Knowing and Doing

Many of us know more than we do. For me personally, I find it's not that I don't know what I ought to do as much as it is failing to do what I know I should do. Pastor Perry’s May 6 sermon dealt with James 1.19-27, which includes the following: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (verse 22)

Perry writes, “The good thing about listeners is that they tend to spend time in the word. Listeners are often people who have a systematic quite time. That is they spend time almost every day reading, studying and taking notes over the things they’ve learned. Listeners are often people who love the church, they usually take copious notes during the sermon time and they even teach bible studies. But according to this passage there’s another step necessary for your spiritual development.” Too many of us who love the Bible don’t actually obey the Bible. The problem is that the Bible is meant to be obeyed, not just listened to.

The pattern we ought to have in our lives is to learn some of God’s truth, then put it into practice, then learn more truth, then put that into practice. But it tends to be that we sit in classrooms and sermons, listen to teaching on CDs and podcasts, all the while filling our heads up with knowledge and not changing our lives one bit. (Does this remind you a bit of the Pharisees that we studied in our last sermon series?)

We love to point our hypocrisy and contradiction in the lives of others. Think of the respiratory therapist who goes out on a break to have a cigarette, or the cardiologist stuffing his face with high-cholesterol foods and fattening himself up, or the beautician with a wretched hairdo. The real challenge is to see the inconsistency in our own lives and then do something about it. We ought to take some of that knowledge we have of God’s word and actually start applying it to our lives, making changes and the Holy Spirit puts his finger on dark corners that need the light to shine in them. O Lord, shine your truth into my life!