God's Word is True

Written by Cameron Miller - Heartland Church - Fort Wayne, IN
​Photo Credit: Janet Mueller

God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Numbers 23:19 NIV.

The Bible makes a claim that God cannot lie. I used to think this meant that He can’t say anything that contradicts reality. “Black is black, white is white, pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza, and the Lord Almighty is unable to claim otherwise.” That’s how the thinking went. But more recently, I’ve  come to realize a deeper truth: reality isn’t so important that God dare not contradict it; rather God’s word is so powerful that reality can’t help but correspond to it.

I have this power myself — or a lesser refraction of it, at least. As an author, when I write a story, it’s my story. And as the owner of that story, whatever I say is true. If I want there to be magic in my world, then all I have to do is write that there’s magic. If I describe my main character walking through the bazaar, encountering a variety of sights and smells, then that is what that bazaar is like. The story is composed entirely of the words I write, and so everything I say becomes truth.

So if that’s what I can do, just imagine what God is capable of. He is the creator of the universe, and so it cannot help but be exactly what He says it is. The world was dark, but He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Lazarus was dead, but Jesus said, “Come forth,” and a dead man walked out of his grave. He took one look at the raging sea and said, “Be still,” and it was.

Sometimes I act like a character in the story trying to argue with the narrator. I need to remind myself that this is God’s world. It came to be because He told it to. It is what He says it is. And it is becoming what He says it will be. As God’s Word, the Bible does not merely explain the principles by which the world works, it defines them, the same way computer code tells your device how it has to operate. If God were to proclaim pineapple on pizza to be delicious, then no matter how my limited mind would recoil at that statement, it would be true. I may have my opinions, my reasoning, and my preconceptions, but they all pale before the supremacy of what God speaks. So in the end, two choices remain: I can either trust, or I can rebel. And only one of those choices works out well.

Prayer: God, You have spoken words into my life that are shaping me to become who you have called me to be. May I play a role in them coming true, and in helping this world to live up to what You have told it to be. Help me release the lies I’ve convinced myself are true when You want to replace them with Your Truth.​