The Missing Word

The Word of God can do amazing things as it is planted in the hearts of a believer in Christ.  1st
Peter chapter 1 says:
22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
24 because "All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away,
25 But the word of the Lord endures forever."

His truth can do a powerful work in our hearts - we just have to make sure that we are hungering for the Word and consuming it so that our hearts and minds are transformed, or renewed, as Romans 12 suggests.  If the Word is controlling and informing our decisions and refining our actions, it can have a tangible effect not only on our level of peace and power, including the power to overcome sin, but our demonstration of the Word can be effective in God touching others through us.

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The Word of God is powerful; Hebrews says it is living and active and Isaiah 55 reminds us of the
authority and even the pervasiveness of God's Word:
9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
10 "For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater,
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

If you live in China and want to practice your Christian faith, you have the option of attending a state-sanctioned church or being part of a house, or underground, church.  But, it looks like that you may not have the option to purchase a Bible.

According to WORLD Magazine:

Starting in late March, major online retailers including JD.com, Dangdang, and Amazon.cn stopped offering Bibles for sale, although children’s Bibles, theological books, and Bible concordances remained. Technically, Bibles in China are allowed to be sold only in government-sanctioned churches, yet the authorities never enforced that rule strictly, and Bibles could easily be found online as well as in Christian bookstores.

That also goes for the retailer Taobao.

And, as the article points out, a government representative visited a Beijing Christian bookstore and said Bibles with foreign ISBN numbers could no longer be sold in the country.  There is the fear that Bible apps will be the next to be excised.  And, the article states that recently:

China’s government released a white paper claiming the Chinese Communist Party exercises authority over religion in order to keep “Western” religions like Christianity from being “controlled and utilized by colonialists and imperialists.”

WORLD also reports that...

...President Xi Jinping insists on the “Sinicization of Christianity,” an effort to transform Christianity into a belief system that “aligns with the core values of socialism and so-called Chinese characteristics,” according to U.S.-based ChinaAid.

No doubt the Church is growing in China, with predictions that the number of Christians in China will exceed the number in the U.S. within a few years.  And, officials cannot be blind to this interest in Christianity - so, they have to choke the information and to remove certain vestiges of Christianity, such as crosses on local churches.

But, I would submit these efforts are just speedbumps against the torrent of God's Word and the power that comes from the knowledge of it.

News of this crackdown reminded me about how lawmakers in California are devoted to stifling truth - that's a reference to a bill that would, according to the California Family Council.  Its website states:

AB 2943 (bill text) declares “advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual” as illegal under state’s consumer fraud law. Sexual orientation change efforts is defined as “any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

As Anne Paulk of Restored Hope Network related on The Meeting House, this would prevent materials from various ministries dealing with freedom from same-sex attraction from being sold in the state, even if by out-of-state ministries.

It appears that in some parts of this world and even this nation, truth is a commodity that will be restricted.  But, God's Word cannot be bound; it will not return void - if there are hindrances, God can get His truth across in other ways, including through His people, His ambassadors. We can be faithful containers of Biblical truth and be open and ready to share it on a consistent basis.  Even in the early church, when rapid growth was being experienced, the Word traveled by word-of-mouth.  Through the years, with the printing press, radio and television, and now the Internet, God has sent His Word into the world and it continues to proliferate as it grows large in the hearts of His people.

We also have to make sure that we are not restricting the Word of God from our own hearts.  We can examine whether or not our daily decisions affect our ability to consume the Word - do we order our schedules so that we might consume the life-giving bread of God's truth?  We have to figuratively or literally take the Word "off the shelf" so that it may reside in the shelves of our minds, living and active, doing its work within us.