Why We Need to Keep Coming Back to the Word of God
By Matt Brown
The Bible is life-changing. Not only does reading, and responding to God’s Word change our lives today, but it can continue to change our lives as we keep coming back to it over and over throughout our lives. It’s not enough just to have the Word, but we need to incorporate the habit into our lives to keep coming back to the Word.
God’s Word is where the power is.
R.A. Torrey shared what has become one of my favorite quotes, “People who pray for power but neglect the Bible abound in the church. But the power that belongs to God is stored up in the great reservoir of His own Word, the Bible. We cannot obtain or maintain God’s power in our own lives or in our work unless there is deep and frequent meditation on the Word of God.”
Torrey was a longtime ministry associate of D.L. Moody. Moody also had a passion for God’s Word, and based his whole ministry on it. In one of my favorite stories about D.L. Moody, he shares: “A quickening that will last must come through the word of God. A man stood up in one of our meetings and said he hoped for enough out of the series of meetings to last him all his life. I told him he might as well try to eat enough breakfast at one time to last him a lifetime. That is a mistake that people are making; they are running to religious meetings, and they think the meetings are going to do the work. But if these don’t bring you into closer contact with the word of God, the whole impression will be gone in three months.”
If we really want to grow in our Christian lives, we need to keep coming back to the Word of God.
It’s not enough to read the Bible once and then move on. We need daily manna from heaven that God only gives us in the form of coming back to His Word over and over.
Your Bible is living and active.
Often when you become a student of the Bible, and you read it over and over again through the years, different Scriptures stand out to you at different times. God’s Word is living and active, and speaks to us what we desperately need to hear at just the right moment.
God’s Word is also living and active in our hearts when we memorize it, and meditate on it. To meditate on the Word of God means to let it roll over and over again in your heart and mind until it get’s deep into your spirit. It is one thing to get into the Word of God, but it is another thing to let the Word of God get into you. I spend much of my life as a ministry, throughout my day thinking on the Word of God, and what God wants to say into the chaos, dysfunction and brokenness of our world. I meditate and ponder what God might be saying, and what He might want me to say to bring hope and truth into a world that needs Him so badly.
We need to keep reminding our own heart of what God has said.
It is important to keep coming back to the Word of God because the Bible tells us the importance of getting reminded of what God has said:
“For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.” (2 Peter 1:12-15)
It is good to be reminded of what God has said, and we do this by coming back to the Word over and over, so our life can keep being changed.
Matt Brown is an evangelist, author of Truth Plus Love, host of Think Eternity with Matt Brown, and founder of Think Eternity — a ministry dedicated to amplifying the gospel every day through podcasts, devotionals, videos, live events and more. Matt and his wife Michelle have three children.
This blog originally appeared at Thomas Nelson Bible Blog: thomasnelsonbibles.com/blog/. Used with permission.