09 Feb February 8th Weekly Devotional
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. (James 1:23-25)
As disciples of Christ, not only do we hear, read, study the Word, but we DO the Word also.
Hearing is not enough. It does us no good to hear it, learn it, know it, if we don’t use what we know to be the right thing to do.
In 2:15, James writes, If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
Just after this, he will remind us that even the demons believe. They have heard the truth. They know the truth. They have heard, and know, and believe, but they do not DO. They are lost. They tremble.
James writes in 4:17, Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.
James is telling us practical Christianity, how to DO Christianity, and what it looks like.
If we are true Christians, then we look like Christians in our everyday lives, and when people look at us, they can tell that we are different from the rest of the world, that we stand out, that we are His own Special people. (1 Pet. 2:9)
If we are living as disciples of Christ, then we look like Him, and we don’t “forget” what we look like. We don’t have to remember what kind of person that we are going to be from one day to the next, because we are the same everyday, all the day long. We know what we looked like yesterday, what we look like today, and Lord willing, what we are going to look like tomorrow.
We don’t have to think about it and decide, we just DO.
So in a busy week this week. Let’s not just be hearers only, let’s go DO.
