Day 1 of 90 - Take God At His Word

Day 1 of 90: Take God at His Word.

Opening Song: days of Elijah by Pastor Charles Jenkins

Closing Song: Overcome by Tye Tribbett 

Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. 

One of my favorite preachers is Priscilla Shirer. I love the way she tells a story. God has anointed her to make parables out of every day life. A few weeks ago, she preached a life-changing sermon. She was talking about the children of Israel crossing over the Red Sea and the importance of standing still, seeing the salvation of God, having no fear, and learning to rest in the power of God. Priscilla’s word became flesh to me when she talked about an intern she used to travel with. On one occasion, her family and this intern departed from an airport that the intern had never been to. It was a large airport with 5 terminals, 25 gates each terminal. On some occasions, there was an A section at one gate and a B section at the same gate. So, they had to depart from terminal D gate 22 A. The intern stood in one line. Priscilla and her family stood in another. For some reason, Priscilla’s line was faster so she texted the intern “we will see you at gate 22A.” Minutes later, no intern. The plane begins to board. No intern. Now it was almost time to leave. The flight attendant calls the intern by name, but Priscilla is confused. The gate was only minutes away from where they checked in. What had happened to the intern?

At the last second, the intern ran into the plane looking flustered and disoriented. The intern explained that she saw the text 22A, but she thought Priscilla meant Terminal A, Gate 22. So she left terminal D, took a train around the entire airport; only to realize that when she got there, she was in the wrong place. So she got back on the train; traveled around the entire airport again, just to arrive back to the place she was in, in the first place. 

Priscilla’s husband looked at the intern and said, “You know, you could’ve saved yourself so much trouble if you had simply believed that what I wrote is what I meant.” Had the intern followed the clear instructions instead of rationalizing herself into a frenzy, she would have avoided so much stress.

How many of us have been that intern? We are too smart for our own good. We think God needs our help to translate what he says. We read His word, but form our own opinion about what it means. God is saying to us today, “Just take Me at My Word.” What God wrote is what God meant. According to Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. God’s words will never fail us or mislead us. He means what he says and He keeps his promises. If God says you are free, believe him! If God says your sins have been forgiven, believe him! If God says, “this choice does not please me,” don’t try to twist God’s arm. Take God at his word! There’s no need to reconfigure, redefine, or recontextualize. Some things are much simpler than we make it. When we finally decide to take God at his word, we will get to the right place, at the right time, without delay.