To Encourage You

James 1:22 “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

Have you ever heard the term “active listening?” If you do an internet search, you’ll see much about it.  One website described it this way, “Active listening is a helpful skill for any worker to develop. It helps you truly understand what people are saying in conversations and meetings (and not just what you want to hear, or think you hear). It’s also a particularly useful tool to use during job interviews, since it can help you build a positive rapport with your interviewer” (https://www.thebalancecareers.com/active-listening-skills-with-examples-2059684).  In other words, it’s a communication skill that is useful in interpersonal relationships and in the workplace. 

But I suppose you could say that “active listening” is also an important practice one should employ when reading the Bible. We shouldn’t read the Bible so that we can cross it off our to-do list.  It shouldn’t be just a habit that we do because it makes us feel better to have done it. No, we should listen attentively as we read the text. We should meditate on the words. We should seek to know not just what the Word of God says, but we should also long to know what it means.  We should be active listeners, in that sense.

But that’s not enough, as the verse above from James 1 tells us.  People can be a skilled listeners and yet deceive themselves into thinking that because they’ve read and understood, they’ve done all that is necessary. However, the Word of God is not to be just “stored up” in our heart (Psalm 119:11).  Rather, reading, studying, meditating, and even memorizing God’s Word is a means to an end. And one of those ends is the rest of Psalm 119:11, i.e., “that I might not sin against you.”  In other words, the reading and understanding of the Word of God is meant to change our thinking, our attitudes, and our behavior. There are things that we should not do as a result of our time spent in the Word of God, and there are things that we should do.  So, perhaps some good questions that we should ask ourselves is this one: “What should I do differently today as a result of what God has said to me in His Word?  Can I point to anything? Have I even thought about it?”

I know that I’ve been guilty many times of studying the Word of God but then acting as if I hadn’t.  James tells us that when we do this we are “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” (James 1:23-24).  James is warning us of this self-deception, i.e., the deception of thinking we’re pleasing God because we have a head full of knowledge, yet knowledge that never gets communicated to our tongue, or our hands and feet. 

In verses 26-27 of this same chapter, James elaborates on this topic with these words: “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”  You see, the active listening of the Word of God is to never stop with the listening – it should have very down-to-earth impacts on the things we say and do. 

So, is that happening to you?  Is that happening to me? If not, then our religion is a deception – it’s all theoretical when God would have us know that it is to go beyond that to the practical. As Jesus said immediately after He preached one of His greatest sermons, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:24-27). 

May God help us to be doers of His Word and not hearers only, for if we are listeners, even active listeners, but that is all, then we are simply deceiving our own selves.