Listening leads to change

We thought last time how, in his letter, the apostle James has a lot to say about how we use our mouths and ears, and what that reveals about our hearts.

He challenges us to be much better listeners – slow to speak and quick to listen to each other but, much more importantly, to God.

We can deceive ourselves that we are good listeners. As signed-up Evangelicals we can claim to be those who regularly listen to God’s word, who love God’s word, who are moved and challenged by God’s word. But so often we do nothing about it. Real listening leads to real change.

Look at James 1:22-25: ‘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 a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it – not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do.’

So here’s the test: do you just listen to the word of God and so deceive yourself? Or do you do what it says?

James uses the great everyday illustration of a mirror. Picture yourself at a wedding reception. You’ve enchanted the other guests all evening with your wit and poise. You’ve conducted yourself perfectly, laughed in the right places, been attentive and charming, and now you need the loo. You excuse yourself. As you smile at yourself in the mirror… horror of horrors! There, wedged on your left incisor, is a large clump of fluorescent spinach from your eggs Florentine starter… Starter?!! That was about 40 minutes ago!

You are mortified and you immediately set about removing the offending vegetation! Of course you do. You wouldn’t leave it there once you’ve seen it.

Well then, as James says, don’t do the same with God’s word! Don’t hear it, feel challenged or moved and then just forget everything you’ve heard. Don’t hear God’s word, then walk away and ignore what it says. That is the height of pride: ‘God, you are wrong! I don’t need to change how I think or speak or act.’

Or it’s the height of disobedience: ‘Yes, I suppose God has got the right to challenge how I think or speak and act, but I don’t intend to do anything about it because I like doing things my way; I can’t be bothered; it’s not that serious; it’s just too costly.’

Back in the 1990s The Soup Dragons famously sang ‘I’m free to do what I want, any old time’.

James says: ‘Well actually you are not!’ True freedom comes from looking into the law’s spiritual mirror, seeing our sin revealed, repenting, and then living within the confines of God’s perfect law of love through the Lord Jesus.

Just as a goldfish is only free to be a goldfish within the safe watery confines of its bowl, we are only truly free when we live within the loving confines of God’s law, in Christ. That is how we were designed to live; that is how we will experience God’s blessing in our lives.

Around the same time The Soup Dragons were extolling us to do what we want, any old time, there was a Christian indie band from Manchester called The Dive. They had wiser words for us:

‘Be a slave to God
On that day you’ll see
The perfect paradox
Jesus sets you free’.

Let’s become enslaved to God’s law of love by listening and receiving the word of truth with meekness, humbling ourselves, remembering and acting on what it says and allowing Christ by His Holy Spirit to transform us from the inside out – this is true freedom.

And next month we will see what James says this will look like in practice.