But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
—James 1:22
The Word of God is alive and active. Is it alive and active in you?
There is a major reason many Christians lose interest and stop growing in their spiritual lives. When you receive knowledge of something the Holy Spirit has shown you and don’t act upon it, you will remain spiritually unfilled and eventually lose interest in your walk with the Lord. If all you do is listen to the Word without trying to apply it to your life, you will get to the place where you become spiritually numb.
The problem is never with God’s Word! God sent His word to redeem us. It heals us and snatches us from the door of death! The Word creates faith in the one who hears it. It calls for our response. To have faith and not apply it to your life, means that you are not responding to the Word you have heard.
The Word becomes alive in you when you act upon it by faith. And what you do doesn’t come through your own efforts. What you do comes from hearing the Word of God in your heart. If you will simply act upon what the Holy Spirit reveals through the hearing of the Word, your hunger for His Word will quicken, and the Holy Spirit will quicken more of His Word in your heart.
Look at James 1:22. “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
Take note of the words “hearers only” in this verse. These words are taken from the Greek word “akroates.” This Greek word was traditionally used to describe those who audited a class rather than receiving credit for it. Those who audited a class only came to class to hear the lecture and be intellectually stimulated, but they never put into action anything they heard because they were “hearers only.” They had no intention of actually applying what they heard.
Are we living the Word we have heard in our hearts or are we “hearers only?” Are we serious about God’s Word making a difference in our lives or are we simply auditing His Word with no intention of doing it?
Many Christians have read the Bible, have heard the Bible, and know a lot of the Bible. But they are doing nothing with what they have heard. That is why they eventually lose interest in what they have heard from God. They don’t draw on the truth they have received. They allow it to remain unused in their lives. They remain spiritually immature and grow numb to the Holy Spirit.
Please make the decision to be a “doer of the Word and not a hearer only.” Receive deep into your heart the truths you’ve heard taught over the years. Never let these truths be only those heard in the past. Keep them fresh. Hear them again and again. Reflect on them, and the Holy Spirit will quicken a response in you. If you respond by faith to the spiritual truth you hear in your heart and act upon that spiritual truth, you are a doer of the Word, and what you do is alive and filled with God’s abundant and powerful grace.
“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 1:23-25).
Believe in God’s truth. Apply it to your life. You won’t “see” His truth is real until you do. You will be like a man who looks into a mirror, and then later forgets what he looks like. You will look away and forget what God’s truth promises. But when you look into Christ’s perfect liberty that He purchased on your behalf, that perfect grace has the power to change you.
Don’t forget who you are in Christ! Let what you have heard motivate you to reach out in faith so what you have heard may be manifested in your life. You will be blessed in all you do. The Word will be alive in you—transforming you—moving you—using you—and doing a work in and through you that you never dared to imagine.
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