The Importance of the Word in Spiritual Formation

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The Importance of the Word in Spiritual Formation

Pastor Wilmoth

Hope Center

March 12, 2014

The Importance of the Word in Spiritual Formation

Part 3

Introduction

It is important to understand that the Word of God is the mediator between us and God.

We are going to examine this thought concerning the Word of God: The Word of God has an intrusive nature. The Word of God breaks into the midst of life.

I.  ______as the Word of God

Understand that the scripture is the optimum record of the intrusion of th Word of God into human history. It is the record of focal event wherein the Word of God broke into human lives. It is the picture of humans encountering the presence, power and will of God in the midst of human situations. So scripture provides insight into the ways in which the Word penetrates human lives and situations, discerns/reveals the truth of the human condition, and transforms human beings.

It is the revelation of the Word as point of ______of human brokenness and human wholeness. As this revelation it reveals three things:

A.  When the Word of God intrudes encounters or breaks in, it addresses human beings in their brokenness. The good news is that we don’t have to measure up to some level of wholeness before the Word addresses us.

B.  The Word calls us to wholeness right at the point of our brokenness! Notice Revelation 3:19

19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline…… NIV

The scripture is a revelation of the Word addressing our brokenness and calling us to ______

C. Scripture is the revelation of the Word as the agent of transformation.

II.  Examination of 2 Timothy 3:16-17

2 Tim 3:16-17 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

Paul states the dynamic inspiration of the scripture. Not only is there the dynamic of God’s inspiration in the writing of the scripture, there is also the dynamic of God’s inspiration in our reading of the scripture. The Word of God which encountered the writer and of which he wrote also addresses us.

Thus serious and earnest prayer should be constantly used before we read the Word of God. “Scripture can only be understood through the same Spirit whereby it was given”.God’s inspiration of the writer and God’s inspiration of the reader are two halves of a whole, and to lose either half is to erect in our hearing of the scripture a filter that will block out the penetrating and transforming Word of God.

The Spirit of God at work in our lives brings us into companionship what the text in such a way that the Word of God begins to shape the word which God speaks to us to be in the world.

III.  Four Important Things that the Word does to us.

When we encounter the living, productive penetrating Word of God in the Spirit in which it was written Paul says four things happen.

A.  The Word is profitable for ______or teaching.

This is the thought that the Word of God gives us the possibility of a radically new mode of being is revealed to us.

B.  The Word is profitable for______.

Here the Word which penetrates to the deep center of our being addresses us at the points of our brokenness. We begin to see the distinction between what we are and what God is speaking us forth to be.

C.  The Word is profitable for______.

This Greek term means to bring something into ______or into alignment or to bring something into wholeness. The Word not only present us with the possibility of a whole new mode of being, not only does it bring to light those things in us which are inconsistent with that mode of being, but it provides us the opportunity of obedience as the channel through which God brings our lives into the wholeness of that new being in Christ.

D.  The Word is profitable for ______in righteousness.

This Greek word speaks of the process in culture of the New Testament world by which an infant was nurtured, educated, trained, disciplined, guided, and instructed. Thus the child was brought from infancy to full, mature, participating membership in the community. What Paul is speaking is that the last activity of the Word is the steady, consistent, daily nurturing of our lives by the Word so that we are increasingly shaped by the Word in the inner places of our being.

IV.  The End Result of the Word

The purpose of this shaping is:

17 That the man of God may be perfect, (Complete) throughly furnished unto all good works

The Greek word here has the meaning that which is perfectly suited to its nature. The purpose of this shaping by the living Word is to nurture us into being all God speaks us forth to be. We are not only shaped internally but the internal is exposed in our outward actions. We are now spoken forth into the lives of others by our good works.