Hebrews 1-5

This whole blog-writing thing has been a bit of a journey for me. I’ve always loved writing. When I graduated from college back in the day [4 years ago] I tried to start writing a blog. I thought it would be a good way to keep up with friends…really I was just having a quarter-life crisis and I thought writing would relieve my despondence. Writing did prove to alleviate my post-college confusion but it was writing in a journal to the Lord not on a public web domain. As I scripted my first entry I was burdened with this realization that blogging assumes that others CARE about what you have to say. My fingers jumped around on the keyboard in attempt to explain why I was beginning a blog and half-way through my first letter to the world I decided authoring a blog wasn’t in my future.

This is my second encounter with blog-writing. Knowing my previous affair, I was a bit apprehensive when Jeff mentioned “blogging through the New Testament.” But I sat down at the computer with my first assignment and I found myself in a familiar position…fingers hovering over the alphabet, wondering if it was presumptuous to assume anyone cared about my thoughts on life. Not only were my measly thoughts going public, but now it was also my inadequate summary of God’s AMAZING gift to us: His Word.

Every week I sit down to write about my selected chapters from the New Testament and I confess to God that I am not even worthy of trying to explain His word. Those adjectives that God uses to describe His Holy Bible flood into my head: living, active, sharp, able to penetrate the heart. Next come the adjectives that describe my words: fleeting, unsure, incomplete, obtuse. I ask God to use me despite myself.

That whole exercise took place yesterday when I opened to Hebrews. As I read verse by verse and attempted to soak up God’s direction, I was confronted with those powerful adjectives…“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” I stopped reading. I thought for a while about just writing those words as my blog entry this week. If I really believe that His words are living, active, and powerful should I not just let them speak for themselves?

But I think God gave me this personal battle to share with you. Recently, I’ve been consistently confronted with scriptures in the Bible concerning transformation – “do not conform to the world, rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind”… “it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart”… “But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.”
When I read scripture like this, I am hungry for that seemingly life-altering change. I don’t want to settle for the watered-down version. If God says in His word that we will be guided and transformed and convicted deeply by a relationship with Him…then why are we not? Why does His word seem more like boring and outdated than alive and penetrating to the soul? This may not be your battle, and if it’s not then excuse me for being so lame.

I have asked God why His Word isn’t penetrating my heart and why I am not being transformed and recently God gave me the answer and it was in just a few verses of Psalm 119 that I’m sure I’ve read before….and you probably have too, but I encourage you to click it and take part in the desperation of the Psalmist.

God is still the same as He was when those words were written in Hebrews. He still uses His word to divide the soul and spirit. I think we are the problem [what’s new?].

Have you ever told God that you meditate on His precepts? Or that you rejoice in following His rules? Or asked Him how you can keep your way pure? The Psalmist is in a passionate pursuit of God. He is so beaten and burdened by his own sin. He desires nothing more than to keep his way pure and to hear from God…to know Him, not to have an education about Him but to KNOW Him.

If any of you are still reading, you are probably wishing I had opted to write those two sentences from Hebrews. I don’t know if there is anything I can write that will convince you to open God’s Word with the kind of desperation noted in Psalm 119. Pray today that God will teach your heart how to feast on His Word and that the Spirit will guide you. May His Word become living, active, and sharp to you.


Jenna Trapasso
May 8