The Necessity of the word

Call To Prayer 

Title: The Necessity of the Word 

By: Njuacha Hubert 

Date: 15.06.2024 

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[a]” Matthew 4:4 Deut. 8:3 

Sometimes we don’t practice certain things because we don’t truly know the value of it. So instead of pressurizing someone to practice something, the better approach is to reveal the value or benefits then they practice it naturally.  Let’s take for instance regular exercise. If you say to someone “Exercise regularly; it is good for you” it would probably not be as effective as if you take time to explain the health benefits of regular exercise. Similarly for us to encourage others as well as ourselves to be habitual bible students we need to understand the benefits of knowing scriptures for yourself. I am going to enumerate a few and trust you can add more.  

The first one is that the word is food. Really, it is food for our spirit.  As a friend of mine would say “Since you are a body, with a soul and a spirit, as you have fed your body today, have you thought of your spirit and your soul which lives forever? what does it need?”. Jesus was very hungry when the devil tempted him to turn stone into bread, yet he reminded the devil of the spiritual food he was solely relying on at that point. The word is indispensably needed to grow in wisdom and understanding. Remember, even Jesus had to learn scriptures from the teachers of the law in the temple (see Luke 2:46-48) just as was prophesied by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:13-15) to grow.  

The word is the sword of the spirit (Ephesians 6:11-18). We are constantly bombarded with worldly data whether images, words etc so one of the things we need is to always hear the word of God again and again, to be able to reject these other lies; to keep standing on the word of God and to overcome temptations. The other need is prayer.  

The word is needed to obtain our inheritances in Christ. Let’s say you had different inheritances from your father worth of 100 million; it’s as good as nothing if you don’t know about it. But the more you know them, the more claims you can make. In a like manner, the more of the word you have digested, the more claims/faith you can exercise to obtain inheritances/blessings in Christ. “My people perish for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). The Israelites were given the promised land but still had to fight by the sword to obtain the land, not because God had not given them, but just for them to exercise faith. For us, that sword is our faith which comes from the word. Romans 10: 17 “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” 

This is a very broad topic with a lot of say, so I may come back to it again or just in a smaller subtopic. But for now, the conclusion is the Word is needed to grow in spirit (faith, wisdom, understanding, discernment), overcome temptations and obtain inheritances in Christ. 

Prayer Point:  

Let’s thank God for the accessibility of the bible. Let’s pray for the grace to see the benefits of reading it.