Daily Inspiration Quote by William Ames

For Ames, “hearing” isn’t the passive act we moderns file under “content consumption.” It’s a spiritual posture: obedience disguised as attention. In a Reformed world where salvation anxiety and doctrinal precision were everyday weather, he treats the ear as a moral instrument. To hear the Word rightly is to submit to it; anything less is not incomplete listening but a kind of refusal.

The phrase “devout receiving” does a lot of work. “Devout” narrows the audience to those already oriented toward God, but it also polices the boundary between genuine faith and mere exposure. You can sit through a sermon and still be spiritually deaf; Ames is warning against that comfortable loophole. “Receiving” is equally pointed. It’s not “considering,” “critiquing,” or “debating” the will of God - verbs that assume an equal bargaining table. Receiving implies asymmetry: God speaks, the believer yields.

That’s the subtext: an anti-autonomy ethic delivered in calm, almost domestic language. Ames lived in the wake of the Reformation, when “the Word” (preached, heard, internalized) became the central technology of religious life, competing with ritual, hierarchy, and inherited authority. His line flatters the ordinary congregant - you don’t need a monastery or mystical vision; you need ears and humility - while also tightening discipline. Listening becomes a test of sincerity, and piety becomes measurable: not by feelings, but by compliance.