Question 90: How is the Word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?Answer: The the Word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation, and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practise it in our lives.
Dear Neighbor,
The bases for these final questions and answers is Acts 2:41-42
So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.Those who received the Word began to practice the Christian life!
In the parable of the Sower and the Soils; (Mark 4:1-20) Jesus explained that there are four ways in which people receive the Word:
- People who hear, but do not receive the Word.
- People who hear, receive the Word, but do not lay it up in their hearts.
- People who hear, receive the Word, lay it up in their hearts, but do not practice it in their lives.
- People who hear, receive the Word, lay it up in their hearts, and practice it in their lives.
In Matthew 13:16, Jesus said to his disciples: “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.”
The Word of God must not be heard only but must be received with faith and love, laid up in our hearts, and practiced in our lives. The apostle James wrote, James 1:23-24
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.
Do not take the reading our hearing of the Word lightly, but attend to it with diligence, prayerfully prepare yourself and others to receive the Word with faith and love, that you may lay it up in your hearts, and practice what the Word says in your lives.
Michael Peek
Your Servant for Jesus’ Sake
