By Hearing the Word
Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Friend, do you try your best to do all the right things, only to feel like you come up short? You watch what you say, how you behave, and how you treat others, but something inside gets weary of the performance. You keep doing and doing, and still, it seems like you can’t do enough! Why does it feel that way? Perhaps you’ve misunderstood the message of faith. God doesn’t work His miracles in your life because of what you do; He does it because you believe! When you work hard you are taking the burden upon yourself; forgetting to include God. But when you lay ALL your burdens at the Lord’s feet, He will carry them and do for you what you cannot do for yourself.
The first Christians had their difficulties too! When the Apostle Paul wrote to them, he asked whether they had seen miracles or received God’s Spirit by obeying the Jewish laws. “Of course not,” he exclaimed, “it is because you believed the message you heard about Jesus Christ!” If these were trusting the message of grace, why then did they struggle with performance? Where was their faith? Paul wrote to believers in another city that “faith comes by hearing, that is, hearing the Word of God.”
Not everyone Paul taught struggled because they neglected the Word. A young man named Timothy joined Paul in his journeys to spread the Good News. Paul knew that Timothy had a believing mother and grandmother but saw that his own faith was real and alive. Paul told Timothy to “be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.” Did he expect Timothy to behave that way just because it was right, or how he was raised? No, Paul commended Timothy for being a worthy minister nourished by the message of faith and the good teaching he had followed because he followed Paul’s instructions to focus on reading the Scriptures. When you feed your faith the Word of God your behavior will not be a performance.
Read: Gal 3:1-5 , Rom 10:17, 2 Tim 1:5-7, 1 Tim 4:6-13
Listen: Word of God