Receive his Word

We happen to have a middle age couple for lunch the other day.  While we were enjoying our meal, the wife confessed, “I’m convinced our generation got stuck making the same meals our mothers taught us over and over again.  It’s so hard for us to break out of our mold.  While this new generation of house wives have discovered so many new and better ways of making the same foods.”

Indeed, we are creatures of habit.

An old American proverb, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, essentially verifies it’s difficult to change old habits or long held views. 

While reading the Parable of the Sower this week, a short connecting phrase caught my attention.  I underlined it below

…Still others are like the seeds sown on good soil. They hear the word, receive it, and produce a crop…

Notice “receive it” connects “the word” with “producing crop”.

My study Bible labels it “receptivity”.

Both Webster and Google define “receptivity” as willingness to consider or accept new suggestions and ideas.

Now connect the entire verse…

In order for the word of God to produce an effect (change in your mind)...

you have to be willing to embrace newly suggested ways to understand it.  

The hardest thing to do is to let go of former ways of thinking, especially in the scriptures.   

At one point, while teaching his disciples, Jesus adds “if only you’d be willing to receive it….(Matt. 11:14)

…or if only you would approach the word open minded, and without criticism.  You might just receive an entirely new revelation.

 

"There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.” -Carl Sandburg

 

"Why is the truth, it would seem, revealed to some and not to others? Is there a special organ for receiving revelation from God? Yes, though usually we close it and do not let it open up: God’s revelation is given to something called a loving heart.”

 -Seraphim Rose

 

Supporting Texts

Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. (Mark 10:15)

then they that gladly received his word were baptized:...(Ac.2:41)

…for neither did I from man receive it, nor was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ,…(Gal. 1:12)

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: (1 Cor 11:23)

 He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words,…(Jo. 12:48)

The one being able to receive it, let him receive it."… (Matt. 19:12)

Gentiles also had received the word of God. (Acts 11:1)