The Word To LIve By: 8-9-25
Phil Waggoner
The Word To Live by: The bite in this promise comes across in the Amplified Translation so much better to me, anyway, than in other recognized translations. By that, I mean it’s something you can hook your faith to and not let go regardless of the circumstances. One summer after high school, I was playing American Legion baseball, and one team we played had a pitcher who threw very fast and had the most wicked curveball I’ve ever seen. He would set you up with two fastballs high in the strike zone, and if he was ahead in the count, throw his curveball. It would come flying at your head and at the last second, curve away and down and right across the middle of the plate. A perfect ball to hit, except you were usually lying on the ground watching it go across the plate because you thought it was coming at your head. When he was ahead in the count (more strikes than balls), I figured out he threw it every time, so I hung in there and swung at the middle of the plate and got a decent hit every time. I had knowledge of what he was going to do and therefore the confidence to swing at something I knew was going to be there. We have knowledge of what Jesus did and will do when we encounter tribulation, trials, distress, and frustrations of life, so we can hang in there, not bail out at the sign of trouble, and swing our two-edged sword at what we can’t necessarily see at the moment but know is going to be there.
Read through the Bible in a year: 2 Corinthians 10; 2 Kings 23:36 24:20; Habakkuk 1;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 9, Matthew 20:18-34, Romans 12
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160