You know, I can’t tell you how many times I have read Hebrews 4:12 and been blessed by its pointing me to the supernatural power of the Bible:
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Please know that what I’m about to share is not at all to minimize the blessing of taking the above verse at face-value (as I’ve always done in the past). It’s just that when I read it again yesterday, I finally caught on to the verse’s context.
The focus of the chapter is the author’s warning for his readers not to make the same mistake of unbelief/hardheartedness as the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert for 40 years (3:19). He goes on to give us the way out of repeating this dangerous “pitfall”. In short, he says that to escape unbelief, we need to “rest from our works as God did” on the 7th day of Creation (4:4,10).
The writer seems to know that it is human nature to want to figure out some formula for resting. And so, to help us avoid the perils of self-righteous “rest” (which is not even remotely close to real rest), he points us to the Bible as the remedy; more specifically, to how the Bible “exposes our innermost thoughts and desires” (4:12b NLT) in order to bring us into the tender-hearted rest of Jesus (Mathew 11:28)
It is so easy for us to judge the Israelites for their unbelief; but, aren’t we all “cut from the same cloth”? Like, “people are people”, right?
Enter in A.A.’s Step 4: to make a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” NOT resting in my innermost thoughts and desires is so easy to side-step if I’m not careful. I find that a big, rightly-humbling part of my “issues” have been and continue to be how clueless/noncognizant I am regarding a whole lot of my thoughts.
I’m not here to give a lecture on “busyness” because being busy is not at all wrong in-and-of-itself. No judgement here, ok? Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you that I stay plenty busy. BUT in the same breath I will say that my own recovery journey out of “adrenaline addiction” has only been possible to the degree in which I have literally sat myself down and been willing to be ok with what God shows me about my innermost thoughts and desires. Being “on the run” by go-go-going (albeit doing good, “Christian works”) on the other hand, has led me down some painful and destructive paths.
When I connected the dots in Hebrews 3 & 4 between the Sword of God (4:12) as protection from the deadliness of unbelief, I was excited for the confirmation. Reading a few verses of the Bible is one of the tools in my “rehab toolbox” – seriously! When I find myself caught up in activity and I hear that still, small voice of the Holy Spirit calling me to “bump it down” (ha) – to physically STOP/put on the brakes – I pull out one of my re-centering/calming “tools” – the Bible, being one of them. For me, it needs to be just a (small) “bite size” of the Bible in order for it to work it’s transforming power; otherwise, my squirrelly/wandering thoughts tend to take over! It definitely acts as a SWORD in such cases, cutting through all the lies behind “adrenaline addiction”, (or any other battle of the flesh) and brings rest and truth to my heart.
If you are led to go further along the lines of our “innermost thoughts and desires”, here is some rather heavy-duty Step # 4 reading preached by Charles Spurgeon. If you know Spurgeon, you know up front that he “pulled no punches”! I pray you will be richly blessed by his message as I have been myself.
Title: “A Caution to the Presumptuous” by Charles Spurgeon
https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/a-caution-to-the-presumptuous
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