Spoiler alert: God’s nature never changes. His truth is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
While Christian writers seek to write in a compelling, engaging manner, seeking to pull readers through their books from paragraph to paragraph and page after page, the foundational theology of which they write never changes.
You might write about the need for someone to make Jesus the Lord of their lives, but it will be this verse which is the reason:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16, NIV).
When life gets complicated, this verse will always be the balm that will soothe a troubled heart and encourage a Christ-follower to see their lives the way God does:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28, NIV).
When strength is gone and a situation seems hopeless:
I can do everything through him who gives me strength (Philippians 4:13, NIV).
When we wonder how to live in a fallen world, we recall this:
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2, NIV).
And on it goes.
A number of updated lists of Bible verses that are the most-searched verses online appear each year. Those above are in the top 10 as compiled by BibleStudyTools.com.
No new theology is indicated from global Internet searches for help from the Bible that are conducted year after year. The same lists could have been compiled by any Christian over the last eighteen hundred years. God’s Word is always relevant and practical.
Why?
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:14-17, NIV).
Whenever I hear someone say they don’t believe in the Bible because it isn’t science, I smile a bit, knowing our God has never changed. But we used to think the sun orbited around the earth, the earth was flat, smoking cigarettes was good for you, and cottage cheese was healthy eating. (I tossed that last one in because I don’t like it to feel justified.)
While you should work hard to find new and interesting ways to communicate, building stories, plots, and prose that reach the heart and head of a reader, the truth behind your writing is settled. This fact should be calming and encouragement for any Christian writer.
