When I was in college, the "Iron Curtain" separated the extended Soviet Union from the rest of the world. One campus group I participated in prayed regularly for Christians who had been arrested for their faith in eastern European countries under the rule of communism. Georgi Vins was one of the prisoners we prayed for, and it was a thrill when he was released.
One occasional guest speaker in chapel was an evangelist who made clandestine trips into the Soviet Union to encourage the Christians there. He may have smuggled Bibles and Christian literature in---I don't remember. It's probably a good thing that I can't remember his name.
Once he told of a particular couple in one underground church. The wife was a Christian. The husband was not, but went with his wife to church meetings even though he was deathly afraid of being arrested.
The church didn't have enough Bibles for everyone. It would have been too conspicuous for people to have Bibles in their homes, anyway. So when the church met in the woods, the leaders would tear out pieces of a Bible and hand the scraps to the congregants.
This particular man got a piece of Scripture that read, in part, "The Lord said to Jeremiah . . . " Frustrated, the man thought, "Jeremiah? Who is this Jeremiah? Who has even heard of him?"
After a while, though, the man was encouraged. "If God can speak to this Jeremiah, who no one has even heard of, then God sees me and can speak to me, too." This was the first step that led to the man becoming a believer in the one true God.
Such is the power of the Word of God that He can use even an obscure phrase of it to draw someone to Himself.
God's Word is so powerful, He made everything in the world, except people, just by speaking. Over and over in Genesis 1, God said, "Let there be. . . ," and there was. "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible" (Hebrews 11:3).
Jesus "is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3).
Jesus healed, stilled a storm, cast out demons, and raised the dead all by His words.
Jesus resisted Satan with Scripture (Matthew 4:1-11). Ephesians 6:16-17 says the Word of God is our spiritual sword. As Luther wrote in "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God":
The prince of darkness grim,
we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure,
for lo! his doom is sure;
one little word shall fell him.
Jesus is the Living Word. The Holy Spirit breathed out God's Word through the people He used to give us the written Word in Scripture.
God's Word is so powerful that people who sought to disprove it, like Lee Strobel and Viggo Olsen, were instead converted by it.
God's Word is powerful to convict of sin. When Peter preached it, men were "cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?'" (Acts 2:37).
"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18).
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:18).
God's power, though His Word, enables us to live for Him. "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire" (2 Peter 1:3-4).
God's Word is so powerful, we can lean the weight of our entire soul upon it. It's not a magic wand: it doesn't promise healing or prayers answered just the way we want. But it promises God's wisdom and grace. When it says we can be saved by trusting Jesus, we can. When it says He will meet our needs, He will.
God's Word is so powerful, we can use it even when people say they don't believe it. We shouldn't club them with it or be obnoxious about sharing it. But as we share with people what God said, He will use His Word to open their eyes and shine His light in their hearts.
Don't be afraid to rely on and share God's Word. He promises it "shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11). "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).
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