Daily Bible Reading – 10.25.2021
James 1:22, Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
We come to our final week and theme in the book of James. This is the theme for which James may be best known. We can attend worship every week, we can participate in studies, we can read and reflect on Scripture, we can memorize and know the Bible backward and forward, and yet it is possible that we are being deceived.
How so? We treat the word of God as a document to be studied without allowing the Word of God to transform our lives. We falsely believe that information is all we need. It becomes a substitute for transformation.
We recently talked about how this happened in the early days of Methodism. We were a movement who met weekly in groups to ask each other, “How it is with your soul?” There was an expectation for everyone to be honest and share where they were finding spiritual success, where they were struggling, and where they had failed.
They met to keep each other encouraged and accountable to living out their daily faith. As the class meeting was eventually replaced with a Sunday School/Bible Study format, the focus changed from how the Word was being lived out practically to a more abstract, less personal, discussion of the meaning of the words of the Word.
Please hear me: There is nothing wrong with studying Scripture because we need to know it in order to do it! However, rather than combining the former way with the new, this approach distanced themselves from the accountability of living a transformed faith. As a result, Methodism began a gradual spiritual descent.
Moses said it this way in Deuteronomy:
Deuteronomy 32:45-47, When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
God’s Word are not idle words. They are your life. We must allow them to grip our souls.
Questions to Consider:
Is God’s Word your life? How are you preparing yourself to put into action what you read and hear?
Weekly Memory Verse:
James 1:22, Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.