Giving Place to the Word of God

By Greg Laurie, Op-ed contributor Monday, April 13, 2015

Now it came to pass, when Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples, that He departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities.
— Matthew 11:1

Greg Laurie, senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California and Harvest Orange County in Irvine, California, shares the Gospel with a sold-out crowd of 19,000 for Harvest America at the American Airlines Center and Victory Park in Dallas, Texas, Oct. 5, 2014. | (Photo: rever Hoehne for Harvest Ministries)

There are times when I have gone into the pulpit with a prepared message and have ended up saying things that I never planned on saying. I believe that is because God will speak through the person who is teaching His Word. Something supernatural takes place when we hear God's Word being taught in person.

There are times when people have walked up to me after a church service and said, "That thing you said. . . . It was just like it was for me!"

I'll tell them that maybe it was. That is because I didn't plan on saying it.

Others have said, "Who has been telling you about me?" They seriously want to know.

"What do you mean?"

"You were talking about the details of a person doing a certain thing, and that is what I have been doing."

When we open our hearts to the Word of God, He will speak to us in a specific way. That happens when we are gathered together as the church. And the job of a pastor is to preach and teach the Word of God. Paul wrote to the young pastor Timothy, "Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching" (2 Timothy 4:2). Preaching is God's primary way of reaching lost people.

Yet there are churches today that don't give place to the Word of God. For them, it is more about music and drama and skits and interpretive dance and clips from movies. But give me something that I can't find anywhere else. Give me the Word of God. That is what I need to hear. And that is what you need to hear. That is what we should be longing to hear: the Word of God.

Copyright © 2015 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Bible text from the New King James Version is not to be reproduced in copies or otherwise by any means except as permitted in writing by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Attn: Bible Rights and Permissions, P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, TN 37214-1000 Used with Permission