Be fed and healthy by listening and doing

Are you well fed and fat. I feel like that. I know I need to lose a few pounds to get to my ideal weight. I need to "do" more. I believe the issue is not the food. I eat like anybody else. I need to lead a more active lifestyle that ensures every part of my body is ready to live a 100 years. James is saying the same thing about our spiritual health.

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

Please do not mistake me for saying that "doing" is more important than "being". Embedded in the doer of the Word is "being". Many of us hear sermons after sermons, attend conferences after conferences, but never do anything. Excuse the expression. We sit on our backsides, watch others do something, and we become "armchair" critiques.

I am involved in a training work that is measured for effectiveness and challenges the graduates to be doers with the training that they have received. The worst thing that can happen is that they get "fat" with the training and this causes them to become unhealthy. It would have been a waste of resources.

Are you hearing God's Word? Do something! Be a doer. If you are not in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, pray for this to happen too, and it will. Another important point that James brings up in this chapter is this.

James 1:5-8
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

If you heard something and you needed to do something seek wisdom from God. Human wisdom always fails, but God's wisdom yields success because He is the alpha and omega. The all knowing person that is ready to speak to us if we would listen.

James 1:19
So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath;

Father, let me be intentional about listening and doing.

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