The Word To Live By: 1-28-26
Phil Waggoner
Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed. John 20:29
The Word To Live By: For the sake of time and space, I’m going to skip over the sequence that all the disciples, minus Thomas, were in one place with the doors shut tightly “for fear of the Jews.” Now, does that sound like a room full of people who believed that Jesus rose from the dead? Jesus appeared to them in the room. Not as a spirit, not as a vision, but as a man. They recognized Him but still didn’t understand what had happened. He said to them (they heard His voice), “Peace be with you.” Then He showed them both His hands and His side. When they had seen and heard, they believed. Thomas showed up at some point and they told him the story. Thomas refused to believe them. Nobody knew what to do so they stayed locked in the room. Eight days later, Jesus showed up in the room again and called out Thomas. He said to Him, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Thomas saw all of this and heard all of this and became a believer. There are two things I want you to see here. First of all, you have a choice to believe what you see and hear. They all believed after they heard the voice of Jesus, not necessarily when they first saw Him. Deuteronomy 30: 19 says, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, and you and your descendants.” That tells me believing the Bible is a choice. It goes on to say you make the choice of life by believing and living the Word of God or the choice of death by not believing and living the Word of God. The second thing is you need to put yourself in position to hear the Word of God. Who you choose to do it with and what you choose to do matters in what you hear. I have never heard the gospel preached on a Sunday morning at a football game, a soccer game, staying in bed because I had a tough week, at work, or boating at the lake because I needed some alone time. (And so we are clear, I have done all of that.) The last verse in John 20 is this, “But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” That’s where you will learn to walk by faith and not by sight.
Read through the Bible in a year: Luke 20:27-47; Genesis 37; Psalms 28;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 28, Matthew 14:19-36, Acts 27:
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160