This is a simple plea as we continue in the new year: Christian, read the Word! Your soul needs the scripture the same way that your body needs food and rest. As a tree needs the ground and the flower needs the stem.
What man would carelessly go days or weeks without food or sleep and expect to be unaffected? What human could function and live healthily if they slept only once or twice a week? Yet thousands upon thousands of people who claim to have living, healthy spirits seem confident that they are able to function without regular spiritual food or rest. They are fools, comforting themselves with deceit, and you are among their number if you think that your soul can live without eating regularly.
When our physical bodies are in need of sleep or food they notify us with feelings of tiredness and hunger. The human spirit, however, warns of its need by silence. Is your soul not hungry for the Word of God? Do you not long for spiritual communion with the Lord and all his saints? Tremble, for the living soul will cry out until its needs be met, but the dead and dying soul will languish in silence.
Despair of growth, oh man, if you do not consistently drink from the streams of grace. Question your salvation if you have no desire to.
Those who have been truly born again eagerly desire to bear fruit. To, “bear much fruit, and so prove to be disciples.” No plant can do so unless it is well nourished. Is there any wonder that there is so little harvest of true fruit in our day if the people of God are not meditating on the Word day and night, seeking to become like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in season? Christian, the Lord has surrounded you with stream upon stream of grace to satisfy and strengthen your soul, but you must drink! Drink, and bear fruit in keeping with the seed that you have received.
Read, meditate, memorize, discuss, ponder, and pray the Word. Without doing so you will surely die, just as a branch that does not abide in the vine does not bear fruit and is therefore cut off to be thrown into the fire.
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