Hear And Do

If you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

James 1:23-25

James compares God’s Word to a mirror. We see our true selves reflected in it, warts and all.

What if a person looked intently into a mirror, noticed that he had a smear on his cheek or that his hair was standing on end, then went away and forgot what he saw that he could have corrected? I think James is making a joke.

But the Word of God has the same effect on a spiritual level. It shows us how to make corrections in our lives. We gaze into the perfect law—the law that will set us free from our sins and entangling patterns of behavior—and let it change us. We hear it, and then we do it. We make the changes and adjustments the Word shows us we need.

This is not a new problem. God addressed it with Ezekiel generations before James wrote his epistle: “My people come pretending to be sincere and sit before you. They listen to your words, but they have no intention of doing what you say. . . . You are very entertaining to them, like someone who sings love songs with a beautiful voice or plays fine music on an instrument. They hear what you say, but they don’t act on it!” (Ezekiel 33:31-32).

God promises that his Word will reveal you. The saying goes, “You don’t read the Word of God so much as the Word of God reads you.” Respond to what the Word reveals about you, and find the blessed life God means for you to have.

Living Word of God, speak to me and reveal the hidden places of my heart. Empower me to take the steps your Word points me to, so I can live in your blessing.

A readiness to believe every promise implicitly, to obey every command unhesitatingly, to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God, is the only true spirit of Bible study.

Andrew Murray(1828–1917), South African pastor and author