PRAYER PRACTICE
Out loud, pray for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear from God through the passage.
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REFLECTION
The Power Of God's Word
by Pr. Dave Mann
This entire week we are looking at different passages where we see the power of God’s Word. From the creation, to the flood, to Babel, to Abram, and more, we see how God causes things to happen simply by the power of his Word. In today’s text, I want to focus on two simple words, “God said” (Genesis 6:13).
We are used to words not meaning much. We say things like, “Talk is cheap.” We listen to speeches by politicians with skepticism. We look for actions to prove that the words actually have substance. That is because humans have corrupted the value of words. We have separated actions from spoken words. Humans have followed the author of lies (Satan). The very first temptation was a questioning of the character of God, “Has God said…?” as though God’s Word is not connected to reality.
This is not so with God. God’s Word endures forever (Isaiah 40:8 & Matthew 24:35). God’s Word always accomplishes what it is sent to do (Isaiah 55:11). When God speaks, things happen! If God says it, you can count on it. Jesus not only came to urge humans to live in the truth, to connect their words with reality, but he was Truth incarnate (John 14:6). As we follow Jesus, as his Word takes root in our hearts, we live more and more in Truth.
One more thought about God’s Word. There are times when God, in his sovereign wisdom, causes there to be a famine of his Word, that is to say, that God is silent for a time, leaving the world to coast on its own chosen path without God’s intervention. (See Amos 8:11.) Lord, have mercy! Save us from such a path of destruction. Noah was perhaps the sole person on earth in that era who received God’s Word. Amos, a prophet of God in the 8th century B.C., was one of the very few who heard the Word of the Lord at that time.
The hope that we have to hear God’s Word is rooted in a fresh blowing of the Spirit of the Lord. God’s Word, originally spoken through Joel in the 6th century B.C., was given new life in the 1st century when Peter preached on Pentecost (Joel 2:28-29 & Acts 2:17-18). May we in the 21st century be blessed to read, hear, and live out the Word of God.
O Lord, we thirst for the Word of God. As light came into being at the sound of your Word, as Noah built the ark of salvation because of your Word, let your Word cause your will to be constructed among us. Without your Word, Lord, we are surely doomed. And when you speak, grant that we obey, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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