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However, it can be so easy today to, absentmindedly, or worse yet, intentionally, choose to limit God exclusively to the letters recorded in our Bibles written to other people in other times. This keeps God distanced from us, renders Him impersonal to us, gives us excuse to be spiritually lazy, and is, effectually, an attempt to keep the Kingdom of God on paper and out of our hearts where it belongs. Luke 17:21 What would King David's relationship to God have been if he had chosen to do this, refusing to listen to any word of God except what was written down by Moses? Where would we as Gentile believers be if the spoken Word had not come by the angel to Cornelius? Even Paul, the apostle, who penned much of the New Testament asked for prayer that the word might have "free course" II Thessalonians 3:1, and spent all of I Corinthians 14 instructing on how to give place to the presently spoken Word.

If we do not labor for this Word to come, or even worse, if we do not believe Jesus when He says that His sheep know His voice John 10:27, how can we have faith, and how can we hear God? Romans 10:17 How can we be born again (the Word, Christ, coming to us and transforming us into new creatures)? How can we be healed without the present Word of God spoken with authority over illness and disease? How can the "steps of a good man" be "ordered of the Lord"? Psalms 37:23 Why would we need the Holy Ghost? John 15:26 In fact, why pray at all if we do not believe God will answer, with a present Word, us present day Christians as he did the old Saints of the Scriptures? Hebrews 4:12 says that the Word of God (Christ John 1) is quick (alive) and powerful.

So, if we are to have power in the Kingdom, we must have the Word to know what to speak to every person and circumstance in our life if we are to fashion our life after the life of Jesus Matthew 10:19-20. Please know that in no way are we to undervalue the written Word. It is the holy record of the spoken Word. John 5:39 Quite the contrary, we must champion for what the Bible testifies of and for what it always will agree with. Just as we work for a paycheck to buy groceries, true Christians will labor for the richest reward in existence, God's Word, Jesus Christ, to come to their lives.

In closing, consider this one question. What is the New Covenant we are living under? We pray that you will let the answer in Jeremiah 31:33-34 change what you are working for in this life. - HTC

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