Get Busy

Romans 2:¹³ “Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.” (MSG)

I am sure you know people who always sit in the same seat in church. In fact, even ushers don’t want trouble, they just allow them. Why do we do that? We do that because we have become familiar. I want to challenge you to sit somewhere else in church. You will be surprised; you will hear the Word in a fresher way. Just sit somewhere else, don’t sit with the same crew, don’t sit with the same person you have been sitting with. Sit at the other end of the church. If you always sit on the right side, sit on the left side. If you always sit at the back, sit in front. If you always sit in front, try sitting in the middle. I challenge you to move things around, and shuffle things.

And this applies to other areas of life as well. We have our “corners”. You hear people say, “This is my corner”. Those things often harden us and make us unreceptive. So, you need to start thinking about why you are doing what you are doing. When you begin to do that, the double-edged sword effect is that you begin to get unfamiliar. The first thing that causes and strengthens familiarity is Hearing Without Responding. The second thing is Acting Without Thinking. And the third thing that causes and strengthens familiarity is Declaring Without Doing. This is slightly different from Hearing Without Responding and Declaring Without Doing. It is the bane of teachers. It is the danger of pastoring and preaching.

We declare a lot of things; we declare the Word of God. We want to be as faithful to the Word as humanly possible. We declare the truth, but are we doing what we are declaring? If you are not doing what you are declaring, you are deceiving yourself. It is the danger of parenting also. As parents, we hold our children to a higher standard. But they can see your life, they know you. You expect your child to do ABCD, meanwhile, you have not even done A. That is a problem, it is called hypocrisy. Guess what? Children see through all of it. So, they just look and smile because they are not allowed to talk. If they do, you will discipline them, so they say nothing.

Every time you declare without doing it, your heart becomes hardened. You need to stop hardening your heart. Guess what? It is not the preacher of the Word that gets blessed. You know that, right? It is the doer of the Word that gets blessed. So, if you are preaching and you are not seeing results in your own life. Check, are you doing the Word you are preaching? By the grace of God, as much as I am able and as much as I know, I do what I preach. I do it. If I don’t measure up, I get up, dust myself up, and try again.

Prayer: Father, I ask for the grace to respond to Your Word, think before acting, do what I am declaring, and end familiarity in my life, in the Mighty Name of Jesus. Amen!