There is so much to chew on in these verses but I am going to pick out the area that spoke to me the most. The words "be doers not only hearers" followed up with "deceiving yourselves" are strong words. I am challenged by these words and in my walk with God. Being in a ministry position I struggle "counting" what I do on the clock as much for God even though it is ministry. I like to find ways outside of my job to serve and be a doer of His word. I am not always succesful at doing this but I am sometimes.
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 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 at 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.
4 comments:
Good stuff. James writes like my mind thinks. Kind of all over the place. One sentence on this. The next sentence on that. Sentence three seems to accompany sentence one. And so on.
I was reading another blog the other day called Stuff Christians Like, it was talking about Christians throwing out the occasional cuss word. One of the comments on that blog referred to James 1:26 and raised the question "is cussing losing control of your tongue"? Is there a difference in strategically placing comments or words into your conversations so as to make a point or gain a comfort level and influence with a person rather than just letting the "s-bombs" flow without thought or saying hateful things out of anger?
Something that has my little brain cranking.
JC
Seems the older I get the easier it is to control my tounge, but that being said I am still too quick to speak and slow to hear which really gets me in trouble. I pray I can get ahold of this and be more of a doer and not just a hearer.
We have a group of believers that meet at our home on Friday nights. This subject of being "Doers" has been in our discussions regularly as of late. We have now decided to spend some time in a few weeks helping out a Network church that is starting up in Blanchard, OK. They need a cafeteria that they will be using painted, and we feel that since we are all part of the "Church" - we need to do whatever we can to help them get off of the ground.
If anyone would like to tag along, I can certainly list a date and time within a week or so. For now, we only know that it's a mid-February event.
This scripture inspires me to surround myself with believers who will love me enough to help me NOT deceive myself! I think that is what the "brothers and sisters in Christ" is all about. Everyone tells their sibling the truth - no matter how mad they might get. We need to treat each other that way. We need to pull each other aside and be frank when we see one of our own deceiving themselves. Of course that will only work if we also love each other as much as biological brothers and sisters do!
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