Musings

04/02/2026
I was listening to a podcast recently (I don’t do that much) and the speaker gave an analogy that really hit me hard. He was referring to how us Christians can often tend to talk a good game but fail to actually live it out. (Guilty as charged.) He compared it to telling his daughter, “Please go clean your room.” But instead of going to clean her room, she prayed about it. Then she started a weekly small group with her Christian friends to study cleaning her room and signed up for an upcoming conference featuring a big-name speaker who was scheduled to talk about cleaning your room. But she never actually went upstairs and cleaned her room. Sound familiar? I must admit it struck a nerve with me. I have been guilty more times than I care to remember. But the positive was that it encouraged me to guard myself and continually seek God’s help to actually live out what he tells me to do. Nothing wrong with studying and learning – in fact it’s essential. But it’s incomplete. As James wrote,

22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22-25 ESV)

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

May we all be doers and not simply talkers.