On April 18, 1775—240 years ago—Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride alerting the Revolutionary forces in Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts to the imminent arrival of the British army. During that time the practice was for military battles to be fought “Napoleonic” style where opposing forces would try to overwhelm each other with firepower and a cavalry attack out in the open.
The vastly superior numbers and weaponry of the British were too much for the Revolutionaries to overcome. Their sound defeat led them to use guerilla tactics—shooting from behind cover rather than out in the open. It was a major turning point in the Revolutionary War that ultimately led to independence from England.
In our spiritual warfare, we should also be willing to make adjustments when necessary. The Bible tells us that our spiritual warfare entails putting on “the full armor of God” (Ephesians 6:13, 17), including the “sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word.”
One of my goals in writing the Life Essentials Study Bible was to make it user friendly and versatile. In addition to its other unique features, toward the end of the seven-year project we added 1,500 QR codes enabling readers to access more than 250 total hours of video teaching of the principles in the Bible.
Since it was published in October 2011, we have received numerous testimonials about how this unique design has helped readers in their Bible study. In one case, a busy executive—the General Manager of a television station—shared that when he is too exhausted at the end of a busy day to flip the pages of the Bible, he enjoys watching and listening to one of the videos. In another case, the mother of a seventh grade girl in the Atlanta, Georgia area reported that her daughter listens to one of my videos in the morning as she is getting ready for school. We have also received encouraging reports from small group leaders who have discovered how to transfer the videos to a large screen TV for their meetings.
These and numerous other examples of people changing their approach to Bible study remind me of Principle #15 in Ephesians, p. 1635 in my Life Essentials Study Bible where I state “In order to receive God’s ‘vast strength’ (6:10), it is our task to take and use the spiritual equipment God provides (v. 11), which Paul described piece by piece (vv. 14-17).” I wonder what Paul would think if he were here today observing people adapting their study of the Word of God to technology in our media-enriched society.