It Works . . . It REALLY Works!

It happens gradually, so gradually that most of the time we never notice it is happening, but rather look back one day and see that it has happened. We can only trace its path by looking back to where we have been. But all of us reach a place in our lives that enough of it is behind us to give us perspective on what lies ahead.

As I look back at my life, there is a common thread: the Bible. I have mentioned before that I was blessed to grow up in a Bible believing church. As a child, I had some faithful teachers like Wallace Arnold and John Hall – and others like them – who invested time in our lives to teach us God’s Word and to model it with their own lives. In my teen years there were people like Ward and Charlene Vanderhoff who loved us and took the time to interact with us and show us how the truth of the Bible really mattered in everyday life.

I also went to a Christian school where men and women like Jim and Phyllis Pinkston, Dick Jennings, Pat Braswell and others interwove Bible truths with traditional learning. We learned that God was real and present in every part of our lives. We were required to memorize the Bible so that its truths were packaged “to go” in our hearts and readily available to us in our times of need.

Most of what I know about the Bible I learned at my church and school as a kid. Those teachings have stuck with me, shaped me, comforted me, challenged me, corrected me. They have been food to my soul.

For some reason, as we grow older, we start to look at those things we are taught in our younger years as passé and we either challenge them, abandon them, or totally ignore them. Some of us find our way back, some don’t. For those of us who do, we wonder why we ever doubted for we see so clearly in our more mature years the truthfulness of God’s Word and the value of its teaching. I wish there was some way that I could impress upon every young person just how “fool proof” a life built on God’s principles is.

And even those of us that never completely stray are tempted still to find sufficiency in things other than God’s Word. Maybe it’s our own ingenuity or skills, or the teaching of the latest guru, but for some reason we think we know better than God. And He lets us try our own thing knowing all the while where we will wind up . . . flat on our faces.

I am thankful for all those who invested in me, and I hope that I am proving to be a profitable return on your investment. But as I get older I see more and more the truth of the matter: God’s Word can be trusted. Father does know best. So I commend God’s Word to you. Let’s get back in the Word. Let’s learn it and live it, read it and heed it. It works.

But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:14-17