Thursday, June 12, 2008

Love the Word



Your word, O LORD, is eternal;
it stands firm in the heavens.
Psalm 119:89

His Word was before the beginning.

His Word is without end.

It will always be, and it will always be true.

There is nothing you or I can do to change it. Society’s mores change with culture, and we – even we, followers of and believers in Christ that we are – begin to judge right and wrong by the fluctuating opinions of the fluid culture around us rather than the rock of God’s eternal Word.

I the LORD do not change.
Malachi 3:6

He never changes. Why, then, do we, His followers, condone an unmarried couple’s living together? Why do we say that only love matters, not the gender of the lovers? Why do we divorce at a higher rate than the rest of Americans? Why do we end the lives of our unborn children? Why do we, children of God, lack compassion for the poor? Why are we so ready to go to war – personally, religiously, politically?

We treat God’s Word with irreverence. We do not believe that it is eternal. We do not believe that He never changes, or, if we do, we believe that someone must have made a mistake or inserted his own opinions into His “word.”

We must return to a place where God’s Word is revered as the greatest revelation of Him in our possession. It is not a document prepared by men to coerce their agenda on others, but a revelation of God’s holiness, justice, love, grace, and mercy given to the human race.

Because I love your commands
more than gold, more than pure gold,
and because I consider all your precepts right,
I hate every wrong path.
Psalm 119: 127-128

I’d like to challenge you to pray through Psalm 119. This Psalm is an acrostic poem (each section correlates to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet) with 22 sections. Take one section a day. Read a verse, then pray that verse to God in your own words. If you do this from your heart, I believe you will begin to love God’s Word more than you ever have. (I can say this because I have done it, and through, God has done exactly this.)

Let us recapture a love for God’s Word.