God's Word is a mirror

The world is full of people who say they believe in Jesus, but those same people don’t pattern their lives after Him.

May 03, 2024

But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. (James 1:25)

Have you ever forgotten what you look like? I will never forget this one mission’s trip I went on when I was in high school. We lived in a Tarahumara village in Mexico for a week. No showers. No indoor plumbing. We ate military rations. We lived out of backpacks.

Honestly? It was one of the best trips of my high school life. I loved it.

After the bulk of the trip was done, we drove back up to Texas and were spending the night in a hotel. I remember vividly walking into the room and catching sight of myself in a mirror for the first time in about 12 days.

Outside of a sunburn and hair turned utterly wild from over a week in cornrows, I probably looked the same. But there were no mirrors among the Tarahumara. There were no places to check your reflection. I don’t know if it was cultural or if it were just the sheer poverty of the area, but I stood staring at myself for a moment.

I had literally forgotten what I looked like. I hadn’t even thought about it. There were other more important things to consider.

And all I could think about was this particularly passage in James—about how some people treat God’s Word. Like glancing at themselves in a mirror and then forgetting what they look like. When you treat God’s Word that way, you never let it permeate your life. You never allow God’s Word to become the foundation for your life. It’s just an ornament, something you show off once a week and then forget about.

The whole book of James is all about practicing our faith as Christians. The world is full of people who say they believe in Jesus, but those same people don’t pattern their lives after Him. They don’t live the way He lived. They don’t speak the way He spoke. They don’t value what He valued.

And if they see God’s Word as something forgettable, it’s no wonder.

If you want to be blessed, if you want to live that abundant life God promised to His children, you can’t just glance at the Bible and forget it. You can’t treat it like an ornament or a paperweight or a status symbol. It has to be everything to you. It has to be your guidebook, your instruction manual, your source of hope and strength and joy, the very foundation of your entire life. You have to be desperate for it.

It's God’s Word. It’s His Words written to you for you. Why wouldn’t you crave it? Why wouldn’t you want more and more of it?

You can’t just say you follow Jesus. You have to do it.

You can’t just say you trust God. You have to do it.

If you don’t do what the Word says, can you truly call yourself a follower of Jesus? You can know Him, sure. Lots of people know Him. But how many obey Him?