“I Know, I Know, I Know”
By Zach Wood
James 1:22-25 NLT
But don’t just listen to God’s word. You
must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t
obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget
what you look like. 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.
“I know, I know, I know”
The phrase that so many parents hear all too often from their
children. After being a parent for
almost 11 years now, I have heard this phrase so many times. And, as you can imagine, it becomes quite
frustrating at times when my kids don’t listen or act like they aren’t
listening. My wife and I will tell them
something over and over and over again, but still yet to see them go off and do
what we just told them not to do.
My parents dealt with me on this more times that I can ever
imagine! I’m sure they are reading this
and probably getting a good chuckle or rolling their eyes just thinking back to
those times. What kid does not deal with
this?
There is not a parent in this world that has not experienced
this with their kid or kids. However, I
can’t come down too hard on them, because I flip that situation around and I
see myself acting this very same way toward God. I have His Word available to me each and
every day to read and learn and…..to OBEY.
But…do I? Many times I
don’t. I tell God, “I know, I know, I
know” and I go on my merry little way like it’s no big deal. I tell God I’ll try harder next time. I tell Him I’ll listen more next time. I tell Him I’ll be better about things
later. I put them off and I fail to work
on them….NOW.
God is not happy when we choose to obey Him in our own time
frame. He commands obedience now, not
later. Could you imagine if we treated
our jobs this way? What if we said to our bosses and supervisors “I know, I
know, I know”, but kept on doing the wrong things? Do you think we’d have a job much
longer? No! Why would they keep an employee who doesn’t
listen?
It’s so easy for us to hear what God tells us to do and to
listen to it, but it’s a whole different ballgame to actually put action to
what we’ve heard. We must do the other
part and actually make a change and live it out. James is very direct about how we need to
live our lives by intently listening to God and obeying Him. And, just like a child to a parent, if the
child doesn’t listen, there are consequences.
We have consequences when we don’t listen to God. Sometimes, they can be drastic. Other times, we can get off with a warning
when we come close to a problem and stop it before it happens and learn from
that.
I hope and pray that each one of us heeds God’s commands and
that we don’t just fool ourselves thinking we’ve done something grand when
we’ve just merely listened and done nothing more. That’s like listening to a sermon every week
and telling the minister “Good message” and doing nothing about that message
we’ve heard. What will we do about it?
So, we need to change our “I know, I know, I know” to “I
will, I will, I will”. That comes
through being willing to surrender and submit.
