Portraits of Faith: Alvin York and the God Who Measures Your Heart
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” — Hebrews 4:12 (NKJV)
World War I is probably a forgotten war in the lives of most Americans today. It was a war of loyalty — nations bound to treaties, dragged into a conflict that would reshape the world.
That war introduced trench warfare. Germans dug in, and American troops were called to storm the enemy’s position.
Here’s what I want you to see: we are still called to storm the enemy’s position. Satan and his forces have dug in, and God is looking for soldiers who will stand their ground and fight.
War is often decided by measurements. How far an army has advanced. How much territory has been taken, or taken back. The same is true in our hearts.
How far has the enemy advanced in your life? How much ground has he persuaded you to give up? The ultimate goal of the enemy is for us to surrender our hearts over to him.
Our text in Hebrews 4:12 examines that very thing. There is a measurement. A standard that the Lord Jesus Christ — the final Word to man — uses to evaluate our lives. And the unit of measurement is the written Word of God.
The first part of our verse makes something clear: our Bibles are not dead books that should sit on a shelf collecting dust. God’s Word is alive. If our Bibles have become dead to us, it’s because our hearts have been surrendering territory to the enemy.
His Word cuts to the heart. It literally reveals itself to us and through us. God’s Word is always clear, and the path we are to follow is always lit right in front of us.
A Nobody from the Hills of Tennessee
One of my heroes was the most decorated soldier of World War I. He’s one of my heroes, not just because of what he did on the battlefield, but because of what he illustrates about being a hero for God.
His name was Alvin C. York. Born in Pall Mall, Tennessee, in the valley of the three forks of the Wolf River near the Kentucky border. A simple man from a simple time.
He wasn’t always a man of faith. In his twenties, Alvin spent his time drinking, smoking, and fighting. But after his father died, he became the man of the house. And one day, his mother had had enough of his wayward ways. She sat him down and asked, “Alvin, when are you going to become a man like your dad and granddad were?”
God used those words of truth to cut right to his heart. Shortly after, Alvin was saved. Changed. Gone was the old Alvin York.
The truth of the living Word of God can come from a variety of places. It might come through the love of a mother or a father speaking His truth. God uses that to convict and encourage a heart.
How Does God Measure Obedience?
But how does God measure our hearts in obedience? You ready?
No one is obedient who is not first loving.
In the Old Testament, God tells us to keep His commandments fifty-nine times. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15, NKJV). Five times in 1 John, the Bible tells us to keep His commandments.
But the clincher is found in 1 John 2:5 — “But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him” (NKJV).
God’s Word becomes alive by how much we love Him and others. A Christian who isn’t loving isn’t truly living.
And God’s Word is also a discerner — a judge — of our thinking and our motives. What we do is important, but why we do what we do is just as important.
The Battle in the Argonne Forest
Alvin York was drafted to fight in World War I. He struggled deeply with the idea of having to kill another human being. At the bottom of his draft card, he wrote these words: “Yes. Don’t want to fight.”
Alvin believed the Bible said “Thou shalt not kill,” and he believed that obeying God’s Word was the first thing any man should do. He left his beloved Tennessee home and everything he knew.
At boot camp in Georgia, he was known as a marksman. A sharpshooter trained by years of hunting in those hills. But he told his commanding officer about his dilemma. He needed to know clearly what God’s will was for him. They granted him ten days’ leave to go home and figure it out.
His officers gave him a book: The History of the United States. But the answer wasn’t in the history book. He found his answer in the book with all the answers — his Bible.
Alvin obeyed God’s Word and shipped off to France to fight the Germans.
On October 8, 1918, in the Argonne Forest, Alvin C. York entered the battle that would measure his heart forever. America had entered the war near the end, but in that forest, something extraordinary happened. Corporal York watched many of his unit get killed and pinned down by machine gun nests on the hill.
The enemy had dug in. The trenches were heavily fortified.
Alvin York, a nobody from the hills, ordered his men to stay put and guard the prisoners they had captured. Then he crawled up that hill and systematically took over the machine gun nests, killed 25 enemy soldiers, and captured 132 Germans.
His commanding officer asked him why he had done it, knowing his firm surrender to the Word and the will of God.
York simply said, “Those guns were killing hundreds, maybe thousands, and there weren’t nothing anyone could do but stop those guns.”
He killed to save lives.
Take the Hill
Here’s the truth about war, whether it’s physical or spiritual: lives are at stake. There are people all around us who need God’s love, and the enemy has dug in. Many have given the enemy ground. So you and I have to do what Alvin York did.
We have to take the hill.
God’s Word is alive. It measures our hearts. It reveals our motives. And it calls us forward — not to sit in the trench, but to advance.
So let me ask you: What territory have you surrendered? What hill is God calling you to take?
Pick up the sword of the Spirit. The living Word of God, and start climbing.
Keep Looking Up!
Heaven is closer than you think.
May God bless your day.
Related devotionals: Pascal’s Night of Fire · Mary McLeod Bethune story · Eisenhower’s D-Day faith
Want more from Pastor Rodney?
If today’s devotional spoke to your heart, my books carry these same themes deeper. Stories of God moving in ordinary lives, scripture for tired pastors and weary parents, and steady reminders that heaven is closer than you think.