“Doers Of The Word”

21 Therefore, ridding yourselves of all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. 22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. James 1:21-22
 
One of the things I love about GMPC is that you are committed to immersing yourselves in the Word of God. You read your Bibles at home, you engage in Bible studies with others, and you almost always stay awake while I am preaching from the Bible. You are doing great when it comes to being hearers of the Word. However, all of us struggle with being doers of the Word.
 
David Kinnaman, the President of the Barna Group has conducted research about how Christians are living as doers of the Word. In his book, Unchristian, he writes that among Americans aged 16-29, 85% of unchurched people use the phrase “hypocritical” to describe Christians and 47% of churched people use this phrase (page 34).
 
Kinnaman writes that the lifestyle activities of born-again Christians are statistically equivalent to those of non-born-again Christians.
 
Born-again believers were just as likely to bet or gamble, to visit a pornographic website, to take something that did not belong to them, to consult a medium or psychic, to physically fight or abuse someone, to have consumed enough alcohol to be considered legally drunk, to have used an illegal, nonprescription drug, to have said something to someone that was not true, to have gotten back at someone for something he or she did, and to have said mean things behind another person’s back (page 47).
 
Kinnaman concludes:
 
Here is what all of this boils down to-and, I believe, one of the most important findings of our research for this book: among young outsiders, 84 percent say they personally know at least one committed Christian. Yet 15 percent thought the lifestyles of those Christ followers were significantly different from the norm. This gap speaks volumes (page 48).
 
The young people in our families, our church, and our community see how we live as followers of Jesus. They know if we are doers of the Word, and not just hearers of the Word.
 
May God bless all of us, as we seek to live as His faithful people.

In Christ,

Pastor David