Words That Never Come Back Empty
so shall my word be that goes out of my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing I sent it to do.
There's something reassuring about knowing that God's word carries its own power, independent of our certainty or sincerity when we first engage it. Isaiah reminds us that when God speaks, something happens—his word doesn't drift away unused. It lands, it works, it accomplishes what he intends.
This is worth remembering when we think about how faith often begins. Andy Kind, writing for Premier Christianity, reflects on the story of social media influencer Brian Guan, who set out to "pretend" God was real for 30 days as a content experiment. He read the Bible, prayed, and practiced gratitude—not necessarily believing any of it, just going through the motions for an audience. Yet after 20 days, something shifted. He had a genuine epiphany and became a Christian.
It's a strange thought: an experiment built on skepticism, even performance, still involved real exposure to God's word and real acts of prayer. And Isaiah 55 suggests why that might matter more than we'd expect. The power isn't ultimately in the sincerity of the reader but in the word itself—it goes out and does what God sends it to do, whether or not the person reading it fully understands what's happening to them yet.
Kind's piece raises an honest question worth sitting with: can "faking it till you make it" be a legitimate road into real faith? It doesn't diminish the mystery of conversion to admit that God can work through imperfect starting points—half-hearted prayers, curious experiments, even attempts to go viral. If his word doesn't return void, then showing up to read it, even skeptically, is never wasted.
If you're curious how Guan's experiment actually unfolded and what Kind makes of the whole question, it's worth reading the full piece, "Brian Guan pretended God was real - and then became a Christian," over on Premier Christianity.
Read the source: Premier Christianity →