Thu Jul 24

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the words doers and hearers.

Reading

James 1:22-25—Hearing and Doing the Word

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

Hearing God’s word without doing it is lying to yourself.
Hearing without doing is like forgetting what you looked like in the mirror.
Hearing God’s word and doing it brings God’s blessing.

Questions

(some read these before notes, then ask them after)

Why do we hear and not do God’s word?
What happens when we hear and don’t do God’s word?
How can the law bring liberty?

Notes

(See last page for authors. Today’s notes are from a commentary on James by Gordon Keddie)

We are better at spectating than participating. We love to watch others, but prefer to do nothing ourselves. I believe the greatest sorrow of true ministers of God, after their own sense of personal unfruitfulness, is the experience of preaching year after year to people who evidence little positive response to their messages. They yearn for visible spiritual growth among their people. Every preacher’s ‘great joy’ is to see people ‘walking in the truth’ (2 John 4). …

Those who hear the Lord’s words and put them into practice are like the wise man who built on the rock but, says Jesus, ‘Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams arose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash’ (Matthew 7:26–27). Hearing and not doing is spiritually suicidal. It is to reject the truth of God at the very point where it must take effect. …

It would, of course, be silly to look in a mirror, only to go away and forget what we look like. The absurdity of this is in the fact that this would be the contradiction of the very purpose we had in looking in the mirror in the first place. It would defeat the object of the exercise! Well, says James, the person who hears the Word of God and does not put what he hears into practice is just like that!

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday notes for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 95c, 34a

Prayer

Ask God to help you do what his word says.
Pray for the preparation for preaching God’s word this Sunday.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.