Live it out

This week's verses are James 1:21-25:

So put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the message implanted within you, which is able to save your souls. But be sure you live out the message and do not merely listen to it and so deceive yourselves. For if someone merely listens to the message and does not live it out, he is like someone who gazes at his own face in a mirror. For he gazes at himself and then goes out and immediately forgets what sort of person he was. But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out—he will be blessed in what he does.

This week is a kind of a Bible study about Bible studies. But it can also apply to those times where you feel like God has spoken something personally to you.  James is talking about how to care for the message God gives us about his salvation and grace. When God speaks a word to his church, what do we do with it?

Imagine you're one of those people who just collects clutter. If you find something by the side of the road, or someone gives you a gift, or you buy something, it all just goes onto a shelf or into some random box never to be seen again. Some of it's valuable, some of it's worthless, some of it has an expiration date, but it all just goes into a corner, or on the bed, or in the overflowing cupboards. How do you find what you need when you need it? How do you make use of things while they're still fresh? If everything just gets looked at once and tossed in a pile, pretty soon you've lost everything.

We're a bit like those people, in our world where things are constantly being handed to us, where we are given a surplus of values to choose from, multiple cultural contexts in which to live, and constant dopamine-driven novelty to fill our heads with shiny things. We are picking up so many things that we don't have time to sort through them and make sure the important things stay within arm's reach. We become so used to being handed more and more things that our treatment of them is just as shallow as the person constantly buying clothes on sale and stuffing them into a bursting closet.

For James, the picture of shallow attention was the mirror. They didn't have cameras in his day, so the only way you would know what you really looked like in real life was to look at a mirror. And not everyone had mirrors, so maybe you would only get a quick glance when you visited your rich friend and the rest of the time you'd just make do with puddles. If you only passed by a mirror once a week, would you remember what you looked like? Would you know you were aging or if you had dirt on your face or your hair was getting messy? You would have to stop and stand there and really look to pick up all of the detail. You couldn't just do it on Christmas and Easter.

When we read something in the Bible, or hear something in church, or in prayer, do we just chuck it in the closet and go back to watching TV or scrolling the phone or hunting down more things to acquire? Or do we take some time to appreciate what we have heard and be sure to put it where it can be put to use?

So, for instance, if we know that our debts were forgiven because God paid a high price for us, and we know that we're supposed to represent that principle to those around us, is it enough to just hear that message in church and feel emotional about it and have feelings of conviction? Or should we also be willing to pay a price in order to save others from the consequences of what they have done to us? Is it enough to think about it for a couple hours that Sunday afternoon and then go back to being a tyrant at work on Monday? Or should we not find a way to make sure that we remember this principle all of the time?

When James is saying to put away the filth and evil excess, he's telling us to clean our cluttered lives. Throw away the worthless and spoiled things. Make space for the valuable items God has given us and will continue to give us. Maybe we need to simplify or ask for help in order for that to happen.

The message God has given us is a gift that can save our souls. It is the most precious thing we've got. We shouldn't take our eyes off of it or bury it in distractions. We should keep it close at hand where it can be used on a daily basis, where we won't forget what we have or neglect it until it's too late.