Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
A few years back, I was sitting with a really close friend for coffee. Shortly after college, we had moved to different cities and what had been hanging out pretty much every day had become maybe once every couple of months, and it was probably my fault. Honestly, I had leaned into work and I had started to neglect a lot of the close relationships that I had before.
I remember sitting there and it was just all about me. I was talking about all of the projects that I was working on and the promotion that I had gotten, and all the things that I had accomplished the last couple of months, and all the things that I was looking forward to and all the work that had to go into it. Honestly, a lot of it was just me trying to look more impressive than I actually felt, because I was struggling with a lot of insecurities and who I was, and I was trying to cover it up by doing a lot of things that I thought other people would go, wow, he is so awesome.
You're Not Who I Remember You to Be
What stands out to me most in that conversation was I was talking to him and I remember seeing this little smirk on his face as I was talking, and in my brain I was like, man, see? It's working. He's so impressed. He's jealous. He just thinks I'm doing fantastic things in life. I finally finished talking and he just looked at me and he said, "Chris, I'm really proud of you. You're so different. You're not who I remember you to be."
I had known him well enough to know that when he said that, that wasn't a compliment. In all of my doing, I forgot who I truly was. That cut deep. I had to ask myself, what was the problem? One of the verses that helped me came from the book of James. We're going to look at that verse today.
It comes from James chapter 1, verse 25. "But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don't forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it."
Faith and Works
The book of James is this beautiful work that dances the line between faith and works. That's a conversation that honestly has kind of been hard for me to navigate in my faith. I know that I'm saved by grace through faith, not of works. Yet there are still things that God calls us to do. There are good works, He said, prepared for us beforehand.
How can we make sure that we're doing all the things that God wants us to do, while not forgetting who we are, not becoming something that we were never meant to be? Well, I love the way that James sets it up in this first chapter. He's talking about this idea of knowing the Word of God. In the verses right before this one, he talks about this idea of looking into a mirror as though we were looking at the Word of God, and then walking away and not responding to it is like walking away from that mirror and forgetting what we look like.
Being Before Doing
There's this order of operations that these verses tell us we need to follow. It's that being with God through His Word and His perfect law comes before doing for God and applying His Word to our lives. Because James says, "Look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free." See, when we start with just abiding in God's Word and looking into that perfect law of liberty, we're reminded that freedom has been given to us through Jesus. That's the part that didn't come with our works. We didn't have to earn it. We didn't have to strive to be somebody that God's finally like, you know what? I'm so impressed with you. Yeah, come on in. You're part of the kingdom now.
Now, when we sit with the Word first, we're reminded that who we are, that new identity, comes completely by grace through faith. But James doesn't stop there, because he knows that we've been empowered by the Spirit to take all that we've learned and apply it to our lives. That God wants to transform us into a new creation, to look more and more like His Son, Jesus.
Simply Being with God
I want to remind us that as we go and serve, as we go and do these good works, make sure that it's never apart from simply sitting in the Word of God and being reminded of who He declares you to be, because that's where I had gone wrong. I had stopped this practice of simply being with God. When that happened, though I knew the Word intellectually, I started to build up this persona. I started to do things that I thought would make me into somebody great, but it certainly wasn't the person that God wanted me to be.
There's this beauty of just trusting God to refine you, to carve out this image as though it's like an artist sculpting the marble or the clay. There's this beautiful work underneath it that we don't see. If we just grab the chisel and we start going to town, we're going to mess it up. We got to trust Him to lead in this process. So, take time. Look carefully into that perfect law of liberty that sets you free, that free gift through Christ Jesus. Then go and do, and watch as God blesses you abundantly for it.
