The Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Heb. 4:12).
Everything Jesus ever said about the Word of God indicates that it is "living and active." Not just information or instruction, it is God speaking to me "live." I am not listening to or reading something God once said. God is speaking to me now!
John calls Jesus Himself "the Word," the Logos in Greek, or the expression of the mind of God. We have all experienced the power of words from those around us. If someone calls us clever, beautiful, funny, or stupid, those words take root in our spirit and begin to shape our future, in some cases in very unfortunate ways.
Yesterday I wrote about the Room of Self-Knowledge, wherein I imagined seeing myself in all the stages of my life, but seeing through the eyes of Jesus, the Word, the Image of the Father. In Him, there is no condemnation at all -- He himself said He came not to condemn but to save the world. So what He sees in us can "always be fixed," in the words of my painting instructor. Whatever I thought I had supremely ruined as I was learning to paint, the merest touch of the master's hand could transform into something beautiful. He had the knowledge and experience to take anything I had done and to use it as the basis of a work of art.
Don Quixote called the peasant girl, Dulcinea, a princess. In his eyes, she was so. And what is it that God calls us? What is it that His Word does in us? --- Redeems us from the ravages of sin and death and transforms us into sons and daughters of God -- and so we are, as St. Peter tells us!
When we begin to believe that God's Word has power in our lives, we begin to transform from what we were into what God sees in us. Jesus described the Word of God as a seed that "grows night and day without the farmer being aware of it." When we read, listen to, focus on God's Word, something begins to happen inside of us, whether we are aware of it or not. Something holy begins to take shape in us. Thoughts begin to come to us that were the farthest thing from our minds previously. They may be words of comfort, a flash of insight, or a nudge to do something that would not have occurred to us otherwise.
In the New Testament, what we translate as "word" actually has two Greek forms, each with a different meaning. One form is "Logos," meaning image, expression, the divine wisdom or rational principle manifest in creation, government, and the controlling of the universe. The other form which we translate as "word" in English is "Rhema," meaning a word spoken in and to a particular situation, a living and dynamic word. It is not the general principle applied to universal situations, but rather a personal, spoken word applied to our hearts. It literally means an utterance -- like God speaking to Elijah on the mountaintop. It is an inspired word birthed within our own spirit for the situation of the moment, a whisper from the Holy Spirit guiding and directing us. It is spoken by a living entity.
In the desert, in the moment of stress and distress, Jesus said, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word (Rhema) that comes forth from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). That word, Rhema, is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing the soul and spirit and judging the attitudes of the heart. It has the power to pierce the hardest hard and the darkest mind.
My prayer is that everyone I know experience Rhema, the spoken Word of God, in their hearts and minds, and through that word come to know the mind and heart of God Himself!
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