Our Privilege--to Speak the Word

December 31

All the uplifting words from the lips of a gracious man that sweeten life like honey when spoken to the heartbroken or frightened or sorrowful; all the words of wisdom of the Word of God itself when drunk in by the thirsting soul cannot be of any avail until they have done the work that God sent them to do.

In Isaiah 55:11 the Lord says through His prophet, “My word, that goes forth out of My mouth, shall not return to Me void but shall accomplish that which I please and shall prosper in the thing to which I send it.” The Word of God, if received by a man, shall be his salvation. If rejected, it shall be his downfall, his damnation.

The ‘Living Word of God’ is Jesus Himself. In John 1:1,2, the beloved Apostle states clearly, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Jesus was and is the everlasting God who made Heaven and Earth. He is the loving God who gave Himself as the propitiation for all man’s sin.

We who believe that Jesus is the Living Word of God bear a great responsibility to convey the message of salvation, the Truth, the Word, to everyone with whom we have association. Ezekiel 3:18-21 indeed states very emphatically that the believer is required to share God’s truth.

Here the prophet declares clearly, “ When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.

"Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

Therefore, when we have received the knowledge of Jesus our Savior and Lord, we must pass it along to others. In I Thessalonians 4:1, Paul says, “We ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus that as you have received from us how you must walk and please God, do so even more.”

Walk and please God and do even more by scattering seeds of the truth of Jesus among everyone you encounter. What is done with God’s truth by the hearer is between the hearer and God, but if the truth goes unspoken by the believer in Christ, the one who professes faith is held accountable by the Lord.

It is our responsibility and our privilege to be bearers of the Word of Life, to be instruments in the hand of God by whom He imparts to the lost the truth that enables them to be found; to sow seeds of life among them so they might be born again from the realm of time where death is inevitable into the realm of faith in Christ where eternal life reigns.