Be doers of the word, and not hearers only

So tonight we had our young adult small group and we are watching Francis Chan's Basics Series. Tonight he was talking about Following Jesus and he made this great illustration that really struck a chord within me. In talking about following Jesus and obeying His commands he said something to the effect of this. Imagine I told my daughter to clean her room. I would expect her to go clean her room. If she came back a little while later and said to me "Daddy, guess what. I memorized exactly what you told me to do. "Go clean your room"." Or maybe she'd come back and say "Daddy, guess what, not only did I memorize what you told me to do, I also learned how to say it in Greek." Or maybe she'd come back and say "Daddy, my friends and I are going to get together every week and really study and discuss what you meant by "Go clean your room" and really dissect the words that you used so we can really understand what you meant by that.

His point being, that sounds ridiculous, right? But how much different are we when it comes to what God has told us to do in His word. I mean He has some pretty clear commands and yet sometimes, in fact not only sometimes but quite often, we resort to memorizing, meditating and studying His words and reason within our minds that those things equate to actually doing what He says. I am as guilty of this as the next guy. I try to spend time memorizing verses and really studying them and thinking about them but I don't spend enough time actually doing them.

James 1:22 says "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." It is so easy to passively read the Bible or to even actively read the Bible and yet not do what God commands us to do.

The scary thing is when you look at the Bible and time and time again it says that the way that you know that you are a Christian is if you obey His commands. If we aren't obeying the commands of Christ, we need to question whether we are a true disciple of Christ. Doing what Christ commands us to do, doesn't make us a Christian because we cannot earn our salvation by works. However, doing what Christ commands us is a natural reaction of a heart that has been transformed by the Holy Spirit so that our greatest joy becomes obeying Christ and bringing God glory.