Be ye doers

“Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22 ESV)

We are called to action. We are meant to live out our faith. It’s easy to talk the talk but it’s tough to walk the walk. To be honest, this devotional probably won’t make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Reading it may hurt a little. It may be uncomfortable. And hopefully, it causes change.

The problem is that we can become content to simply listen to the Word. Just hearing the Word without acting upon it isn’t enough. While studying the Bible is good, right, and needed, we are not meant to merely study. We are called to obey God’s Word and do what it says. “The end of all knowledge is conduct” (Lightfoot). Francis Chan gives a great illustration concerning this issue:

“When my daughter comes to me and I say,’look, go clean your room,’ she knows better [than] to come back a few hours later and say,’dad, I memorized what you said. I can say it in Greek. In fact some of my friends, they’re gonna come over and we are going to do a little study on what it would look like to clean my room.‘”

While this is funny, I realize that it can be true in my life. Often times we read the Bible in order to get some special revelation from God. We hope that a mind-blowing truth will jump off the page and spur us on to action.

All the while we can too easily ignore obvious commands such as go, “Go therefore and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19). Instead of filling our minds with more and more information, let’s start living out what we already know.

The simple truth is that God has called us to be doers of the Word. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

As we take in God’s word this week, let’s remember it’s not just about absorbing information. Our mindset needs to be one of obedience.  Yes, this requires effort, but God’s already paved the way for us. We just need to walk in it.