About heeding...

You know how certain scriptures become red letter moments in your life? I have known those moments since I first came to know the Lord. In fact, the Lord highlighted the Scriptures to me before I had ever read the Bible: He let me see them in pictures. 

For instance at the time of my conversion, I "saw" that the Christians who were sharing the Lord with me at that moment sat, as it were, safely on a rock while the rest of the unbelievers at the party (I was as an observer) were sinking in this awful sticky slush (I can still see it in my mind). Later, when my life had been turned around by the grace of God I read, astounded, about Jesus being the Rock and about the miry clay and about my new life of hope and solidity in Psalm 40:2:

"He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established by goings."

Jesus before being recognized. "The Road to Emmaus" by Robert Zund

Luke 24:30

Had I denied the Spirit who showed me those pictures, had I not obeyed them nor followed them, I shudder to think where I would be now. Had those disciples not embraced His words, they would certainly not have returned to Jerusalem to see the resurrected Christ but would have continued on the road of despondency. 

We come to know things by trying them; the senses of touch, sight, smell, taste, hearing enable us to prove them, see what they are... Why should it surprise us that we come to know the Word of God by proving it? We prove the Word to ourselves by obeying it... How else could we possibly observe for ourselves that it is true?

I also do not believe that this process of receiving the word and being renewed ever stops in the life of a Christian. God, let me evermore heed Your Word, hear it and do it. 

"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" John 7:17