(Shawn A. Akers) For most of my adult life, I believed James 1:22-25 didn’t apply to me. I had convinced myself that I was a “doer” of God’s Word and not simply a “hearer.” After all, I went to church. I tithed. I listened to well-known preachers and agreed with what they said. Here and there, I told people about Jesus. Wow, did I buy into Satan’s lies. And he did a fantastic job of selling it, too.
Over the past year of my transformation as a believer, however, I slowly began to realize that I was the epitome of James 1:22, which says, “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” (MEV).
Every Sunday I would hear a good sermon at church, and every Sunday it would be the same. I got fired up and knew I was going to have a great week after being filled with a good word and great fellowship. But then something would happen in traffic or my children would say something that shouldn’t have upset me but did, or I would worry about our family finances, and my joy would dissipate. CONTINUE
