Don’t just listen, apply!
“But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.”James 1:22 NLT
James is right! We fool ourselves if we fail to apply what we read. It is so easy to read and forget. If our hearts are hard the words bounce right off.
I remember being in a service where the preacher was speaking about faith and hope, and I could see that he was failing to make an impact. What he said was right but the hardness of the people’s hearts made a thudding sound. They looked at him blankly.
It our job to ensure that our hearts are soft to God’s word. James tells us our hearts are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Jesus told a parable about the different types of receptivity of hearts by likening them to types of soil. Truely hard hearts had souls that was trampled upon like a path. What do we allow to trample upon our hearts? Sinful thoughts and ways. In other words fleshly behaviours.
The next two types of soils were rocky soil and thorny soil. The rocky soil has a shallow layer of good soil but problems and persecution soon snatch the good seed away. The thorny soil is where the worries of this life and the desires for wealth crowd out the truth of God’s word.
Now we can read this and even hear it preached but fail to have it bear fruit in our lives because we have allowed our hearts to become one of the other types of soils.
Our hearts are our responsibility. Our relationship with God is our work. We must love Him with all our hearts. If we don’t, then we fail to love His word or seek His word. Daily we must feed on His word, chew it over and glean all the nourishment we can from it.
If we love our own life more than we love God we harden our hearts.
Comments
Post a Comment