BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Well, God’s Word is His binding oath and He will do what He said He will do. You can count on it. It Isn’t Enough To Remember “But Terri, what about those times when things didn’t turn out like the Word says?” I can tell you this: If something failed, it wasn’t the Word of God. Romans 3:3-4 says: “What if some did not believe and were without faith? Does their lack of faith and their faithlessness nullify and make ineffective and void the faithfulness of God and His fidelity [to His Word]? By no means! Let God be found true though every human being is false and a liar...” ("Amplified Bible, Classic Edition"). Everything that has to do with men, everything in this natural world, is subject to change. But the Word of God is not. The Word of God is true even when everything else around you is telling you otherwise. But notice the verse says you must let God be true in your life. To do so, settle forever in your heart and mind, there is no fault in God. There’s no weakness or shortcoming in His Word. You will never catch God in a lie. You will never get in a situation where you exercise faith in God’s Word and God fails to keep that Word. Never! The Bible says God is active and alert, watching over His Word to perform it (Jeremiah 1:12). Understand, however, that it’s not enough just to know what the Word says. It must be reality to you—more real than the problem you face. Even though I had experienced His healing power many times in my life, years ago I encountered a serious situation with the health of my children. Over a period of time, simple runny noses had become serious diagnoses, with one bad report after another. Fear was beginning to squeeze me. As I prayed, the Lord said, 'You don’t really believe that Jesus bore your children’s sicknesses and carried their diseases. You know it happened, but you don’t believe it for yourself.' I replied, “Well, I am going to!” I got my Bible and meditated on 1 Peter 2:24 that says, “by His stripes we were healed.” I purposefully chose to believe that God cannot lie, and that His Word is true regardless of what my circumstances are telling me. In my mind, I pictured Jesus on the cross with Jeremy’s and Aubrey’s sicknesses. I also saw Him come out of the grave victorious over those sicknesses and then giving that victory to us. I did that for two hours. Two hours. Big deal! Yet those two hours changed the course of my children’s health. In a matter of a few days all symptoms were gone! It’s important for you to realize that throughout that time, I had a basic belief that God has healed us all by the stripes of Jesus. But I had been attempting to exercise faith in God’s Word based on head knowledge. That is not enough! That’s why Proverbs 4:20-21 says: “My son, attend to my words; consent and submit to my sayings. Let them not depart from your sight; keep them in the center of your heart” ("AMPC"). For that reason, we must constantly center ourselves on God’s Word, because it’s that Word that produces faith in our hearts. In fact, you cannot deepen your faith in God without deepening your trust in His Word. It Becomes What You Need One of the mistakes holding many believers back from trusting the Word is that they think of God’s Word as a “thing.” But the Bible tells us that Jesus and His Word are one, the same. John 1 says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (verses 1, 14). Think for a moment about that statement, “the Word was made flesh.” The world needed Jesus. So God’s words and the faith that He released in those words became Jesus. That is a fundamental characteristic of the Word of God. Mixed with faith, it becomes what you need. God’s Word will become finances if you’re facing shortage, health when you’re faced with sickness, and peace to the troubled mind. 22 : BVOV

• Cover