I Know, I Know, I Know

“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.