“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.” (James 1:22 NIV)

My little grand daughter sometimes has a problem coordinating what she is thinking and trying to do with what her limbs actually do.  Right now, the struggle appears when I am trying to get her boots or her jacket on.  She will put her arm into her coat sleeve but to get her hand through the elastic cuff requires her to push, to straighten her arm and shove her hand through.  The same goes for putting on her boots or shoes, a push is required to accomplish this.  As we are working together to get ready to go outside, I find myself saying to her:  come now Lindy, give it a big push.  Lindy responds with all the right noises that one makes when they are expending energy to push, she even arches her back with energy to do so, but the big push message just doesn’t get through to those arms and legs.  One day soon it will, but for now we struggle along the best we can.

This issue reminded me of a very important command in the Bible:  Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.

Knowing the word of God and doing the word of God are a lot like Lindy and the big push.  Many people know the word.  Many people can recite the word.  But how many of us follow through with the big push to* do* the word? 

When Lindy makes all the right noises and even the right body gestures that a person makes when exerting the power to push, but nothing happens, so it is with us as Christians when we listen to the word but do not apply that word to our every day lives.  The result is empty.  Our lives lack power to demonstrate to others the love of Christ.  And we deceive ourselves, thinking that knowing the word is all we need to do, as His servants. God requires results from His people.  And those results can only come when we allow the Holy Spirit to apply the words we know to our hearts, that we in turn might do the word, for all the world to see and be blessed by.

So today, let’s give it the big push when it comes to not only listening to the word and knowing the word but by doing the word that others might see that what we talk is also what we walk.

Prayer:  Father God, we thank You for the opportunity to hear and know Your word.  And we pray Father that in hearing and knowing, that we will also be prepared each and every day to exert the big push in regards to making that word come alive in our lives as well as the lives of others.  And we give You thanks for Your Holy Spirit within us who has the power to enable us to not only hear the word but to also do the word as we humbly yield to Him.  We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.

Lynne Phipps