Originally posted on October 22, 2020 @ 9:57 am
It is good to begin the day reading the Word of Yahuah. The word “good” is important, though we take it for granted, lumping it into the category of words we classify automatically and without much thought. Many, if not most readers here have a Biblical worldview. Amen. That is part of the Way.
The book called “James” in the Holy Bible has a short few verses on hearing and doing the Word that is wonderful in its clarity.
Jas 1:19 So that, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
Jas 1:20 For the wrath of man does not work out the righteousness of God.
–anger prevents the follower of Yahusha from obedience to Yahuah, because anger overwrites our memory of the command to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and love covers a multitude of sins. Emotion of any kind, whether anger or elation, is not service to Yahuah. We might “thank god” in our moments of joy, but is that worship? Giving thanks in all things means giving thanks in the hardest times, too. My 14 yr old son, whom I love, told me yesterday that he hates me – “I hate you, dad. I truly hate you, and your god.” So do I thank Yahuah for that? Do I thank Him for the grieving in my soul? Do I thank Him for my son’s mother, who smiles to me yet tells my son not to be like me?
Jas 1:21 On account of this, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of evil, in meekness receive the implanted Word being able to save your souls.
–“receive the implanted Word, being able to save your souls” That is a huge statement. Huge. The “Word” is capitalized, so it refers to the commands of Yahuah in Torah, and also to Yahusha, who is the Word made flesh. So it is both Torah and Salvation – being able to save our souls because the Word is implanted within us – the manifestation of Yahusha in our soul is the manifestation of the Word in our soul. The two – Yahusha and The Word – are the same. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Yahuah and the Word was Yahuah.”
“I and my Father are one.” – Yahusha
In our hour of temptation, we either hold to our God and despise the temptation, or love the temptation and hate our God. This is why Yahusha taught “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”. We will serve one or the other – Yahuah or temptation, and what is temptation except the desire to reject obedience to Yahuah? Therefore, in your anger, do not break the commands of Yahuah, do not ‘sin’.
Jas 1:22 But become doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
Jas 1:23 Because if anyone is a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, this one is like a man studying his natural face in a mirror;
Jas 1:24 for he studied himself, and has gone away, and immediately he forgot of what kind he was.
–-quite interesting. Two sentences: Hearers only of the Word are failures who do not know “what kind’ they are. Most translations convey that statement as one pertaining to appearance, but “what kind he was” says to me that the hearer does not know WHO he is in creation. He does not know that he is a living soul housed within and restrained by a human body, which is itself is a living machine, a machine that heals itself when broken and wears out over time. Then this man who hears the Word but refuses to abide by it briefly considers what he has heard (the mirror), but tosses it aside as unimportant, failing to understand that Yahuah calls us to a profoundly different state of being as we operate as living souls on earth. The hearer of the word never understands what the doer of the Word understands – that we are aliens here, that we do not belong here, that we do not fit in here, that we are sons and daughters of The King, a royal priesthood teaching obedience to Yahuah through example by adherence to His Word. That is what kind we are, and this is what doers of the Word know.
Jas 1:25 But the one looking into the perfect Law of liberty (the ‘Law’ does indeed set us free), and continuing in it (living in obedience to the Words of Yahuah), this one not having become a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in his doing.
לוחם חנית
James 1:22 But become doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
Boils down to my ever more trainable skill of repenting and obeying through disciplined will-power. Take please a strong look at the excellent bible study by this kindhearted man speaking on the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTxMiTEI4l8