Not simply alive, but with all bodily functions MOVING

God’s Word is an objective standard that allows you to know and to test the inner ideas and thoughts you have with something like a measuring stick.

It's given to be that objective standard, and when you deal with God’s Word IN God’s Word, the written Word of God, you’re really dealing with God Himself, explains Richard Jordan.

The only contact you have with Jesus Christ, or the Creator of heaven and earth, outside of the Word of God, is on an inner, subjective level and it always has to be gauged by the objective Word of God.

Now, you want to have that inner subjective contact. That’s fellowship. You want to have in your experience that contact with God, but it comes . . .

Here’s God the “transcendent holy other,” as the theologians call Him, and here you are a little peon down here. Now you’re no longer a peon; you’re a saint of the Most High God and you’ve been put in CONNECTION with Him.

The thing that bridges those two things is God’s Word; it’s the only thing that can bridge it. It’s your faith in the Word of God that brings out of the realm of theory and idea and the nebula and brings into concrete reality in your experience the life of God.

That’s why Jesus said in John 6:63: [63] It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

Paul says in I Thessalonians 2: [13] For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

Now, Hebrews 4:12-13 is a fantastic passage about the power of the Word of God and about what God’s Word is designed to do; God’s design for His Word to be a tangible point of contact between man and God.

It demonstrates that the Word of God has within itself the attributes of God Himself, and the reason it has those attributes is because it’s the Word of God Himself.

[12] For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
[13] Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Notice it says the “word OF God.” The word that belongs to God; the word that comes from God. This is God’s Word. Anything that comes from God or has to do with the person of God is a part of His very being; His Godness, His attributes.

God’s Word is designed to work in your inner man, making a distinction between the soul and the spirit. Only God’s Word can make that distinction and it’s designed to produce things inside of you.

That’s an interesting concept about the Word of God being “quick.” To do something without delay or hesitation and accomplish something--that’s a characteristic of being alive. Life has to do with all of your bodily functions MOVING. Life has to do with movement and the word “quick” in the passage is the word for “alive.”

II Timothy 4:1: [1] I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;

The verse says Jesus comes to “judge the quick and the dead,” so you can see the contrast with being dead. But there’s a connotation to the word “quick” that is something beyond just really being alive, because you can be alive and be a slow mover.

Have you ever noticed that? People say, “Boy if you move any slower it’ll be next week before you get there!” There are people who shuffle along but they’re not getting anywhere fast.

The connotation in the passage is that the Word of God is not simply alive, but the Word of God has the ability—it’s stressing the INSTANCY; the SPEED of the Word’s ability to work and that’s an important concept about understanding God’s Word.

It doesn’t take forever for God’s Word to change your life. What takes time is before the change, getting the leverage on yourself to make a change.

That is, conviction that brings you to the place—"godly sorrow,” as Paul calls it—where you make the choice to change and after you’ve made the choice to change, then there’s the putting off the old and putting on the new. There’s the discipline of being renewed in your mind day by day.

II Corinthians 4:16: [16] For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

There’s a discipline of growing and maturing, but the change between those two things takes place in a moment of CHOICE and God’s Word, when it’s relied upon, will produce the results it says it will—it won’t take forever. If it’s taking forever, the problem isn’t the Word of God.

God’s Word is alive, but it’s not just alive and, “Well, we'll get there one day.” God’s Word can produce the results IMMEDIATELY in your life. It’s something that can get things done quick—all you have to do is believe it and then it WORKS in your life. It will accomplish what it says the instant you trust it.

And it’s powerful. Now the word “powerful” there is the idea of energy. It’s energetic. In fact, the word translated “power” there is the word that we get our word “energy” from. The idea of being active and it’s powerful. It’s got the ability to get the job done; do the lifting that’s necessary to get things accomplished.