Dabble (def) - Take part in an activity in a casual or superficial way. James writes about a person needing a fix and shares what should happen when we read God's Word. We don't just get in God's Word for "a fix", but to take away a lifestyle of service. James 1:22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror;24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. Hmmm Forgetfulness....
This happened just this morning. Andra (my wife) and I live in an apartment and the trash bin is about 75 yards from our front door. So we put the bag of trash that needs to be taken out on the front hood and drive to the bin. This morning I put the trash bag on the roof carrier and backed out and then drove off without going to the trash bin. When I say, "drove off", I mean we went on a drive that was about 8 miles in distance. We turned into a favorite subdivision that has some lake lots and as we drove through two guys were getting ready to unload some material for a house that is being built there. I noticed they looked kind of funny at us as we drove by. So we go to the turnaround in the cul-de-sac and as we head back, one of the guys waves us down. I put down the window and he says "Did you know you have a bag of trash on your roof?" I thought "Oh my. We have been driving over 50 miles an hour with that bag of trash on our roof and it didn't fall off." He politely handed it to Andra and we drove off laughing hilariously. We couldn't believe that bag didn't fall off. But we could believe we had forgotten it, cause it happens from time to time. Forgetfulness....hmmm.
James writes in his letter about many things, but one screams out at me. I don't need to get a fix for my life and get on with it. I need to respond by doing something in light of what I learned. The depth by which we live our lives can creep in to our study of God's Word and God wants so much more than that for us. If we just kind of get a "Bible Fix" then we are missiong the point of life-change. Psalm 42 says so much about what our desires should be in our life. Desire is what God puts in us and the world has even tried to corrupt that by making desire only a sexual thing. But desire for the truth from God's Word causes us to receive much more than "a fix." It changes us at our core and the rest is gravy. Gravy in that, we look at our life much differently and we consult God's Word from there on with a deepening desire that relies on that truth for our life direction. Psalm 42 begins with this in the following verses As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When we "desire" the truth of God it changes us and causes some permenant things to happen. First of all, we want to act upon that word. We take on a constant desire to be more holy in our lives and the things of the world fade in our thinking. We begin to "live" the life God wants and we deepen our fellowship with HIm. Secondly, our priorities change as we measure the activities of our day with a deep desire to serve the Lord in some kind of calling. In verses 6-8 in The Message version of God's Word it reads When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse everything I know of you,From Jordan depths to Hermon heights, including Mount Mizar. Chaos calls to chaos, to the tune of whitewater rapids. Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers crash and crush me. Then God promises to love me all day,
sing songs all through the night! My life is God’s prayer.
All of this is not surface level faith. This is a deepening walk with God that handles the ups and the downs of life by relying on God, and that deepens our relationship with Him. I love the verse where it says "God promises to love me all day, sing songs all through the night. My life is God's prayer." When we live in that kind of intimate relationship with God we desire the deeper things of God and guess what? He gives them to us. So don't just come to God for a religious fix. Come to him to develop the strong relationship that He offers through Jesus and see what great mysteries about life, God will show you. The James scripture above talks about a man forgetting who He is once He leaves the mirror. When we deepen our relationship with God the mirror stays with us and our life becomes God's prayer.
The Pilgrimage Continues....
David Warren
Comments