The Word To Live By: 5-22-26
Phil Waggoner
But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” - that is, the word of faith which we are preaching. Romans 10:8
The Word to live by: I had my annual physical the other day and it couldn’t have been better, literally (except for height - I’m too short for my weight). But it got me thinking and remembering how I got to where I am today. I love where I am in the body of Christ and the blessings of God that I am living in. I said yesterday it started when I chose to accept Jesus as the Lord of my life. At maybe the lowest point of my life, a man called me on the phone and invited me to his house and he, along with his wife and daughter, preached the word of faith to me. So I asked myself, “What did he say that caused me to accept what he was saying as the truth?” I believed in God, I just didn’t know Him. To get to know someone, you have to have a personal relationship with them, not a relationship through someone else. Just because you know who someone famous is doesn’t mean you know the truth about them. You might know what someone else thinks about them, but you only really know someone through a personal relationship with them. You can agree or disagree with their politics or their religious doctrine, or even the public choices they make, but until you have a personal relationship with them, you don’t know them. And the deeper the relationship, the better you know them. The first thing they told me was that the Bible was a personal letter from God to His creation and that I was His creation. That made sense to me. I have a literalist personality. I don’t like ambiguity or manipulation, particularly in conversation. Say what you mean and mean what you say. The best way to make your will known is to write it down. If it is written down, there’s no chance of misunderstanding. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable …” Believing that or not is a choice you have to make. (Like I said, it made sense to me.) But to help you along, there is enough historical and scientifically provable scripture that it is mathematically impossible to be true unless there is a creator behind it. I had some friends that lived on a golf course, about halfway down a long fairway. Three different times I was in their backyard and picked up a lost ball and put it on their rain gauge that was glass and about a ½” in diameter on top of a clothesline pole. There is no way a golfer could have mistakenly hit a ball that rested on the top of that rain gauge without breaking it. I caused it to happen because I put it up there. God caused the Bible to happen, and He causes to work in your life. He watches over His word to perform it (Jeremiah 1:12), and it doesn’t return to Him empty without accomplishing what He sent it to do (Isaiah 55:11). Put your faith in what He says, not what you think or see in someone else’s life.
Read through the Bible in a year: Acts 27:13-44; 1 Samuel 3; Psalms 51;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 22, John 3:1-18, 1 John 1
The stomach is satisfied by the fruit of the mouth; one’s lips can earn a satisfying income. Proverbs 18:20
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160