Challenged and Changed

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. - 1 John 4:20

Sometimes, as I read John the Apostle's writings, I wonder if he was always so direct. Since he was known as one of the "Sons of Thunder," perhaps he was. Of course, Jesus was an instrumental influence in the life of the human agent who crafted His Word and John also wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so there were many factors that formed his personality and character. What events in John's long life, other than those we can read, made him the man he was? What life events shaped him, and are now currently shaping us?

While we do not have the complete story, we might imagine that as John wrote these words, he reflected upon all those instances when loving his brother was not so easy. He would have personally interacted with the Word as he was recording it for posterity. God's Word would have challenged and changed him.

The Bible isn't just black ink on white paper (or digitized pictures on a smartphone screen), it is the living Word of the living God. As we read, it intersects our lives and examines us as it must have examined those who were its scribes in ages past. May we also be so challenged and changed by what we read.

I prayed for faith, and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning, but faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, "Now faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since. - Dwight L. Moody