Responding to God’s Word
Do you need a boost to get your spiritual life going? Some things you can do: remove obstacles, expose your faith, and let Jesus lead. You do all of this best by a right response to God’s Word. First, nurture the kernels of the Word you receive.
Mark 4:8,9, “And other seeds fell into the good soil and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” And He was saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Germination and growth don’t depend upon the number of seeds, but upon the quality of the ground. How strange to observe a garden with dirt baked by years of unuse and to see twelve years’ worth of seed laying on top rotting away. Some spiritual lives falter like that. Seeds of learning received today fall on the seed from the weeks and months and years before, but never planted or sown.
Get Ready
How we respond to a Word from God depends on how ready and prepared we are to apply it, not just how often we hear the words. Are the past seeds growing? What will you do with the new seeds? You can leave the ground fallow to eventually develop a crust on top. That kind needs to be turned over again.
That’s true spiritually too. Prepare yourself or nothing’s going to grow. That may require pruning back a few things, like busyness.
And Jesus added, “And the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful (Mark 4:19).”
Holy Clutter
When we’re surrounded with holy clutter, we might need to lift and blast and chuck. If your heart’s full of hardpan, you need to do a little beating. Sometimes we need to dig down deep with some major reversal. That’s what happens when you’re trying to plow up a pathway to convert to farmland again. You’ve got to turn the soil over, press it and break it.
If you don’t know Christ, that’s where to begin. Seek and reach out to Him. If you haven’t read or heard His Word lately, dig in and study. If you’ve held back from sharing your faith, make a major reversal. You may need to rip some things up.
I’m the kind of guy that likes my desk immaculately clean. I don’t want even loose papers strewn around. But things pile up. A stack of books. Calendars and commentaries. Meeting and counseling notes. Printer paper, pens, fingernail clipper, coffee cup, tape dispenser, and almost always, a Dictionary of Words of the American West. And somewhere in the midst should be my work in progress sermon.
Our spiritual lives can get like that. I call this holy clutter. Even spiritual activities sometimes need to be chopped back. Before any kind of Bible study, here’s an acronym to remember: COY. Be ready to do these things in response to God’s Word.
BE COY
C = Confess
We sometimes come to the Lord with so many things on our mind, He couldn’t get a word in if He wanted to. We need to confess what’s going on. “Lord, I’m so busy and I’m tired and I’ve crowded you out.” “Father, I’m convicted of this act, that attitude.” Tell Him the truth about where you’re at, with activities, habits, and relationships.
O = Obey
Be alert for obedience. Say, “Lord, I don’t know what kind of seed you want to plant, but I’m ready to obey.” And listen to what He says.
Y = Yield
Be yielding to Him, in what He reveals and asks, as He brings new insight. Every time you go to church, be prepared to confess. Be ready to obey. And yield to the Holy Spirit’s prompting. Position yourself to be fully attentive to hear what He has to say. Be COY. Nurture God’s Word for yourself and then extend the knowledge to others.
Mark 4:21, “And He was saying to them, ‘A lamp is not brought to be put under a peck-measure, is it, or under a bed? Is it not brought to be put on the lampstand?”
Expose how the Word of God activates in your life to other people. Open the process and results for examination. Name at least three people who know what’s going on in your spiritual life on a regular basis. Why do that? So you don’t hide His light under a basket.
Give God’s Word Time
Mark 4:29, “But when the crop he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
God’s Word works like a seed, not a great blast of lightning. We want things to happen quickly. Give God time to grow His Word in our lives. Though it starts small, eventually it influences everything in our lives. Some lessons take a while to learn, including spiritual truths and their effects, to give God time to accomplish His best work. Expect great things from God’s Word.
Mark 4:32, “When it is sown, grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade.”
Jesus taught about mustard seeds that didn’t look like much, in fact, almost imperceptible. Yet it could grow into a huge plant growing over everything in the field, even providing a sanctuary for animals.
You can tell if you’re expecting great things from God’s Word if you hurry to read it. You can hardly wait to get into it, looking for a great outcome. Just like when you try out a new product with good results, you tell your neighbors and friends and family. You also recommend great wisdom from the Bible. And be quick to act on what you’ve learned.
Jesus in the storm
His Word Affects Everything
Mark 4:40, “And He said to them, ‘Why are you so timid? How is it that you have no faith?’”
Jesus said this after the storm on the sea when he fell asleep, and the disciples awakened him in fear. He scolded them that after all His teaching and their experiences together on the land, they didn’t transfer those truths to the sea. They tended to not apply spiritual truth to real life. Jesus expected what they learned to affect every situation and setting.
Our faith should not be like a Mexican jumping bean to be put in a jar on a shelf, good only for inspection. The Word of God works like an earthquake, touching every part of us, what we do and don’t do, what we say and refrain from saying, every day of the week. Nurture His Word. Expect great things. Expose the Word. And give it time to work.
Suggested Plan of Action
First, go on an eight-day diet of eating God’s Word. For instance, plan to read and meditate on two chapters in the Book of Mark each day. Then, tell someone that’s your goal. Let them check up on you, to see how you’re doing.
Second, share with someone one verse you will fully implement in your life this week. You could go to a chapter like Romans 12 for lots of choices.
Third, commit yourself to one hopeless situation you’re faced with that you will apply God’s Word. Perhaps a relationship that’s gone whacky. Or it seems finished. Pick a trial or testing or tough circumstance in which there seems little hope. Pray continually for God to make a way through, an opening of intervention. Volunteer to do your part. Play it as He guides you, step by step, by the Book. How about backing up and doing your life the right way? Follow His Word for you, exactly like blueprints for a building, and see what happens.
STEPHEN BLY
Circa early 1980s
Holy Bible Image by Raquel Candia from Pixabay
Jesus in the Storm Image by Imágenes Cristianas y Poderosas from Pixabay
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FAITH ADVENTURE “How Do You Respond to God’s Word?” audio podcast by award-winning western author Stephen Bly. Sponsored by BlyBooks.com Legacy Series.
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A HEARTY AMEN to all the nuggets of truth here.