P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

STEP #1: PICK IT UP!

A recent article in the magazine, Aspire, tells how in the mid-1980s, contemporary Christian singer Amy Grant was going through a time of spiritual crisis in her life. Her husband had slipped into a drug habit — cocaine, in fact. Their marriage was just about to crash on the rocks. And for a brief period, things were really, really dark for Amy Grant.

She spent several days just lying in bed, "mourning my life," as she put it later. She really was tempted to dump everything: her marriage, her Christian music, her faith. Maybe she'd move all by herself to Europe and start over. She was that close to the edge of the emotional cliff.

And then, when things seemed darkest, her sister marched into the bedroom and really let her have it. "You want to leave? Fine! Leave! Go to Europe, leave it all behind, start your life again." But then she leaned a bit closer and added these very strong words: "But before you go, you tell my little girl how you can sing that Jesus can help her through anything in her life, but that He can't help you."

And you know, that little verbal blast, that firing of spiritual artillery, hit home. Amy and her husband Gary got some counseling, began to rebuild their marriage. Here in 1999, her Christian witness has reached a whole new crossover audience of secular teens who listen to albums like Heart In Motion, and then hear on the very last track:

"When it all comes down, if there's anything good that happens in life . . . it's from Jesus."

But go back with me to what that sister had said earlier. Here Amy Grant had sung to a whole generation of young Christians that Jesus Christ changes lives, that the Christian faith works! One of her big, big hits, entitled Thy Word, comes right out of the Bible, Psalm 119:105:

"Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."

And the issue we want to address this week here on the Voice of Prophecy is a simple one: Even if the Bible says wonderful things, brilliant and true things, how can we get them to actually work in our lives? Here Amy Grant, popular Christian singer, was literally singing the words of Scripture over hundreds of radio stations and having the heart of the gospel message go out on millions of her CDS . . . but it wasn't getting through to her. She was on the precipice herself, ready to chuck it all and start all over again without God.

There was a time, obviously, by Amy's own admission, where the Word of God wasn't shining a light on the path for her. Because she was in darkness! And sometimes all of us, even if we've sat in Christian pews for 50 years, feel like we're groping in the blackness of spiritual midnight ourselves. Where's all the light that's supposed to come from the Holy Bible? Why are we tripping over the stones of sin and the tree roots of temptation and the potholes of pride that are in the path ahead?

The answer comes on two levels, of course. And it'll take us all this week and much, much more to explore the fullness of the Bible's power. But let's get to the obvious answer first. The Bible can't change our lives if it's unread. Like I say, that's obvious . . . but sometimes we don't act like it's obvious. We confess to being mystified by our confusion and our lack of knowledge, when we plainly know that we're not reading our Bibles. We're not cracking open the Book where the answers to life are provided.

I hope some of you had the opportunity to hear our half-hour weekend broadcast that just aired Saturday or yesterday around North America. It was entitled Plugging In Before Going Out, and our Sunday writer/producer, John McLarty, spelled out some specifics on the gritty day-to-day details of just doing it, getting into the Word of God. How do we develop that daily habit? Are mornings better than evenings for Bible study? How much each day? How do we slog through the hard parts? Questions like those have plagued even faithful believers for centuries. If you didn't hear it, write or call and request the cassette: Plugging In Before Going Out. But let's emphasize again, the Number One reason why the Bible doesn't impact our lives is because we're simply not reading it.

A great pastor and Christian writer we'll use several times this week, Pastor Tony Evans, makes this cryptic observation in his excellent book, The Victorious Christian Life:

"Dusty Bibles mean dirty lives."

And yes, that's clever, but it's also true! Friend, there are things in the Bible, in these 66 books, that can change how we live! They really will! We'll live differently if we know these things! Conversely, we'll live worse — we'll make mistakes, we'll suffer needless heartache and doubt, we'll miss the high mark, the potential God intends for us, we'll not experience the "abundant life" the Word of God holds out before us, if we don't read the Bible.

So often the simple fact of doing it, of reading the Bible, is the difference between life and death itself. Spiritually and physically. There are a million stories we could tell, of course; one of my favorites has to be that of a young mother named Joy Swift, who at the tender age of 20 had both her two infant daughters and her two stepsons get shot and killed in one horrible Thursday evening. Her whole family was literally wiped out in a few grisly minutes. Three weeks later her oldest stepdaughter, Stephanie, just two years younger than Joy herself was, died too . . . of leukemia.

And this kid, barely out of her teens herself, was virtually destroyed. Two funerals for five kids. Being a mom was her only identity. Her husband, naturally, was shell-shocked himself; she couldn't get much strength out of him during such a crisis.

And then two things came into her life. One was a motel Bible that she began to read. The other was a Christian nurse who visited with Joy in the hospital after the last of the funerals. And this young hospital worker, a complete stranger, held Joy while she cried and then showed her in the Scriptures where she could find the Bible's promises that she would see her kids again. This nurse, who knew her own Bible well enough to show the way, pointed Joy to the guarantee in First Thessalonians 4:16 to 18 in that great old King James English:

"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." And then the incredibly powerful last line: "Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

And do you know something? Those three verses right there, just three verses, those simple 71 words, literally turned around the life of this grieving mother. Instead of giving up — maybe committing suicide or divorcing her husband or descending into hatred and drugs and denial — she kept on reading her Bible. She became a baptized Christian. It took her husband longer, but George Swift finally took the good news of the Bible into his life as well. They started a new family and today have three terrific teenagers . . . who are looking forward to meeting their five brothers and sisters as promised in that chapter in First Thessalonians. Joy Swift went on to write three bestsellers, stories which have touched the lives of multiplied hundreds of thousands of people who have also experienced grief and unremitting rage. Friend, the simple truth is that the Bible completely turned this picture around. I wouldn't want to think today where Joy Swift might be without the Bible.

But here are two points. First of all, the Word of God changed her life because it came into her life. She picked up that motel Bible; she read it. And others came along and helped her in that process. Several good Christian ministers of different faith groups came into her life, gave her Bible studies, mentored her. That nurse played a huge role in making the Bible a living thing to Joy.

But here's a second point. Even with the Bible in her life, even with Christianity as her newfound faith experience, it was a long, sometimes painful process . . . allowing the words in the Bible to become her, to infuse her with truth, to change her life.
Later in her gripping book, A Cry For Justice, she tells how she went into the Missouri State Penitentiary to face the man who had killed her kids. Billy Dyer had been just a 14-year-old boy, a friend of the family, when he and an accomplice had slaughtered her kids. Now, much later, she sat across from this young man, aged 24, to tell him she was ready to forgive him as the Scriptures commanded her to.

Well, you can do the math for yourself. It took ten years for Scripture to fortify her to the point where she could say to this boy: "Billy, I forgive you." The words in the Bible were there; their truth was never in doubt. But the process, the surgery-like process of changing her, of both strengthening and softening her, of building up enough faith in God that she could give her anger and revenge to Him . . . that was a ten-year process. In fact, more than ten years, because there's not a day goes by these 22 years later where Joy and George Swift don't have to get out their Bibles and wrestle again and again and again with its hard words, its challenging statements, not just about resurrections and reunions, but about forgiveness and surrendering hatred.

That's the hard part. It's hard sometimes to read a Bible, even harder to let its words actually create a change in you. But this unique mother, Joy, would be the first to tell you that it was an UNdusty Bible that literally saved her life.