A Precious Gift

If you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:1-5.

Something you consider priceless is impossible to replace. You can’t put a price tag on something that is priceless. Brother Gearl asked us Sunday if we had anything in our lives that we would consider irreplaceable. He asked if there was a relationship we absolutely could not replace. Many of us would consider our wife or our husband irreplaceable. For some that priceless relationship may be with a child or a sibling. As followers of Jesus none of us can put a price on our relationship with Christ. Our relationship with Him is both precious and priceless, if we are intimately involved with Him and worship and praise Him as our Lord and Savior.

The most priceless jewel in the world is a shimmering, flawless, blue diamond that sold in Hong Kong for $7.98 million. Pretend for a moment that by some unforeseen circumstances someone gave it to you as a gift. Let’s say you determined not to sell it and decided you wanted to keep it. What steps would you take to protect it? Armed guards? It’s own heavily-guarded fortress? How much would you sacrifice to make sure your new priceless gift remained safe and secure?

God has another gift for us, a priceless gift that outshines the brightest, most expensive diamond — His Holy Word. How do you regard God’s word. Take a look at your personal Bible. Is it pristine, free of underlines and notes in the margins and looking like the day you bought it? Or are the pages covered with highlighted passages, notes in the margins, underlined words, pages changing color and looking haggard with turned down corners, sticky notes, family pictures tucked between the pages and old church programs marking favorite passages? Which Bible might be more precious?

How precious is God’s word to you? Paul answered that for us in Brother Gearl’s lesson Sunday: “…when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God.” And why is it so precious? What does it do? Paul finished the verse by saying the word of God . . .”performs its work in you who believe.” v.13. In other words, God’s word works in us and through us in proportion to the degree to which we regard it as precious. Brother Gearl said that when something is priceless to us, we don’t let anything come between us and the priceless thing. Think of something in your life you regard as priceless. To what extent would you go to preserve its worth to you?

If you do consider God’s word priceless, the only way you can hear it speak to you is if you open your hearts to hear God speak to you through it. How many times have you heard Brother Gearl tell us what he says every time he reads God’s word. He begins every study with, “Speak to my heart, God, through your word.”

Then, as we read God’s word and apply it in our lives, we can see its power working in our lives. It creates testimonies in our lives that God’s word is, in truth, priceless if we are to experience God’s best for our lives.