James 2:18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.
It took me a few read-throughs to fully understand this one. I had to go back and read the whole chapter to fully understand the meaning. To me, what this scripture says is that professing to have faith and not living that faith is the same as not having faith whereas having faith and living it proves your faith. Does this make sense?
The scripture previous to this one kinda brings it all together. It says, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.“
When we profess to believe something, we need to live it. Otherwise, we make hypocrites of ourselves.
It doesn’t have to be anything major. If we say we believe in being kind to people, well, then we shouldn’t talk crap about people behind their backs or spread gossip, EVEN IF IT IS TRUE. I think that’s one thing people have a hard time with. I’ve heard so many times that ‘it isn’t gossip if it’s true.’ Uh, is it hurtful? Well, then it’s gossip. If you don’t want it said about you or if you don’t want people talking that way about you, don’t talk that way about other people.
Living our faith doesn’t mean just living the easy things, it means living the whole thing. The easy things are different for everyone, so if it’s super easy for you to not drink, don’t look down on the people who struggle with that. Sometimes kindness and encouragement are all people need to give them that extra push to get over their particular trial. When you provide that kindness and encouragement, you are living your faith.
It’s amazing to think of all the little things that encompass living your faith. When we think about living our faith, we usually think about all the big things, but it’s in the little things that people find the most trouble. Helping someone in need (even if we don’t like them), offering encouragement, accepting people with imperfections (this doesn’t mean we condone what they are doing wrong), being honest in all our dealings, thinking kind thoughts, speaking kindly to others, not judging people, giving back the extra few cents we were given in error, telling the cashier when they didn’t charge enough for an item, not trying to trip people up over their words, not mocking people, not complaining when we don’t get what we want or things don’t go our way, assisting those with disabilities, etc. The list goes on and on.
Granted, nobody on the earth today is perfect. We all make mistakes and do things that are not necessarily living our faith. This is a part of life. What makes those mistakes part of us living our faith is when we recognize the error and take steps to improve upon the mistakes we’ve made. That is what God is talking about when He speaks of works. Works are our efforts to become more like Him. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fall a little short. What matters is that we try.
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