Hebrews 4:12 says “ for the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged 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.”

I would like to pick up where I left off last week, discussing how God’s word will pierce us as well as comfort us.

Let’s examine the last part of this verse, where it says, “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Yes, right now, God knows your thoughts and even your intents. That’s why it seems like the preacher, if he is “preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ” and not “his own gospel,” has been living in the basement of your life lately.

Have you been in a service and the preacher was talking about you and your mess, and you wondered how he knew that? It’s God’s word calling you and me to the point of repenting or turning from our wicked ways. This is what’s lacking, along with many other things, in churches all across America — a lack of repenting.

What type of Christian are you? Are you one who wants the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s Word, to sting you in a way that leads to conviction of your heart, which leads to repenting? Or are you one who says and needs a “rub me lightly and softly,” saying to the preacher “just tell me what I want to hear and not what I need to hear?”

God’s word will call you out and every evil thought and intention you have hidden in your heart. God gives us chance after chance to come clean from the heart That’s why we need the word of God to convict us as well as comfort us. There are a lot of Christians who right now believe they are in perfect standing with God, and feel no need to repent.

Don’t be afraid of God’s word calling out the junk that’s within your heart. He shows you and I that we have not mastered this thing we call life yet. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 4:3 “for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.”

This is happening right now among Christian people as you read this article. They are afraid of hearing and receiving what they need to know about God and this Christian journey and they are trading the “truth” for hearing and receiving what they want to hear which could lead them to eternal damnation.