At my college, all 3rd year ministry students were given the opportunity to experience internships. That could be in a church or school, but didn’t start until after a concentrated, intense, and short semester of classes. I remember working with other students as we learned about the “Learning Pyramid”. This understanding is one of the main reasons that we do our Bible study the way we do – we spend most of our time in that “practice doing” mode. Humans tend to remember what we do well more than what we hear.
This is also the evidence behind our desire to build and strengthen our Leadership Pipeline, making sure to build rotating platforms for people to teach others and practice leadership through our ministry. It appears James subscribed to the same idea. He defined behavior change as the pinnacle of our faith life, not intellectual stimulation. In other words, pure faith is realized when behavior changes.
Today’s passage is broken up into 3 paragraphs, walking through James’ ultimate main purpose of writing this letter: God’s word should change behavior, not just stimulate your mind. He tackled 3 areas where we need to practice transformative behavior, based upon one key truth – every believer has the ability to do this, because the word is implanted in their hearts. What James means is that when we accept Christ’s offer of forgiveness and invite Him into our lives, with the arrival of the Holy Spirit we receive God’s logos (Christ) in our hearts as our new “law”. And God even foreshadowed this in Jeremiah 31:31-34.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Attitude Matters
Back to James: he starts right away with an attack on our attitudes. We need to remove rampant arrogance, anger, and all kinds of wickedness from our lives and lean fully into the righteousness of God. We need to start this process by slowing down. I often struggle with remembering if I locked doors which usually happens because I am hurrying to do about 5-8 other things at the same time. Dallas Willard considered the act of hurry one of the most dangerous pursuits of a believer’s life. He said this: “you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” Hurry is stress, hurry is expectation, hurry rejects saturation. Hurry is not our only problem, but you can see here that it is a necessary starting point in attitude change. It allows us to slow down, breathe, and respond appropriately to what God is saying in our hearts, often in the stillness and quiet of our hearts – that’s the non-hurried part of our hearts.
Behavior Matters
It’s not just slowing down that helps though, much more is required – in fact, action in general is required. My experience coaching athletics was encouraging because teaching would be put immediately into practice and shown – much easier to feel accomplished! We have to act on this word implanted in us by God. This really is the main point James hit on in this passage – the words “hearer” and “doer” are repeated 4 times each! And James’ illustration of the mirror and immediate forgetfulness is spot on. In fact, referencing my forgetfulness earlier in regards to locking a door or unplugging something, the best thing I can do it use a hand action to help me remember or better yet, take a picture or text myself. The act of doing (as evidenced by the Learning Pyramid) supersedes the act of looking or hearing. Active learning is always better than passive learning – so if you want to improve your Christian life, then practice what God tells you, don’t just sit here in church and say, “well. That was nice!”
Others Matter
This leads us to James’ climactic moment: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27). Our main actions are to be service towards others. If you’re not doing for others, it’s going to be hard to convince people that you are a Christian. Jesus summed this up powerfully in Matt 22 – love God and love others. And when Jesus said love, He meant active love (obey/do for – John 14:15), not passive love (good thoughts). So when you want to make someone feel better and you tell them you’ll pray for them, actually pray for them, don’t just say nice words!
Next Steps
God’s word should change behavior, not just stimulate your mind. Pure faith is realized in action. Let’s put that into practice:
Slow yourself down. Eliminate hurry from your life by getting rid of this idea of multi-tasking. Just focus on each moment as it comes.
If you want more of Jesus in your life, then obey Him (John 14:15)
Practice doing things for people that can’t pay you back. Help a beggar on the street or buy lunch for a non-believer friend.
The Learning Pyramid is a widely accepted principle of education – if you want to grow and retain the information, it MUST be put into practice. Only then will your learning be worthwhile. The same is true about your faith. Behavior is how you show worthwhile faith.
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