The Power of the Word of God

In the Come, Follow Me lesson this week we read, “The Lord compared His word to a ‘two-edged sword’ (Doctrine and Covenants 14:2). What does this comparison suggest to you about the word of God? For instance, how is His word quick, powerful, and sharp? How have you experienced the power of God’s word?” The Lord actually made this comparison between His word and a two-edged sword five times in the Doctrine and Covenants, always as a way of introduction to a revelation He was giving (6:2, 11:2, 12:2, 14:2, 33:1). It was similarly used by Paul who said, “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” (Hebrews 4:12). To be quick means that the word of God is living and will continue to be revealed to us in the future as in the past. To be powerful means it can move us to do what the Lord desires us to do, just as Alma declared: “The preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just” (Alma 31:5). To be sharp means that it penetrates and reaches our hearts, “[leading us] to faith on the Lord, and unto repentance, which faith and repentance bringeth a change of heart unto [us]” (Helaman 15:7). The fact that the word is like a sword with two edges means that it cuts and penetrates in all directions: whether given to the young or old, to Jew or Gentile, to poor or rich, it calls all to repentance. “For verily, the voice of the Lord is unto all men, and there is none to escape” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:2). The fact that the Lord said His word is even “sharper” than a sword suggests, as Alma also testified, that His word has more power than physical strength: “It had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them.”

                So how have I personally felt the power of the word of God? I distinctly remember times in my youth reading the Doctrine and Covenants in my bedroom and feeling indeed that there was power far beyond mere words in what I was reading. My freshman year in college I remember a specific teaching opportunity that I had reading these words of the Book of Mormon: “And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people. And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary” (Mosiah 3:7-8). I felt those words at that instant deep in my heart, knowing that they were true. On my mission I read Moroni’s heartfelt witness of faith and the grace of God in Ether 12 over and over again, moved by the power of His experience and invitation: “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them…. And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written, that the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of them, may be and abide in you forever” (Ether 12:27, 41).

In times of need the word of God has been a source of great power and strength to me. When I have felt lost and without the Spirit I have clung to this hidden passage in the Old Testament, knowing the Lord wanted to find what was in my heart: “God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart” (2 Chronicles 32:31). As I have struggled to find my way in various situations and challenges I have often been moved by the Savior’s declaration to us: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). Without Him we can do nothing. Along with this declaration the words of Moses often move me to humility and trust in the Lord as I recognize my weakness before Him: “Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.” But with that his will to persevere moves me to keep trying with the Lord’s help despite my inadequacies: “I will not cease to call upon God, I have other things to inquire of him” (Moses 1:10, 18). I know that I have indeed felt the power of the word of God to guide and strengthen and redirect my own life and pray that it will ever be so. Paul’s declaration has penetrated deep in my own heart and is my testimony too: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13).