ODJ: obedience & action
September 29, 2011
Don’t just listen to God’s Word. You must do what it says (v.22).
READ: James 1:19-27
Francis Marion Tarwater, Flannery O’Connor’s young, disturbed character in The Violent Bear It Away, came of age in the backwoods—far from the town and other people. Tarwater’s uncle, a bizarre man who had ecstatic visions and believed he was a prophet, raised the boy. When his uncle died, however, Tarwater headed to the city to find his remaining family. Once there, it became evident that he wasn’t prepared for the city’s temptations. He discovered that he couldn’t passively rest on the values he had been taught. He had to act. “You can’t just say NO,” said Tarwater. “You got to do NO. . . You got to show you’re not going to do one thing by doing another.” James, intensely concerned that our faith be lived and not merely professed, said something similar. Words—heard or spoken—are never enough. We have to act. We have to obey. If we only hear God’s instructions but never actually do anything with them, then we “are only fooling [ourselves]” (James 1:22). For James, foolishness was not ignorance (not knowing the truth), but rather a failure of action (knowing the truth, but not doing anything about it). “If you listen to the Word and don’t obey,” he wrote, “it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like” (v.23-24). Looking at a mirror is useless unless we act on whatever we discover staring back at us. Likewise, hearing God’s Word is useless unless we act on the truths we are given. It’s easy to learn facts. We know that eating too many cheeseburgers is bad for our health, and we know that our failure to forgive is toxic for our soul. The problem isn’t our knowing these facts, however; it’s the need for doing, for action. —Winn Collier
What truths has God revealed to you recently? What are you doing to respond and to obey them?
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We need to obey God’s Word daily!!!!