"From a Hearer to a Doer"

GOOD MORNING!

DEVOTIONAL:

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does." James 1:22-25

James warns that people who hear but don’t do the Word are self-deceived. He says this because hearing without doing means that even though they have been exposed to the Truth, there are people who refuse to live by the Truth. They have deceived themselves into living by a standard different than what they heard in Scripture. The reason he says we are deceiving ourselves is because we tend to make excuses for not obeying the Word. We rationalize and try to justify our behavior.

Self-deception is an attempt to avoid the truth about our own behavior. But as James says, despite our excuses, the mirror of the Word of God always gives us an accurate picture of ourselves. The Lord through the prophet Jeremiah says: “For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from Me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes” [Jeremiah 16:17]. Deception is dangerous. Self-deception is disastrous. Nothing is hidden from God.

Whenever we read the Word of God, the Truth preached, we must make a decision about what we are going to do in response to it.

If you disobey, don’t rationalize … repent. Repentance is the antidote for self-deception.

Much love and care,

Pastor Pat

Greece Assembly of God

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