A Second Wind: A Biblical Exploration of God’s Mind of JusticeSample

Do What You Heard

As a result of our global pandemic, more churches and pastors are broadcasting their sermons online. Overnight, preachers like me, have become virtual televangelists and parishioners have their pick of the litter. This is a remarkable moment in world history. More people are hearing the Scriptures proclaimed than in centuries before. Did you know that you can hear the right information, sit under the best teaching and never have to apply yourself to it? That’s what it means to audit a course in college. You can hear the material and never matriculate as a student.

The word for today is this: You cannot audit God’s word. Even the academy recognizes that auditors or hearers who are not doers and non-doers should not receive a grade or promotion. After all, all they have done is heard. How much more does God assess the character of His people who hear, but never do?

The undoing of the family unit has been a result of the auditing of God’s word.

The weakening of the local church has been the consequence of auditing of God’s word.

The miscarriage of your individual potential is the outcome of auditing of God’s word.

Let me say it again: there is no auditing the Christian life.

Yours must be a life of doing God’s word. Our nation recently lost, on the same day, the Rev. C. T. Vivian and Congressman John Lewis. Both men were stalwart leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement. One editor at The New York Times wrote that the synchronicity of their deaths was as if history were sending us a message. Where are the leaders who fight for justice on the grounds of righteousness? C. T. Vivian was an ordained preacher and graduate of American Baptist Theological Seminary. When asked why he joined the Civil Rights Movement with Rev. Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., he said he saw no compartmentalization between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the struggle for human dignity against racism. He was what James calls a, “doer” of God’s word. 

The problem during our pandemic is as its always been. It is not with the hearing of God’s word, but the doing of it.

Application

Be honest. How often are you quick to obey a warning from God? How swiftly do you apply His instruction or heed the wisdom you hear in a Biblical sermon? My guess is that you, like me, could speed up that delay. That’s one reason we have James 1:22 and Matthew 7:24. Jesus expects us to hear and then do.