Hey friends. I just got home after my trip to Wilkesboro, NC. It took me an hour longer to drive back to the farm. I took all the back roads I could -- through places like Mount Airy, Ararat, and Stuart, which are some of the loveliest parts of North Carolina and Virginia. What a beautiful world we live in!
The conference was such a wonderful time of Christian fellowship around God's word.
In my earliest years as a Christian, I discovered the book of Acts and loved all those verses about the power of the Holy Spirit. I have tried to visualize in my own mind what the Day of Pentecost must have been like. Imagine the thoughts that would have run through your mind had you been one of the 120 in the upper room. I imagine many of them spent a lot of those seven weeks waiting for the Holy Spirit to come wondering what the "Holy Spirit" was going to be like. They probably visualized all kinds of things! My guess is that none of them ever anticipated that there would suddenly be the sound like the roaring of a mighty windstorm in the skies. And can you imagine what they thought when they saw that first tongue of fire? But what they thought is really not important. The important thing is that they immediately began to be witnesses! They immediately took their lamp from under the bushel and began to shine it all around, so much so that the people around them thought they were drunk!
I felt this way today while speaking at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church. As I spoke there was such a crying out in my soul for everyone to know the truth concerning the word of God.
I will never be able to thank God enough or praise him enough for the fact that he had so much mercy on his church to give us his word. Can it be trusted? Absolutely! Can its detractors be rebutted? You bet they can! I believe with all my heart that every committed follower of Jesus faces a decision like the one I posed to my audience today: Who do we love the most? And what book is the most important one in our lives? The most beautiful part of all this is that when you love God more than anyone in the world, he will give you a greater love for his word because that's his love letter to us! I wonder what excuse we're going to have when we stand on the day of judgment and he says, "Did you read my love letters -- ALL of them?" Think of some of the flimsy excuses we are going to have. "I meant to, but ...." "I was too busy ...." "I didn't have the time ...." The Bible is nothing but a bunch of printed words on paper until God's Holy Spirit reveals the truth to us. And remember: the Holy Spirit is the ONLY person who can reveal the truth of the Bible to us! I hope you will never open the Bible without first asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to you.
So that was pretty much my message today.
The most neglected area in the life of a defeated Christian is probably Bible reading. It doesn't have to be that way! This should be the most exciting part of your day. The Bible can be trusted! God faithfully preserved it to us! Now it's our responsibility to respond with our fidelity!
Have a wonderful Lord's Day tomorrow!