James 1:22-24 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
I have a love-hate relationship with mirrors. What you see when you look at a mirror is exactly what the mirror sees. When I’ve been eating fairly well and exercising some, I like what I see when I look in the mirror. I look and feel much thinner. And for someone who has kinda been off-and-on actively trying to lose 40 pounds over the last couple of years (I’ve lost 32 of those 40), that makes me feel good! I love what I’m looking at because I feel that all of my efforts to achieve the weight loss are staring me back in the face. I knew what it takes to achieve the weight loss, I put it into practice, and I saw the fruits of my labor pay off.
The hate part of my mirror relationship comes when I’ve been lazy. Slacking off. Eating like a broke college student (can you say junk food galore?). I try at all costs to avoid looking at a mirror. What’s funny is when I do see my reflection during this time, all I see is the junk food. The lack of exercise. The stress. I completely forget what thinner Courtney looked like. It’s like that Courtney is a totally foreign person. I still knew what it took to achieve the weight loss (just like thinner Courtney did) but I did nothing about it. This reminds me so much of building my relationship with God.
Every time I open up my Bible, I am looking in a mirror. The more time I spend in it and with God, the more I see myself. I see my flawed human nature, I see things that need to be different. Out of seeing those things comes the desire and the practice of committing to change, to be more like Christ–which should be the daily goal of every Christian. When I’m having some down days spiritually, I find that I don’t spend as much time in the word and that’s the precise time I need it! Just like the lazy-slacking-off Courtney that avoids looking in the mirror when she knows she hasn’t been doing too well physically, the lazy-slacking-off Courtney avoids opening up the Bible when she hasn’t been doing too well spiritually.
The scripture above (from James 1) says to not merely listen, but to do. What good is knowing and hearing if you don’t put it into practice? No one benefits from that. Physically and spiritually lazy me knows what it takes to stay healthy. But if I’m not doing anything to exercise that knowledge (spending time in the gym and spending time in the word and with God), what good is that knowledge doing me? What good is that knowledge alone doing for the people that I encounter?