WEEK 9: DAY 4
BARREN VS ACTING FAITH

James 2:14-26
Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn't it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, "Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I'll handle the works department."
Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.
Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That's just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?
Wasn't our ancestor Abraham "made right with God by works" when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn't it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are "works of faith"? The full meaning of "believe" in the Scripture sentence, "Abraham believed God and was set right with God," includes his action. It's that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named "God's friend." Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?
The same with Rahab, the Jericho harlot. Wasn't her action in hiding God's spies and helping them escape—that seamless unity of believing and doing—what counted with God? The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.

When I hear the word believe, I hear the word become, then live. Becoming being a function of words and living a function of actions.
The truth is the evidence of what you have become is seen in how you live.

So you have faith, what next?
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So you have heard God, what next?

What has it birthed in you to do? What is the evidence of the hope that has been revealed to you? Is what you are doing a confirmation of what you have heard or it has been business as usual?

One of my confessions is 'I am the wealth of nation'. As powerful as this sounds, if I do not believe it, I cannot act it.

No, I didn't say act like it, I said act it.
Once you begin to act like, you are confirming the falseness of your life because an healthy person doesn't act like he is healthy, he is simply healthy.

So let's reminisce for a few seconds of how you have heard the Word but yet to act it so it doesn't bear fruit. I hope you make today day 1 in working your faith.

I pray you know God's word comes with its power to do, so you take each step with His boldness in Jesus name, amen.

Rain in a bucket; Devotional With Toyosi
www.raininabucket.wordpress.com