guarding the truth

2 Timothy 1: 13-14  What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus.  Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you- guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

This morning I reflected on the wonderful gift God has given us in His Word.  It amazes me that the God of the universe has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind, and that we hardly seem to care!  GOD ALMIGHTY speaks to us through a book!!  And it is a book that is unlike any other, for it contains the truth.  While so many people in this world struggle with the chains of oppression and addiction, the Lord invites us to know the truth and to thereby be set free.  

Paul tells Timothy to guard the good teaching that was entrusted to him.  The same letter tells us to do the same.  The truth of God has been entrusted to us in the bible.  This morning I am asking God to help me to regard the bible as God wants me to.  I want to hunger for God's Word, revere God's Word, submit to God's Word, and elevate God's Word in my life and in this world.  I want to guard the truth with the help of the Holy Spirit.

I read this quote yesterday and it continues to ring in my head today as I contemplate my own inadequacy in my approach to the truth:

From the cowardice that dares not face new truth, from the laziness that is contented with half-truth, from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, Good Lord, deliver me.  Amen.  -Prayer from Kenya, by Howard Hendricks in "Color Outside the Lines".