Action

NB is a series about things that are very important!

Very important because they come from God’s Word, are very important to him and should be very important to us.

So, let’s pray that they will be.

[Pray]

Week 1: “Truth”. Week 2: “Salvation”. Week 3: “Change”.

This week … ACTION!

Simply, the act of doing something.

Pablo Picasso, “Action is the foundational key to all success”

Makes sense. No matter how much talent Picasso might have had, talent would not have made him successful without action.

No matter how he felt, he had to get up and paint (and do all the other things he did) to become successful.

That is true of all of us. Action is the silver bullet.

It is easy to look at successful people (whatever they are successful at) and think that they are lucky. But usually people are successful because they do what they need to do, no matter how they feel and no matter how many times they have failed before.

What we call luck is often them taking the good opportunities that come their way precisely because they are people of action.

Of course, successful people also do the right kind of action. They don’t just work hard; they also work smart.

The bible places a lot of value on action, especially when it comes to action needed in response to what God says we should be doing, which is part of obedience.

Action, as a part of obedience, Jesus says, shows that we really do love him, John 14: 15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

Action is a key part of love. Which is true in all relationships. It can be very easy to say I love you and not really mean it.

Demonstrating love with action is much more likely to be the real deal.

God demonstrated that he loved us by actions, not just words:

• John 3: 16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
• Romans 5: 8, “…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

And our love for others is also best seen as real by our action…

• 1 John 3: 16 – 18, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

That is very challenging.

The book of James has much to say about action or the lack of action and what it reveals about us and our relationship with God and others.

Besides challenging believers to do certain things James actually speaks about the importance of doing, of action.

James is keen that Christians hear the word and accept the word, but he is also keen that it doesn’t end there…

1: 22 – 25, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

Those who don’t act on what they have heard from the word, are deceiving themselves if they think that is ok with God. It is not … and is not the way of blessing.

God’s word is meant to be acted upon. That’s the point of the word.

The illustration of the mirror that James gives is very powerful.

What is the point of a mirror? So that you can look at it and remember what you look like. How weird would it be that every time directly after you had looked in a mirror you completely forgot what you look like?

Well, according to James, no weirder than someone who looks into the word (hears the word) and then forgets it (they obviously had no intention to take it seriously and do it in the first place).

What is normal (not weird) is someone who hears the word and then they do it. Obviously, they had the intention of hearing and then doing what it says, because that’s the point when it is God’s word.

That would be the person who looks in a mirror and when they walk away having an image of what they look like in their minds. 

True Christianity is not hearing and forgetting but hearing and doing.

James gives examples in the next few verses of what faith in action looks like.

1: 26 – 27, “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

James then gets to the heart of the matter when he says that faith without action (works) is useless, dead and unable to save…

2: 14 – 18, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

And then James goes on to give examples of how faith without works is dead (demons) and how real faith is always accompanied by action (Abraham and Rahab).

I started off talking about success and action in general, and amongst James’ readers were probably some wealthy Christian businesspeople (more than likely traders) who might be tempted to apply the idea of God requiring them to be people of action (works) to their business in a worldly way.

Maybe in church or even in their business motivational seminars they said, “I am a man of action. Let me explain by business plan of action for the future because I am in control of my success. I have amazing plans to grow my business.”

Well, that is not the whole truth. And so, James gives then a more biblical perspective on that kind of action…

4: 13 – 17, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

Their godly action should be to think, say and live with the truth that their actions (plans) are ultimately under God’s control not theirs.

If it is the Lord’s will they will happen. And it might be. But it also may not be. They don’t know. The bible doesn’t contain specific revelation about their plans. That is all part of what the bible calls God’s secret will.

But when it comes to what God has revealed in the bible, we must be people of action.

If God says we should do it, we don’t have to pray about whether we should or not … we must just do it and then pray for a God-honouring outcome.

There is so much more in the bible about this.

Action is obviously very important to God

He is a God of action.

His action demonstrates how much he loves us.

How important is action to you?

What I mean is, if God has said that you must do something do you love him enough to do it?

Are you more than a hearer of the word … also a doer of the word?

If like me you struggle with this, we have to find a way to get better at it. If we love our Lord, we have to.

I want to suggest three important things to help us become Christians of action, of obedience.

Firstly, remember that you are not on your own. God has placed his Holy Spirit in you to help you.

Pray for Holy Spirit help in becoming a Christian of action, of obedience.

Pray with confidence knowing that God has placed his Spirit in you for this very purpose. Believe that with the help of the Holy Spirit you can do it.

Secondly, remember that you are also not on your own in this because God has placed people around you to help you.

God has placed you in a church. Gather around you a small group of Christians (2 or 3 others) who are action people. Ask them to help you act on and obey God’s word.

Who you choose for that group is important:

• They must be action people, not good intention people.
• But at the same time they must be patient people (a fruit of the Spirit often lacking with action people) and not people who quickly judge you because you are not good as they think they are at it (the truth is they are usually only better in some areas and are blind to seeing that you are better in different areas and that you need each other).
• Avoid people who are always talking about themselves and their experiences. There is some place for that, but you want someone who will encourage you with the word and then simply lead by example without trumpeting it all over the place.

Thirdly, develop an action strategy.

A strategy that helps you do what you need to do even when you don’t feel like it.

Obviously, it would be best to do what we should do with motivation and feelings fully behind that.

But whether we feel like it or not we should do what God wants us to do.

Action is the best way to give our feelings and motivation time to get back on track … especially when it comes to the things of God and when we know we have the Holy Spirit in us working on us and blessing us for obedience.

But we have our part to play. The nice thing about action is that we can usually control it, unlike feelings.

I want to suggest a strategy for action.

Part of it comes from a world-renowned life coach that has some scientific backing to it and is designed to help our brains kick out of autopilot (when autopilot is a lack of action for whatever reason) and move us to act on what we know we must do …

Part if it comes from the bible.

This is it:

• Say to yourself what you know God’s will to be in the situation
• Say a quick action prayer
• Count down from 5
• And then do it!

Examples:

• In James we know that God wants us to give to brothers and sisters clothes and food if that is a problem.
  • Autopilot: You say you will pray for them and walk away because it is too much of a schlep to go to all the trouble to help.
  • Strategy: “I know God wants me to give them something of what I have” “Help!” 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… “Come with me to my house, I have something I want you to have”. Or “please just wait here, I am going to fetch something I want you to have”
• In James we know that God wants us to be quick to hear and slow to speak.
  • Autopilot: In conversations we don’t really listen to people, what we have to say is more important, so we are thinking about that, we speak over people, cut them short in what they are saying.
  • Strategy: “I know God wants me to listen well and speak a lot less in conversations” “Help!” 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… set about listening to what they are saying and only speaking if asked to.
• In James we know that God wants us to be slow to anger because our anger does not produce the righteousness of God.
  • Autopilot: Someone says something I don’t like; someone rubs me up the wrong way and boom I get angry and it’s all downhill from there with my language and maybe even physically.
  • Strategy: “My anger doesn’t help anyone and certainly doesn’t honour God” “Help” 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
    • Just listen. Try to understand what they are really saying. Ask if you can think and pray about it and come back to them.
    • Or if you are really struggling, and things could go pear-shaped, ask if you can talk about this at another time and walk away.

You get the point?

We need to be people of action so say it, pray, 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… and then do it.

It won’t be easy to start … it may take a long time … autopilot has taken many years to be programmed … some areas may be way more difficult than others … it’s not about perfection this side of heaven.

But eventually with perseverance and by the help of the Spirit and others around you, you will become someone who acts, obeys God’s word and you will be so glad you did.