I Samuel 12:24 “Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.”

Back in the days of my youth, the church and pastors of churches had different thoughts about how to administer the Word of God to people. Back in the day, we had men who seemed fearless in their stand for even the very fact that God exists. They defended His Word (the Old King James Version) and they would sacrifice their own honor for the sake of preserving God’s Honor.

Part of the teachings of scripture and what some pastors insisted on was for their people to find a Life’s Verse. What is a life’s verse?

A life verse is a Bible verse or a short passage of Scripture that you reflect on and turn to frequently. It is a verse often committed to memory. However, sometimes, it may be difficult to find the verse that speak to you during this season of you life. After all, there are 31,102 verses in the Bible.

The preachers of the days in which I speak were committed to their craft. They tried to be Word Smiths that took hard verses and made them simple to understand by using illustrations that people could relate to much like Jesus did as He taught parables.

Then some man began the process of changing the words of God so that it made sense to the common man. He did not realize that he was not helping anyone. He produced a commentary on the Bible instead of reproducing scripture. Scripture is sacred. Scripture is written exactly how God wanted it recorded for the world to read.

The first old preachers made God’s Word understandable while the next generation of preacher has moved from God’s Word to a poor representative of God’s Word. It worries me more than you think it would, but I take seriously the verse in Revelation 22:19 “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

OK, I hear the words of many of today’s ministers screaming at me, “Even the King James 1611 Bible is a translation!”

It is, yet I believe it is a translation to English guided by God. After all, it is 412 years old. Ever since the Great Awakening started by George Whitefield through the times of other great preachers such as Charles Finney, D.L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, and many others, this old King James Bible has been used and blessed of God.

Here is a challenge to those who went with the newer versions that only started being used since 1984, where are all the huge revivals? How come there are no more sweeping changes to American religion. Since 1984, we have had a few crusades, but no sweeping revivals. I’ll leave this thought now that I have got you angry about it enough to try to prove me wrong. I hope you are angry enough that you actually study it and find the truth instead of the lies the devil hands out…you see the devil can’t destroy the Word of God for He has preserved it, but he can pollute it by handing out “easier to read” versions of scripture.

Let’s get back to a Life’s verse. As you read scripture and a verse pops out at you like the one I have quoted at the beginning, and that verse seems to apply to your past and to your future, then claim it, memorize it and refer to it often. Our verse does that.

I Samuel 12:24 “Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.” “Consider how great things he hath done for you.” If we chose this for our life’s verse we will constantly be reminded to look back and see what God has done for you. The goodness of God will shine through all the trials, temptation and troubles. We many times for get the days past and only concentrate of the problems we face, yet trouble and problems are only temporary. The problems I had last year are gone. They have been replaced with today’s troubles.

Back in the day of preachers preaching to people to pick a Life’s Verse, life was much harder physically. During the time of the Great Awakening, men worked from dawn to dusk to provide for their family. Farmers especially knew that God was involved in their crops producing enough food for them to survive the winter. Today we have moved from recognizing God’s Goodness to us to relying on the government to take care of our every need.

Think about days gone by and try to find God’s Hand in the solution to many of the problems you have face, then give Him the glory He deserves. Truly consider how great things he hath done for you and give Him the Praise He deserves.