Starving for Truth (5)

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1.8

Starving for truth
I suspect that a good many American Christians are starving spiritually and don’t even realize this is the case.

They keep reading their Bibles and listening to sermons and lessons on the Scriptures, but their lives lack much of the fruit that it is reasonable to expect when the life-changing Word of God is having its way in our souls. They don’t seem sorry about sin in their lives, and almost never practice repentance. Many of them aren’t even persuaded that sin is all that big a deal. After all, doesn’t God accept us as we are? We can’t help it that we’re sinners, and we shouldn’t judge others anyway.

And where is the evidence of holiness, righteousness, and abounding good works of service to the needy all around them?
We are not robust in these areas because we are starving for the spiritual fuel that alone can produce such effects. We are starving for the truth of God’s Word, and we don’t even seem to know it.

We cannot make ourselves repent, hate sin, or give ourselves to others in good works of love. This is God’s work in us, by His Spirit, unto the likeness of Jesus Christ. And He accomplishes this work as the Spirit stokes the fuel of the Word into our souls, so that we really hear God’s Word, and it begins to change our lives.

Christians today are presently struggling through what the prophet Amos referred to as a famine of hearing, and many of them don’t even seem to notice. But if we were really hearing the Word as God intends, we would observe more of the fruit we’ve mentioned thus far.

A ready witness
A fourth fruit of the hearing of God’s Word is ready witness for Him. They in whom the Word is alive and powerful, transforming them into the image of Jesus Christ, cannot help but talk about Him with the people in their lives.

God instructed the prophet Habakkuk to write His Word on tablets of stone, so that all who read it could run to proclaim it joyfully and urgently to the people of the land (Hab. 2.2). When the apostles and believers in Jerusalem finally heard the message of the Gospel in the Word of God, they spilled into the streets and, ultimately, spread out to every nation proclaiming the Good News to everyone they met (Acts 2.1-11; 8.1-4). Persecution could not stop them, nor could cultural differences, geographic distance, lack of resources, or the duties and distractions of daily life.

In one generation they turned their world upside-down for Jesus Christ (Acts 17.1-9). In little more than two centuries they established the banner of the Gospel as supreme over the civilized world. What they heard they lived and declared to others with such compelling power that multiplied thousands streamed into the churches to give thanks and praise to God (cf. Mic. 4.1-8).

Where are the witnesses?
And what of our day? What the late John Stott once described as “our guilty silence” afflicts us still. In the churches today, we prefer to leave the work of evangelism to highly skilled professionals – worship teams, seeker-friendly preachers, parachurch leaders, missionaries, and evangelists – while most believers seem to have nothing of eternal significance to say to their neighbors, friends, or colleagues.

We are trapped in a spiral of silence, ensnared in a merely personal faith, overwhelmed by the incessant messages of a materialistic, unbelieving age, and reluctant to speak up and speak out boldly on behalf of the only Good News that can save human lives. We have the power to bear witness, but we are failing in that calling, because we are not truly hearing the Word of God in a way that taps that power, so that it wells up in our souls and flows out through our mouths and lives. 

We are weak as witnesses for Christ because we are languishing in a famine of hearing His Word. Only when we admit the former and correct the latter will our witness for Christ begin to be more in evidence.

We can break out of this famine as we begin to hear the Word of God faithfully, as He intends, and set ourselves for repentance, sanctification, good works, and witness in the normal course of our everyday lives. The famine of hearing will continue until we begin listening to God’s Word, seeking the Spirit earnestly to instruct us, and determining to let the Word bring forth real and powerful fruit in our lives.

For reflection
1.  What does it mean for you to be a witness to Jesus Christ?

2.  Who are the people to whom God sends you each week as His witness? Do you pray for these people? For opportunities to share the Good News with them?

3.  What can Christians do to encourage one another to greater consistency in our witness for the Lord?

Next steps – Transformation: Suppose someone were to ask you what it means to be a Christian, or how one becomes a Christian. What would you say? Make a brief outline of the Gospel as you understand it. Share that with some Christian friends and see if they can help you to flesh it out a bit more. Then start praying every day that God will give you opportunities to share this Gospel with the people you regularly see. Start conversations that might lead to a presentation.

T. M. Moore

This week’s series, Starving for Truth, is available as a free PDF download, for personal or group use. Click here.

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