For Life and For Godliness

Photo by Marius Taciuc

"It was the first time Marius would get to attend a New Testament Bible dedication. ...After arriving in the village where the dedication was to take place... he estimated that there were about 1000 people there in the village. He was amazed that they all seemed to have the same mindset."

"'From time to time there were groups of about 100 or so that were coming out of their houses and singing hymns in their language as well as in Tok Pisin (the local trade language). That is something you don’t see in the western world. I was thinking to myself all the time: What would it take to see something like that happen in my home country? An entire village coming out of their houses singing for the glory of the Lord. That was very emotional for me. I realized that they were taking it seriously. They were saying, this celebration of ours is very personal.'"
(From The PNG Experience blog. Post titled, "For the Glory of the Lord.")

By His Power

In our Christian life we can reach for books, commentaries, various translations of the Bible, podcasts, and more. Marius' testimony above is a powerful reminder that while we are blessed to have these sources of encouragement and growth at our fingertips, we can often allow them to side-track us from the sweetness of Biblical basics.

A podcast titled "Back to the Basics" by Alistair Begg disclosed simply and clearly that God's power has given us all we need for life and for godliness. In the podcast, Alistair mentions the strength from God's power that Paul talks about in Colossians 1:11. In the original Greek, this is a present continuous tense verb. The power that sustains us is not like a canon that shoots us out into the world every Sunday leaving us to come dragging back to church or some other resource for another power boost. It is more accurately like an engine that contains enough power to carry a plane safely through every phase of its journey - take off, flight, and landing.

For His Glory

Imagine never getting to hold a full copy of the Bible in a language you can understand until you are an adult, maybe not until you have grandchildren. All of a sudden, you have God's Word at your fingertips to reference any moment, to lead you in your Christian life in a way you couldn't imagine before seeing this book completed! Now you can see that God's power has truly given us all we need for life and for godliness (2 Peter 1:3)!

How good it is to be reminded that, in the midst of all the resources we have, God's Word is still the perfect resource for the Christian life. How sweet to maintain an appreciation for the basics of God's Word, like His promise to be our unfailing power source throughout all phases of our Christian life. Such truths drive us to have the same personal and communal joy over God's glory and God's Word that Marius found in the Papua New Guinean village.