Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father gently guide us in becoming more fully obedient to his words to us in the Bible. Father, bring us back to your word, that we might better know you and the life you are calling and commanding us to. Make real to us how our obedience to your commands brings such abundant life Father! It is so easy to forget. Let us remember with our actions today, Lord! In Jesus's name and by the Spirit inspire us to act on what we say we believe today, Father. Let us be known as those who know by doing.
Your Morning Song: "The Cost" by The Rend Collective Experiment
Your Morning Scripture: James 1:22-25
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
As sinners saved by grace, born again but still struggling against our brokenness, it is healthy and good to examine our inner selves against the test of the Bible closely and regularly. And these verses are a great example.
You could ask yourself many questions to get a feel for where you're at regarding being hearers of the word only versus being a doer of the word.
Is going to church on a Sunday morning the whole expression of my faith?
Do I read the Bible out of obligation or desperation?
Do the people that know me but don't go to church with me, know that I'm a Christian?
Do we go to church or are we the church?
Do I struggle with feeling like God isn't real, or at least isn't doing anything in my life even though I go to church and listen to Christian music?
Is my daily schedule and weekly schedule formed by what God wants, or what I want?
Do I do what God wants? Or do I do a few things so and hope he's satisfied with letting me have the rest of my life to myself?
How many people would be shocked to know that I am a Christian?
God has not given us his word to make us smarter. He has given us his word to make us more obedient. God has not revealed his will to us so that we would know it. He has revealed his will to us so that we would do it.
It is intimidating sometimes, when I think just how much of me God wants for himself. All. Not just lip-service thoughts and a few meager prayers, he wants all of me. My goals, my hopes, my dreams, all of my doings, great and small. All.
That seems like too much. Too restrictive. Too controlling. Too impossible to do. But God never asks us to do what he will not also make us able to do. He enables whenever he commands. And to do what God says with our whole lives will bring a deep and abiding intimacy with God. It will bring liberty and freedom from bitterness, anger, grief, jealousy, rage, hatred, conflict, and any other thing that could rule and ravage us within.
Let us be free, blessed, grateful, gracious doer of God's word. Remembering his commands obediently with our whole lives, and not just on Sunday morning.
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