House on the sand (hearing and not doing)

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. (Matthew 7:24)

Well it’s been quite a week, especially for those in the northeastern United States who have been in the wide swath of hurricane Sandy. (I’m sure there are some from our membership who have experienced loss. You have our prayers.)

Meanwhile, here at the Catch we have been inspired by Marti to jump out of the phone booth as Superman, to fly like Peter Pan to where God is, to love like my newly married son, and to take a sword to our fleshy sin nature that keeps us from walking in newness of life in the Spirit. Now it only remains to be done – to be acted on in the trenches.

All these things are well and good, but they mean nothing if there is no action. They are all inspiration for doing, but the doing must be done.

No one is better at talking about doing something, and never doing it, than Christians. It’s part of our evangelical training. God forbid that someone would listen to a sermon and go out and actually do something about it! That would break the unwritten code about hearing without doing – something that Jesus said was as foolish as building a house on sand.

Oh, Christians talk the truth well enough. We talk around it, underneath and above it. We dissect its pieces and stand guard to make sure everyone else divides it up properly. We try to “one up” the other guy with our new feel-good spiritual nuggets. None of which amounts to a hill of beans if we don’t put into practice what is being revealed.

It’s time to ride in, slay the dragon and rescue the princess. Or to put it into spiritual terms, it’s time to obey. What is the Lord telling you to do? Write it down. Tell it to Marti or me if you need a witness. Most of our lists will be simple to say, not easy to do, but that’s why we have a cape, wings, love and a sword, all provided by the Spirit to put to use when obeying God. Go ahead; do it. It should be a good weekend.