From the Home Place

November 15, 2025

D.L. Moody (1837-1899) served God’s kingdom as a pastor and leader with his life and his wisdom. Moody once commented that he had little interest in getting more people into the Bible, but that his primary interest was to get more of the Bible into people.

You see my friends, for the most part, the American church has bought into the lie that “Information equals Transformation.” When I was working on a bachelor’s degree in Phoenix, I was once again reminded that every professor seemed to think that his class was the only class you were taking.

For example, the first day of the “Genesis” class, we were instructed to read the book of Genisis before tomorrow’s class. That’s fifty chapters of reading in one night. Let alone that as a student carrying 21 credit hours, I had six more classes with similar instructions for homework on that same evening. When I asked one of the professors why he gave so much homework, along with his hour-long lectures, he stated, “Research has revealed that you students will retain only 70% of what we teach you, so we have increased the information presented to you by an additional 50%, hoping you will now retain 90%;” – Thus the idea of information equals transformation. In the school’s defense, not only were the professors great teachers, but the school required each student to have a ministry as well (application of our learning) – I taught fourth-grade Sunday School at our church.

Back to the opinion, transformation does not lead to transformation. I hold the Bible as the primary proof of this statement: Jesus told His disciples, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” Please note the very small, very powerful two-letter words in this verse. “If,” implying that the disciples had two options, to do, or not to do; and the word “do,” requiring action.

Jesus knew that the lives of His disciples would not be transformed by receiving information, He required application of the information in order to realize transformation. Jesus was simply telling us that we do not fully understand the information until we can correctly apply it to our daily lives.

One of our pastoral ministries professors instructed us that as important as proper exegesis of Scripture is, application of that truth was of even greater value. He required us to write sermons on assigned portions of the Bible. Then we were to use highlighters to specify certain portions of our manuscript: Blue for deity, Red for statements from Jesus, Yellow for information and Green for application.

We all proudly turned in our brightly colored first assignments. He graded each right in front of us. In less than fifteen seconds he quickly thumbed through the pages of each manuscript. He would then place either an “A” or an “F” on the front of document. We all received an “F!” Our beloved professor was not looking for the red, nor the blue, not even the yellow, but if each document wasn’t at least one-third green, it received an “F.” He was attempting to help us understand that application, not information, equals transformation.

So, for each of us, when we recognize a biblical truth, our next step should be to ask the Holy Spirit to help us to rightly apply that truth. Just knowing said truth does not change our lives, nor the lives of the people around us. Apply, apply, apply! For you see, the Bible is only a book of information until its readers make proper application.

Applying God’s word with you, Neal