When I first heard the words in my spirit, “My people do not know my word, nor do they know my ways,” I didn’t fully understand how serious they were. At the time, they sounded like a strong warning, but I had not yet seen just how true they were in everyday life. I assumed that if people went to church, called themselves Christians, and spoke often about faith, then they must also know what God has said in His Word. But as the years passed, I began to realize that many people are familiar with Christian phrases and church language while remaining surprisingly disconnected from the truth of Scripture itself.
That realization has become even more painful to me today. As I look around, I feel both saddened and alarmed by how far much of the church has drifted from what is clearly written in the Bible. In many places, personal opinions, social trends, traditions, and cultural pressures seem to carry more weight than the actual words of God. Messages that challenge people to repent, obey, and pursue holiness are often replaced by messages designed to comfort, entertain, or affirm whatever people already want to believe. Instead of allowing Scripture to shape our lives, too many treat it as something to edit, soften, or ignore when it becomes inconvenient.
This is not a small issue. When God’s people don’t know His Word, they cannot rightly discern His will, recognize error, or reflect His heart to the world around them. A church that loses its anchor in Scripture will eventually be tossed around by every new idea, every cultural shift, and every popular voice that sounds spiritual on the surface. And when that happens, the witness of the church grows weak. We may still have buildings, programs, conferences, and online platforms, but without truth at the center, we risk preserving a form of religion while losing the power and purity that should mark the people of God.
A powerful example of this in Scripture is found in Hosea 4:6, where God declares, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Hosea was speaking to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, a people who had turned away from the Lord and given themselves to idolatry, immorality, and spiritual compromise. The knowledge they lacked was not merely information about God, but a true knowledge of His ways, His covenant, and His heart. They had rejected His law, forgotten His truth, and the result was spiritual collapse. That is why Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and Proverbs 9:10 adds, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” When people lose the fear of God, they also lose the foundation of wisdom. And when the church no longer trembles at God’s Word, destruction does not begin in the culture first—it begins in the heart.
We see the same warning in the New Testament when Jesus said to the Sadducees, “You are mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” They were religious, educated, and confident, yet they were still deeply wrong because they did not truly understand what God had spoken. That is a sobering reminder for us today. It is possible to be active in religion, familiar with church culture, and still be blind to the truth. Knowledge of God’s Word is not optional for the believer; it is essential. Without it, people are easily deceived, truth is distorted, and the voice of God is replaced by the opinions of man.
For that reason, this should be a wake-up call for all of us. The answer is not more noise, more trends, or more empty religion. The answer is a humble return to God’s Word. We need to open the Bible not only to read it, but to believe it, obey it, and let it correct us. We need to ask God to reveal where we have been distracted, deceived, or spiritually lazy. We need hearts that are willing to be confronted by truth and changed by it. Christianity was never meant to be a collection of ideas we admire from a distance. It is a life of surrender to God, shaped by His truth and marked by faith, humility, love, and obedience.
Even now, it is not too late. God is still calling His people back to Himself. He is still merciful, still faithful, and still ready to meet those who seek Him with sincere hearts. That is what gives me hope. My prayer is that the church would once again become a people who know God’s Word, understand His heart, and reflect His character in the way they live. Real change does not begin when we simply complain about the culture or point out the failures of others. It begins when we personally return to the Lord, allow His Word to search us deeply, and let Him transform us from the inside out. If the church is to stand strong in this generation, it must first return to the truth it was always meant to live by.
Minister A Francine Green I May 2026