Thursday, January 19, 2017

What Do You Really Look Like?

"Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
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 a 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 1:21-25 (NKJV)

Just about everyone has a mirror in their home and many people even carry a mirror with them.  Although some people can get carried away with looking in mirrors because they are so self-absorbed, everyone needs to use a mirror sometimes.  Mirrors can help us to see if we need to comb or fix our hair, to see if our clothes are in order, and mirrors can even help us to see if we have something caught in our teeth.  Without a mirror there are times you may need to make an adjustment with your appearance and not realize it, and that could lead to other problems.

In James 1, God's Word is compared to a mirror.  We are told that there are some things we need to lay aside and something we must receive, which is the truth of God's Word.  Then, when we have received this truth, we need to put it into practice.  James 1 tells us that if someone hears the Word and does not do it then it is the same as someone who looks into a mirror and forgets what they look like.  The only way to make sure everything looks right naturally is to look into a mirror.  The only way to make sure that things "look right" spiritually is to look into God's Word.

As we look into the Bible we will see who we really are now and what we should look like.  We all want to do the right things in our relationship with God and follow God's plan for our life, but if we do not have an accurate picture of ourselves and what we should be we will fall short.  We can all have opinions about what looks right but we need to have an objective standard to go by.  We need to continually look into the mirror of God's Word to see a true image of what we look like, and how we ought to look, to become the person God wants us to be and to do what He wants us to do.

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