:
- Listening to audio Scripture whenever I can (driving, working around the house, etc.)
- Scripture journaling (writing out key Scriptures in my journal and how I can apply them to my life)
- Keeping a jar of daily Scripture promises to read
- Decorating my living space with key verses to remember
- Listening to Scripture-based music
- Scripture art — making Scripture into beautiful artwork or calligraphy (I am personally terrible at this, but I am blessed by seeing others do it!)
I have also found that learning the skill of inductive Bible study has been critical in helping me deepen my understanding of Scripture and cherish the incredible reality of God’s truth.
Inductive Bible study can be as simple as using a concordance (online or book) to look up the original meaning of the key words in a passage of Scripture. Or it can be more in-depth, such as exploring the historical and biblical context of the verse, reading classic commentaries written about that portion of Scripture, comparing various translations of the passage, and going deeper into the origins of the phrases being used.
Studying the Bible really can become as exciting as searching for hidden treasure — sweeter than honey to our soul. If you have struggled to really delight in God’s Word, I encourage you to take some simple steps toward making it a true priority in your daily life — and soon you will discover a love for Scripture that you never knew was possible.
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One of the most convicting and impactful stories I’ve ever heard was a true account from Voice of the Martyrs about a group of believers in a persecuted country who were arrested because of their faith. The arresting officer came up to each of the Christians holding a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. He commanded each of them to spit on the Bible. If they refused, he would shoot them. Reluctantly, each believer spat on the cover of the Bible in order to stay alive. But a 16-year-old Christian girl, with tears running down her face, took the hem of her dress and lovingly wiped the spit from the Bible, refusing to show any disrespect to the precious Word of God. A few seconds later she was killed.
Men and women throughout history have given their lives to uphold the integrity of Scripture. Their courageous examples should remind us that the Bible is truly an invaluable gift — worth giving our time and energy to study, and worth giving our very lives to protect.
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Leonard Ravenhill once said, “We’re not here to get to know the Word of God, but to get to know the God of the Word.”
My prayer is that we would get to know the God of the Word; that we would cultivate a passionate desire for Scripture and build our lives upon the priceless treasure of His unchanging truth.
“The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times” (Ps. 12:6 ESV).
“Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with their whole heart” (Ps. 119:2 ESV).
This article was originally published in Issue 45.
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