Tues.’s Devo - Pure Religion

Read James 1:19-27

James admonishes us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. I bet if we did those two things then the 3rd thing he tells us to do would be easier: slow to anger. I know when I react and don’t stop and calm myself down first, I say the wrong thing and regret it. It is so easy to take things personally when they weren’t meant that way. The only way we can discern rightly is to listen and pray about what is being said and why. Jesus never reacted but he sometimes acted. He acted when he overthrew the tables of the money changers in the temple. He was acting out of righteous indignation. He was acting for God, not himself. We are suppose to be separated from the filthiness of the world. Eph. 5:12 says that we are not to even talk about what the wicked do in secret. Instead, we are to spend our time in God’s Word learning the secrets of God. Only God’s Word has the power to save our souls. Just reading it and memorizing it is not enough - we must live it and put it’s precepts into practice. We never really learn something till we use it and that is the same way the Word of God is. It is just a book until you let it live in you, then it is alive! If you live by the Bible then you will be blessed in all that you do. Going back to the words we speak… what comes out of our mouth shows what is in our hearts. If we live the Word and do what it says then we will care for those who have no fathers and women who have no husbands and we will keep ourselves unpolluted from the world.

Lord, put a watch over our mouths that we stop and get your perspective before we speak. Give us a heart to reach out to the fatherless and husbandless and help us to keep our hands pure.