We must be channels for the Word of God that Christ may speak through us and Christ may work through us by His Word. This means that we have got to have a knowledge of the Word of God. We must not only read God's Word and study God's Word; we must memorise God's Word. ... I know from my own experience, and the wickedness of my own heart, that some people trust more in their own words of persuasion and their own babbling than the Word of God. That is why some people can talk and talk and talk, they can corner people and hammer people, they can do all kinds of things, but nothing will ever happen. You can discuss, and discuss, and discuss, but it is only the Word of God that can get into a heart.
I once saw a picture of the Constitution of the United States, very skillfully engraved in copper plate, so that when you looked at it closely it was nothing more than a piece of writing, but when you looked at it at a distance, it was the face of George Washington. The face shone out in the shading of the letters at a little distance, and I saw the person, not the words, nor the ideas; and I thought, “‘That is the way to look at the Scriptures and understand the thoughts of God, to see in them the face of love, shining through and through; not ideas, nor doctrines, but Jesus Himself as the Life and Source and sustaining Presence of all our life.”
"Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" This was Satan's crafty inquiry; and had the word of God been dwelling richly in Eve's heart, her answer might have been direct, simple, and conclusive. The true way in which to meet Satan's questions and suggestions, is to treat them as his, and repel them by the word. To let them near the heart, for a moment, is to lose the only power by which to answer them. The devil did not openly present himself and say, "I am the devil, the enemy of God, and I am come to traduce him, and ruin you." This would not be serpent-like; and, yet, he really did all this, by raising questions in the mind of the creature. To admit the question, "hath God said?" when I know that God has spoken, is positive infidelity...