The most rewarding investment is probably one of the most overlooked, and under appreciated. But its benefits never loses its value, but rather keeps appreciating.

I checked out an article on Investopedia: How to Invest in Stocks: A Beginner’s Guide to learn more about how it works. The article describes investing in stocks as a time-tested way of putting your money to work.

Some of the key takeaways the article provides:

• Investing is committing money with the expectation of some profit.
• Investing rather than consuming allows your money to grow over time.
• Investing comes with risks.

The investment to which I am referring also has similar key takeaways:

• Investment of time spent yields ongoing benefits.
• Investment of time spent builds your capacity to grow.
• The only risk involved is failure to allow it to impact you.

The investment of time spent reading the word of God is the most rewarding investment. The only thing it costs is time; however, its benefits far outweigh the time you invest.

Ongoing Benefits

From my own personal experience, I have found that the word of God in me is like a treasure that is so deeply hidden but always surfaces at the most opportune moments. It increases my faith in God. It helps me to see all of my circumstances through the lens of scripture. It really helps me to know God the Creator, to know his heart, and his unsurpassed love. It helps me to minister to others in need with his word.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.

Proverbs 25:11ESV

Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Colossians 3:16ESV

Even the quote that I just cited is an example of ongoing benefits because that scripture just came to my mind because it was a part of my hidden treasure. I never intentionally memorized that scripture, but it surfaced at the time of trying to make this point. This of course is the work of the Spirit and the time spent in investing in the word.

Builds Your Capacity to Grow

I wrote some years ago, It Doesn’t Happen By Osmosis, to encourage believers to not just admire those who know the word, but become one who knows the word, and of course becoming one requires an investment of time.

This investment of time helps you to strengthen your spiritual muscles so that you become more sensitive to sin so that you do not want to dishonor God. You begin to believe and rely on his promises which helps your walk through various circumstances in your life. You develop a compassion for others. The fruit of the Spirit begin to show up in your life. (Galatians 5:22-23) The Bible becomes your source for discerning truth from error, and you learn that:

The word of God is good for direction.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

Psalm 119:105KJV

It helps us to keep the right perspective.

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12 ESV

It makes us wise.

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. 98 Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. 99 I have more understanding than all my teachers, your testimonies are my meditation.

Psalm 119:97-99 ESV

It gives us hope in our circumstances that God is working.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28KJV

The cited scriptures is a minuscule sampling of a deep treasure that is so worth your time of investment. I am living proof that although I could know so much more, that there is so much hidden in me that it just has enriched my life beyond what I might have imagined years before.

The Only Risk

Initially, I would have stated that there are no risks, but there are. For one can just read the scriptures for the sake of being able to state you know the word or have read the word but that the word has impacted your life, your perspectives, how you live. Both Jesus and his brother James speaks to this:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

John 5:39

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks a himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

James 1:22-25ESV

With the right mindset, there is no downside, there are no risks in the investment of time spent in the word. Time spent in the word is the greatest investment in you, for you, and for others. It is not too late for you to make this investment. Its rewards are limitless.