$10 Billion. That is the amount spent by Americans on SELF-help in the year 2017 and the number continues to grow. I am guessing some of that money came out of your own pocket. Evidently, we all need and want help. I know I do. I need help tamping down my pervading fears. I need help elevating depression into over-flowing joy. I need help getting motivated to accomplish something. I also need help slowing down. I need help in my battles with anger and judgmental nature.
We would probably all agree that this life we’ve been given, while of great value, brings with it some pretty monumental struggles and confusion. If you aren’t cued in on the angst out there, you’re not paying attention. Aching identity and needy guidance questions are petitioned on social media all day long every day. From obsessively edited selfies to tweeted tirades, we are publicly shouting out loud our desperate need for help. We lie, cheat, steal, insult, and wantonly join groups formed solely to power up hatred, all in response to our human misery. We are some kind of a messed up, confused, unstable wrecks, even those considered “the best of us”. If only we could proverbially shake out our rugs, clean our houses, straighten out our thinking and solve our problems. After thousands of years of human effort, should we even hope for help and change?
What if there actually existed a resource where a messed up, confused, miserable person could go for absolutely guaranteed solutions, unadulterated wisdom and simple yet complete instructions for our best life now. Would people go and resource this “guaranteed” self-help? Would they then stick with this help long enough to achieve the promised foolproof results? Evidently, no, they would. not. Instead, we continue our spiral into spiritual and emotional and physical chaos, even those who claim to have all the right answers.
There is a how-to guide book on living your best life now currently in publication and you probably even know exactly what it is. So, the obvious question has to be, why are so few people regularly accessing this incredible and valuable information?
If you’re reading this blog, you’ve surely guessed that I am referring to what we traditionally call the Holy Scriptures or The Bible. Why is it that we are completely ignoring and neglecting this one-of-a-kind resource and instead spending $10 billion on limited, unproven and somewhat hokey advice? I ask this because:
“All Scripture is God-breathed”
Yes, the Bible itself tells us that ALL of it, every single word of it was breathed out by our Creator God. ELOHIM ( אֱלֹהִים ) is what He calls Himself as He breathes out the first of His recorded words. The Bible’s words are His breathings– the very One who created neutrons and protostars and behemoths. He created all of it and then opened His mouth and breathed out interstellar, or rather inter-cosmos communications with the culmination of His Creation (that would be you and me). How on earth are these breathings being ignored by the mass majority? Should we not at least pursue these words of God with the same intensity and excitement as say, other possible extra-terrestrial messages?
“The Lord’s word is flawless;”
There are no errors. While humanity might think they’ve found errors, there are none according to the Author. Our feeble minds do not compare with His. Annoyed by this, mankind is constantly attempting to bring the Lord’s Word into disrepute. If you claim to accept that the Bible author is actually our Creator, that men were moved along by Him to write what He breathed out, then the next level of faith is to believe that in His Sovereignty, He can and does present to us that which is TRUE. All of it. Every fact, every prescription, every word. I promise, if you fully realize that this is one place you can go where there are no lies, that everything He says is true, then not only will it change your life, but His Words will become your most prized possession.
“I am God, and there is none like Me; declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”
Furthermore, I can settle into full faith in the Words of the Bible with no questions or qualms when I realize that it is self-authenticating. God put his cosmological fingerprint on scripture. He wove the future into almost every page! We should shake off our mental laziness and think about this: The God of the Universe who is not bound by any limits of time or space, knew exactly how history would go, could give vivid details of important future events thousands of years before they happened. By conservative estimates, there are over 300 prophecies recorded from ancient times that were correctly and specifically fulfilled in the life of Jesus of Nazareth and that is only a portion of prophecy in scripture. This fingerprint of God in the Bible, a knowing that only someone unbound by time would have, proves that it is truly Him communicating to us. Why would I not want to know what He is saying?
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart.
There is so much in this book for you and me. There is so much to discover about who God is. There is so much to discover about who I am and how my brain and heart work. There is an eternal adventure to start living today in relationship with your Creator which you are largely missing if you aren’t in His Word. Making it part of every single day builds perspective of life you can’t get anywhere else. It offers the privilege of developing His perspective. We get to live inspired, to have His heart within us and to live free of the desperation that plagues our race. Are you still mentally and spiritually asleep or is pursuing God through voracious study of His Word already changing your life?
Lori Grizzell is a lover of the Word. She works beautifully alongside her husband, Kenneth, in ministry in Bowling Green, KY. Lori and Kenneth have 3 grown kids with expanding families! They have blessed so many lives from California to Florida, Tennessee to Kentucky and many in between!