And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit …
- Ephesians 1:13
 
Today’s passage includes both a moment of hearing and a moment of believing. These two moments – in fact – happen to take place at the same time. And what follows them is truly remarkable.
 
When you heard the message of truth, that good news that Jesus has died and risen from the dead to save you from your enslavement to sin, in that very moment you were included in Christ. You received in that moment every benefit and every blessing that was due to Christ. All of good that was due to come to him from all of his obedience in all his hard life … all of that comes to you.
 
In that same heartbeat, another moment sends shockwaves through your soul. You don’t just hear the message of truth, you believe the message to be true. You believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, that he did it for you, and that he wants you to join his family. In that moment you believed, God gives you all of himself, filling you with his very own Spirit.
 
Hearing and believing. Believing and hearing. The two go together. Neither is valuable without the other. You can’t believe if you never hear. And hearing without believing won’t change anything about your life, community or destiny.
 
Despite this, we can struggle with hearing and believing.
 
We may have weeks or months or years when we coast on our belief, treating Christianity as a status or achievement rather than as a relationship. We get too busy to listen to God or to truly hear the message of truth that continues to ring in our ears.
 
And, if we’re honest with ourselves, the other side of the equation happens to us too: we can settle for mere hearing. We can hear the news of our salvation over and over and over again. We can analyze it, study it, run experiments on it, diagram it, and talk about it but cease to let it settle into our hearts and pump through our blood and fill our veins.
 
God’s good work in us invites us every day to both hear and believe. Which do you need to lean more into today?