What place does the Word of God have in your life? Derek Prince (one of the top Bible teachers of all time) presents eight effects that God's Word can have in your life (faith, new birth, spiritual nourishment, mental illumination, physical healing, victory over sin/satan, cleansing, spiritual mirror):
1. God’s Word produces faith. During World War II, I was in the hospital for an entire year in the deserts of North Africa with a skin disease that the doctors couldn’t cure. I was a new Christian and I kept saying to myself, “I know if I had faith God would heal me.” But the next thing I always said was, “But I don’t have faith.” Then one day Romans 10:17 jumped off the page: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” If you don’t have faith, you can get it. You don’t need to stay without it. In the time of the New Testament, the majority of the people who could read would read out loud, even if they were by themselves. There is benefit in reading out loud because even when you hear yourself read, faith comes.
2. God’s Word is the seed of the new birth. It is by His Word that we are actually brought into His family.
The “incorruptible seed” is God’s Word received into the heart by faith, producing the new birth. The nature of a seed determines the nature of the life that comes from it. If you plant an apple seed, you don’t get an orange tree. The Word of God is incorruptible and the life it produces is incorruptible—it’s divine, holy, eternal.
3. God’s Word is spiritual nourishment. Once you have been born again, you need nourishment. God’s Word has provided suitable nourishment for spiritual growth. When you are a spiritual infant you need milk...as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby. 1 Peter 2:2 NKJ Many of us could testify that when we were first born again the one thing we wanted to do was read the Bible. We were born healthy infants with a healthy appetite for the one thing that could really nourish us. As we grow, we need more solid food. In Hebrews 5 the writer is telling Jewish people—who had knowledge of the Scripture from their background—what some of us may need to hear: that because of all you know, you should be doing better than you are. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. vv. 12–14 NKJ To mature you need to apply the Word of God. You need to use it to recognize the forces that you are dealing with. If you don’t live actively by the Word of God, you will never be able to take more than milk. Solid food is for those who have practiced, exercised, and applied the Word diligently and regularly in their lives.
4. God’s Word brings mental illumination. In Psalm 119, the psalmist is speaking to God and he says: The entrance of Your Words gives light: it gives understanding to the simple. v. 130 NKJ The entrance of God’s Word into our minds and into our hearts gives light. It is different from education. Education is not light; you can be educated and be totally in the dark. You may be seeking education, but are you also finding wisdom? They are not the same. Education is useful, but it is not light.
5. God’s Word provides physical healing. I say this out of my own personal experience. Fools, because of their transgression, And because of their iniquities, were afflicted. Their soul abhorred all manner of food, And they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, And He saved them out of their distresses. He sent His Word and healed them, And delivered them from their destructions. Psalm 107:17–20 NKJ These people were at the point of death, and it suddenly occurred to them it might help to pray. And God “saved them out of their distresses.”
Notice three things that God does when He sends His Word: He saves, He heals and He delivers. The three great acts of God’s mercy—saving from sin, healing from sickness and delivering from demon power—He accomplishes primarily through His Word.
I had been in the hospital in North Africa for about seven months when I discovered Romans 10:17: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” I began to look through the Scripture again with a new hope. But I had a problem. I read promise after promise about healing, but I thought, “That only means He heals my soul. He’s not really interested in my body—that’s just corrupt, it’s going to die anyhow.” But when I got to Proverbs 4:20–22, I couldn’t get around it. God says His words are “life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh.” Not even a philosopher can make “flesh” mean anything but flesh. Then I looked in the margin, and the alternative reading for “health” was “medicine.” I thought, “How do people take their medicine?” The answer often is: three times daily, after meals. Over a period of a few months, I took God’s Word as my medicine three times daily after every meal, and it gave me complete and permanent healing in one of the most unhealthy climates in the world!
6. God’s Word is the key to victory over sin and Satan. Many of our young people today question whether it is possible to lead a pure life. Most of their educators will tell them it isn’t. But the Bible says it is. How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your Word....
I thank God that when I worked amongst African young people, I saw those words fulfilled time and time again. They were made pure and they led clean lives because they gave heed to the Word of God.
7. God’s Word cleanses us. It makes us holy and acceptable to Him. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25–27 NKJ
Husbands, that is not a suggestion; it is a command! How will Jesus provide Himself with a bride who is holy and without blemish? Through the washing of water by the Word of God. The Word of God sanctifies us; it cleanses us. By the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice He redeems us, but by the water of His Word He cleanses and sanctifies us. We need both. We are redeemed by the blood that we might be cleansed by the Word.
8. God’s Word is a spiritual mirror. When you look into it, it doesn’t show your physical appearance, but what you are really like inside. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. James 1:23–25 NKJ
When you look in a mirror and see something wrong, the sensible thing to do is tend to it. If your hair is out of order, you brush it. James says you need to do that when you look in the mirror of the Word of God. You need to see your spiritual self in it and act on whatever it shows you that you need to do. If, when God’s mirror first reveals to us the truth of our own sin, we immediately act upon this revelation—repent, believe, and obey the gospel—then the next time we look into the mirror, we no longer see our old sinful nature. Instead we see ourselves as God now sees us in Christ: forgiven, cleansed, justified—a new creation. We are made to understand that a glorious miracle has taken place.
Adapted from “The Power and Authority of God’s Word” (#4161), The Active and Powerful Word.