A very powerful message from Ann Voskamp about the power of the Bible.

When you first meet this guy named Joshua, you’d never know that he’s been in the mouth of a lion.What do you say to a man who’s walked out of the mouth of a lion? Only to give his entire life to the Lion and the Lamb?

You’d never have the faintest idea that lion teeth slammed down on his waist while he was just a kid sleeping out in the wilderness with his herd of goats.

Clenched between the incisors and canine teeth of the lion, Joshua found himself dragged into the bush, braced to be ripped apart for a pulpy nocturnal feast for the beast.

And in the split second that the lion dropped the mangled boy to get a better grip, the kid’s barking dog lunged in between the lion and the boy, growling and snarling, holding the lion at bay until near-by goat herders snapped awake and dragged the barely-alive Joshua out of the lion’s deadly reach.

The boy lived to become a scarred man. What do you say to a man who’s walked out of the mouth of a lion? Only to give his entire life to the Lion and the Lamb?

“Why?” I ask Joshua standing there in the wilderness, holding the reins of a camel. “Why — give your entire adult life, nearly the last three decades of your life, to translating the Bible into the language of your people?”

Joshua leans forward. “It is like giving them a weapon.” He points to a tree where women in these stacking rings of glorious, rattling beads are gathered under its branches.

“One of those women told me said “Now you have given us a weapon that we can use. Which is God’s Word. It’s like you have given us a spear that we can use to fight a spiritual warfare.”

Because you have to beat back your lion attacks, because “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

Joshua holds up a Bible.How would everything in this tilting world stand stronger if the Word of God laid more open for us than closed?

“This is — powerful. The weapon is God’s Word. Now, we can be equipped. But the problem is now — we need the other bigger part of the weapon. The Old Testament. We also need the Old Testament.”

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