Does God's Word Really Affect Your Life?

DOES GOD'S WORD REALLY AFFECT YOUR LIFE?
(Dennis Abernathy)

A management axiom illustrates a spiritual truth that is important to keep in mind as we read and hear God's Word: "To look and hear is one thing. To see what you look at and hear is another. To understand what you see and hear is a third. To learn from what you hear and see and understand is something else. But to act on what you learn is all that really matters."

A lot of folks read, and hear God's Word preached, but they never act on it. Jesus said: "Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man" (Matt. 7: 24). The apostle Paul added: "It is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified" (Rom.2: 13).

God's Word has not been properly imbibed until it has become a part of one's behavior! Multitudes hear the Word of God taught and preached and have no particular interest in what the Word calls on them to be and do. They go away without the conviction to bring their spiritual lives into conformity with God's will for them. Attending a worship service, and listening to a sermon, and giving brief attention to some truth taught therein, is of no value, if a difference is not made in one's actual behavior as a result. If one hears God's Word, and sees what is wrong with his life, and he sees what he must do to put it right, and he is only a hearer, and nothing changes in his life, his hearing has gone for nothing!

Thus, if what we hear from the pulpit is not lived in our life there is no point in hearing at all! No one was ever made better by simply listening to a sermon. One may gain knowledge, but knowledge only becomes relevant when it is translated into action. Action means obedience because hearing and doing are summed up in obedience

It is not just hearing, but the doing that blesses the individual. James 1: 25 says: But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." Warren Wiersbe said: "Too many Christians mark their Bibles, but their Bibles never mark then." Friends, it is action, based on faith that ultimately counts. It is true that "to act on what you learn is all that really matters."