(The local radio station gives some time to the county Ministerial Association every Monday through Friday morning for a short devotion. The ministers in the area take a week at a time to give these devotions. The short reflection by the minister is followed up with music of his choice. This week is my turn, so I’m sharing these devotions to more than just the Phillips County, MT, area.)
Good morning, everyone. It’s great to be with you again for these morning devotions.
What do you think is our greatest challenge for us as Christians? What is the greatest challenge we need to face as we follow Our Lord? Well, I would argue that our greatest challenge comes from the Book of James 1:22, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.”
I say that’s a challenge because it’s very easy for us to be a hearer of the Word. It’s passive, it’s apathetic, we don’t need to do anything; in fact, being hearers of the word doesn’t demand anything from us. It doesn’t require us to change; it may even make us think we’re in the right because we hear things in the Word of God that seem to agree with our particular world view.
What’s hard for us to do is to be a hearer of the Word, to actively live out God’s commandments, because it requires much of us. It requires us to change. It requires us to have a constant reevaluation of our lives.
This isn’t any thing new. This is a constant struggle throughout humanity. Look at the Israelites in the Old Covenant. The Scriptures tell us that the Israelites were given God’s Words in “statutes and decrees” that were taught by Moses. They were very clearly given the Word of God, as we see in the early books of the Scriptures. But they would regularly fall away from God’s commandments, and would end up following these false gods of human tradition. They needed judges and prophets to call them back.
Sadly, this situation didn’t change after Our Lord came. When we look at the situation throughout the history of the Church, we see that Christians regularly fall away from God’s Word given by Christ to His Church. We see this in divisions within the Church, people fighting within the Church, but we also see it with the various denominations we have today that have split the Church.
Even worse than that, are the many Christians who are unconcerned with the active practice of the Faith. Yes, they’ll say they’re Christians: they’ll believe in Our Lord, but they give no public nor private practice of their Faith. They’re not praying, and they’re not committing to public worship.
If we are to truly be a doer of the word, following the Scriptures, it means allowing the Word of God to influence our lives. Just being a hearer only means allowing sin to fester within us; to allow ourselves to not be changed by Our Lord and allow that sin to remain in our hearts and defile us. If we are to be a doer of the Word, it cleans all that out. I quoted James 1:22, but also look at the verse right before it, James 1:21: “Put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the word that has been planted within you, and is able to save your soul.” By being a doer of the Word, it purifies our hearts to follow God’s commandments, and leads us to the salvation which God has promised us for His glory.
So, the time is now to stop being only hearers of the Word, but to be doers for God’s glory.
(Post Reflection Music: Matt Maher – For Your Glory)
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