Today’s 333 Devotional: “Being Doers”

The Apostle James says that we need to be doers of God’s word, and not just hearers only; otherwise we’re deceiving ourselves (James 1:22).

How is this deceptive? It’s because we think we’re doing God’s will by reading or hearing God’s word on a daily basis.

With the explosion of the Internet and social media, there’s more available to the Christian than ever before. There are Bible reading plans for everything, from dating to marriage, and on subjects like faith and forgiveness. There are also hundreds of videos by hundreds of pastors and speakers on hundreds of biblically based subjects.

But we’re deceiving ourselves thinking this is what we should be doing if this is all we do, that is, intake only. There also needs to be an outworking of what we’re in-taking.

This was quite pronounced at Jesus’s birth, and the Wisemen’s trip and encounter with the religious authorities and scriptural experts in Jerusalem. These religious and biblical experts knew the Scriptures concerning the coming of the Messiah but did absolutely nothing with their knowledge.

They knew where and when He would be born. They were even told that He had arrived, but they never took it beyond the hearing stage and never went to find Him (Matthew 2:1-8).

If all we do is read and know God’s word but do absolutely nothing with it, we are like these religious and biblical leaders of Jesus’s day, deceiving ourselves as well.

Instead, it is better to know less, but put the less we know into practice, than to know more and do little or nothing with it. Is what we’re learning making a difference in our lives and the lives of those we come in contact with?

With their limited knowledge, the Wisemen followed, found, and worshiped Jesus, while the religious scholars continued to sit missing the greatest gift of them all.

The Wisemen were wise, not because of their knowledge, but because they moved forward with the truth they knew.