According to the Word
- Apostle Kanya Stewart
- 9 hours ago
- 4 min read
He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.—Proverbs 5:23.
Recently, 80 people were on a major airline’s plane that crash-landed and flipped. But each one made it out alive and safe. People called the crash "unprecedented." Many sought to understand how the accident was survived.
The answer: instruction.
The flight attendants were quick and thorough in giving instructions to the passengers. But most flight attendants are. So that wasn’t the only reason they survived.
It was a willingness to listen.
The passengers lived because they listened to the flight attendants from the start to the finish of the flight.
The Word of God is like those flight attendants’ instructions. Our life and safety are contained in it.
Our Pastor, Chief Apostle H.C. Gunn, recently said, “Your change is in the Word.” He also said, “When you read the Word, the Word will read you and change you.”
He explained that without the Word and obedience to it, our prayers are ineffective. How can we ask God questions or request his help but not want to listen to what he says—whether in his written Word or spoken Word through our pastors?
He asked, What have we been taught by God or from the pulpit that we have forsaken because of a person, place or thing we wanted more?
When a company offers us a coupon for a free item, we diligently follow their instructions to redeem it. But God is offering us freedom through salvation via his Word, and we won’t follow the instructions.
Chief Apostle Gunn explained that when we don’t want to listen to the Word—or we ignore and reject it but attend to everything else—it’s because we still haven’t surrendered to God.
Imagine if those people on that flight didn’t surrender to the instructions of the flight attendants. There would be 80 more people dead.
During a recent service, Chief Apostle Gunn taught about Matthew 17, when Peter encountered the IRS of that time. They wanted his tax money—and Jesus’ too. He didn’t have it. There were two miracles of instruction in this situation.
Peter and Jesus could have said, “We don’t serve your kingdom; we serve God,” and refused to pay the taxes. But instead, Jesus instructed humility and obedience to the law of the land. Peter listened, which prevented any unnecessary jailing or persecution, maintaining their safety and their freedom.
Jesus told Peter to follow his instructions, go to the water and fish with a hook. Once he did, he would catch a fish, and in its mouth would be their provision. The fish’s mouth had money in it. Needs were supplied through listening to instruction. You can’t lose when you listen.
How could God make money appear in a fish’s mouth to pay a bill? Chief Apostle Gunn taught us that since Genesis, the spoken Word and instruction of God never stopped creating and making things. God’s Word still has the same creative power it did during the creation. So when he speaks instruction to us—directly and through those he appoints, or through what we read in his Word—things in our lives are still being made.
When we don’t listen or attend to the Word, we block God’s creative power.
Chief Apostle Gunn said, “God created everything by Jesus Christ, which is the Word of God. The Word creates your condition. The more you follow the Word, the more your condition is made or changed.”
In 1 Kings 17, a widow woman and her son were preparing to die. They had nothing left to eat and were gathering sticks. They were planning to starve to death. But God sent his instruction through the prophet Elijah, and in his words was their life and sustenance.
But her miracle first started with Elijah’s obedience to the Word of God. God told him to turn eastward in his travels for his own sustenance, and when the provision there was gone, he told him to head toward Zarephath, where a widow woman would sustain him.
That widow woman was the same one preparing to die with her son from lack of sustenance. Having nothing herself, Elijah came to her and asked for water and bread. All she had was a morsel and a little oil. But she went to fetch it.
And the rest is history.
Verses 15-16 document the life-saving power of listening to instruction and the Word of God—for both Elijah and the widow woman and her son: “And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah.”
Don’t you want to live too? Don’t you want to be sustained by the power of God’s Word? It is the one source that never fails.
Read Proverbs 4:20-23.
Listen to our most recent weekly broadcasts.
Appointment With Death: https://www.thebodyofchristinc.com/listen-in?wix-music-track-id=1467381168946072&wix-music-comp-id=comp-lrczxokb
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