Hearing without doing is how a whole church goes to sleep.
Many churches are full of people who know a great deal and do very little with it. It is easy to be disappointed in them. It is harder to admit how easily we do the same thing.
That is why every day in this class ends with an “I will”. Not a feeling, not a resolution to be better, but one specific thing, today, because of what you read.
Today’s passage uses a vivid picture to describe what happens when we hear and do not do. Read it, and then look honestly at yesterday’s “I will”. Did you do it?
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Last time you wrote that you would:
This is where you will look back at yesterday. For today, just notice how you are coming into this.
An honest prayer
Pray this as it is, or in your own words.
Lord, I do not want to look in Your mirror and walk away unchanged. Show me one thing to do today, and help me actually do it.
Read
James 1:19-27 (OTB)
19My beloved brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry; 20because human anger does not achieve the righteousness that God desires. 21Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save your souls. 22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Be doers of the word. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at their face in a mirror 24and, after looking at themselves, goes away and immediately forgets what they look like. 25But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—will find blessing in their actions. 26Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is without value. 27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unpolluted by the world.