When the Word Impacts Your Response

``It's possible to be at church every Sunday and attend bible study every Sunday, but never grow in our faith and walk with the lord. So on your sheet, next thing is we will we we will experience the power of god's word when we put it into practice. You see, we have free will. You got god's word, the living word of god, you got the holy spirit, you got everything you need. God shows you. He speaks to you, and he's saying what he wants you to do. It's our decision whether we're going to pursue that or not. Now the holy spirit will help us accomplishment, accomplish it, but we've gotta pursue it. [01:07:14] (38 seconds)

You know, if you look at yourself, you get maybe you've done this before, maybe it's just me. Look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, I need to do something with that hair, and you get to brushing your teeth and then you forget you get sidetracked and do something else, and you oh, I never did anything with my hair. You know, something like that. That's the idea is that you see the problem, you see what what needs to be fixed, but you don't do anything about it. You read god's word. You heard the truth. You see where you don't align with god's word, but you don't do anything about it. It's the same exact thing. [01:03:01] (31 seconds)

And then sometimes we convince ourselves, well, this sin doesn't really hurt anyone. It always hurts someone, and it always hurts those closest to us the most, but it always hurts our relationship, our fellowship rather with the lord. And so we need to ask him for forgiveness. But here's the thing. This is repentance. It's stop doing it. Stop doing it. It is repentance. It literally means a change of mind, a change of direction, that we agree with god that we're wrong, and we align our lives with his will, what he says is right. [00:52:27] (31 seconds)

So are we always on the defense expecting that we're gonna be treated unjustly and that we're always the victim? Are you too thin skinned? In other words, you carry your feelings on your shoulders and oversensitive about situations, maybe just imagining what someone said was gonna be negative because you're already expecting it, or your are are your and your pride will not allow you you allow someone else to get the upper hand or to get the first punch or the best punch. So pride this is on your sheet. Pride is often the fuel behind our anger. [00:57:37] (37 seconds)

We're not digesting it. We're not ingesting it. We're we're not just we're not just we're not getting in God's word. We're just glancing at it. You know, just getting a little spritz. No. We we need it to just cover all over us, don't we? We need to take a bath in it, not just a spritz. It goes in one ear and out the other. Your mom ever tell you that? I I talked to you, and it just goes in one in one ear and out the other. What does this only glancing at god's word look like? What does it mean for you? [01:05:23] (37 seconds)

He's saving us to a personal relationship with God the father and a personal relationship that brings joy and peace, wholeness, and purpose. And in order to live in that joy, peace, wholeness, and purpose of life, then we must leave behind the wickedness of our former life. And in this leaving behind, we also pick up what we're taught through the word of life. We call it the word of life, the word of god, god's word, the bible. It's the word of life because it holds the power of life that that give us life, to save us. It gives freedom. [01:00:39] (42 seconds)

This foothold, it's like a crack. You know, a crack in in the way we're living, a crack in our faith, and a crack in our fellowship with the lord, and he slithers in there, weasels his way in that little crack. You know what he does? Like, water turned into ice on that asphalt, making that big old pothole. He just busted away, and now he that little foothold he you allowed him to have through that anger, now he has a full hold. [00:44:26] (26 seconds)

week after week. We can hear a sermon after sermon. We can read the bible every single day and all those things and still walk away unchanged. Not because we didn't hear it, not because we didn't understand it, not because of any other reason, except for we just chose not to do anything with it, not to apply it, not to live it out. And that's exactly what James is addressing in our passage today. If you'll go ahead and open your Bibles to James chapter one, we're gonna look at verses 19 to 25. [00:32:48] (32 seconds)