For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. – James 1:24-25
I never understood the comparison. How is disobedience like forgetting what you just saw in a mirror? It finally clicked for me when Erik Bledsoe spoke on it this weekend at Summit Lake.
“The Bible is a mirror. It shows you who you really are.” There are two ways to walk away from that book.
I could agree and can say, “Amen, that is true. I believe that.” Yet I walk away still cherishing the wounds, nursing the sores, drug down by my analysis of the situation. “That’s true in general, but in my case…” “I know God can do that. He can do anything. But…” Two seconds of focusing back on the problem, and our grasp on the Rescuing Hand slips, oiled by worry.
Or, as I walk away with a fresh realization of who I am, I can boldly leap onto the blessed promises. “I am a child of God. I am specially chosen. He delights in me. He thinks I am good, likeable, worth dying for. Right now, not because of my track record, but just because he made me. And yes, it’s true that I am despicable, in and of myself, but he has died so that I can stand now, by faith, washed from guilt and released from sin-slavery, and wrapped around by his loving squeeze hug.”
And then, when my mind has been filled with truth, I seal it with the simplest words. “Thank you, Lord.”
That is remembering what you look like in the mirror – what the Bible says about your identity. And that is the powerful force that alters your life and your behavior: you act like the person you truly believe you are. And so you become a doer.
Being a doer of the word is the process of the active remembrance of my identity.
Ben Taylor 