In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action. (James 1:21-25, The Message)

In my early years as a Jesus follower, I tended to focus mostly on what I thought or believed about God. After all, “ What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” (A. W. Tozer)

I had so many false beliefs about God, lies that infected my God view, there was plenty to keep me busy just learning about God.

But before too long, I found myself in great danger of being merely a hearer of God’s Word, rather than actually living differently because of Him. It is a danger I face to this day. In American Christian culture it is so easy, if not encouraged, to let the whole of our lives with God be defined by where we are on Sunday mornings and what we say we believe about God, rather than actually living out of truth.

I want to run far away from “letting the Word go in one ear and out the other.” I want to live this call in James 1 to let God landscape me with truth like a good gardener. I want to act on what I hear, stick with the truth until it bears the fruit of delight and affirmation. Read more