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Sometimes God puts something on your heart and you can’t escape it. Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn, there it is. This is just an overwhelming theme that God keeps showing me and I felt compelled to share.
I can talk a lot. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a talker. Maybe you are too, maybe you aren’t at all. Talking is great for communicating ideas and learning about another person. Talking is great for debating and expressing concern. But talking will always be talking if we don’t back up our words with our actions.
James spoke extensively about this in the Bible. Like really extensively. Like going as far as to say your faith without works is dead (2:26). Here is my burden. As a campus minister my job involves a lot of talking, strategizing, planning, and organizing. As a leader on your campus, you probably share similar responsibilities. Thus far I have been to countless strategy meetings, prayer gatherings, and staff meetings. I developed a mission statement. I planned speakers for the fall. I worked out our theme for the semester. I consulted leaders. Got advice from other ministers. I could tell you my heart and passion for that campus a million times over and never grow weary of explaining it. It is easy to talk about the dreams I have and what I want to see happen. But, I don’t want to spend the next 50 years of my life talking about revival, I want to be part of it ACTUALLY happening.
I think there is a tendency in ministry, to talk a good talk but fail to walk out the walk. Without really noticing we busy ourselves with meetings and strategy and plans. What good is a stellar mission statement if it sits in your folder and no one knows it? What good is a sweet discipleship model if no one is actually being discipled? What good is anything we say if we aren’t good to do it? This is a reality I am being convicted of myself.
James 1:22 says, but be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. James was writing to the Jews to encourage them in their new growing Christian faith. These were people who knew the books of the Old Testament inside and out. They knew what to do and what to say, but their hearts had not been transformed and burdened for the people. We are very much the same today. We love to read books, debate topics, listen to preachers. These are good things but we end up consuming all the day long getting full on knowledge that never translates into action. James believed that faith and action were so intrinsically joined that you simply could not separate them. James 2:18 says, Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
I realized that revival starts with me. It starts with us. It starts when we get real about the word of God; when we start living out and being obedient to what it actually says. When we stop caring about our plans and start seeking after His. It starts when praying seems more necessary than talking, and the burden for the lost consumes us. Revivals begin in our own hearts and is a result of faith set on fire and put in action.
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