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CURRENT RADIO SERIES Lifeworks   CURRENT TV SERIES All Things New

He is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. Therefore men fear him; he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit. --Job 37:23-24 I recently was in London to visit our radio and TV stations in the UK, and I found myself staring at and admiring the great 95 story skyscraper called “the Shard.”  So called because it, the tallest skyscraper in the UK, resembles a shard of glass. It is huge and powerful, and loomed over me as I stood beneath it on the sidewalk. But when I flew over it in a plane, I got an entirely different view. Although it towered over me and made me feel small when I was standing next to it, it looked tiny when I saw it from the air. God views all human efforts to impress Him as tiny grains of sand…even though we may think that we are pretty great.  A good example is the tower of Babel in Genesis 11.  It may have impressed its builders in their vain attempt to reach up to God, but it was just a tiny speck to Him. Our wisdom is considered pretty foolish to God.  God is never impressed with even our best efforts to please Him in our own strength. Instead, God wants us to put our faith in Him, not ourselves or our own works.  We need to take a “God’s eye” view when it comes to our efforts to reach up to Him, because anything we do on our own falls short of His standards. If you are living your life trying to impress God, stop.  Make it your purpose instead to submit to His great power, justice and righteousness. God is never impressed with even our best efforts to please Him in our own strength.

Hearers and Doers

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
James 1:22–25



The Bible is not given to us as merely a source of information, though it is completely reliable in all the knowledge it contains. The Bible is given to us primarily as a source of transformation—it is meant to change us through the work of the Holy Spirit as we learn its truths and apply them to our life. Nothing in Scripture is meant to be read and ignored, but taken to heart and put into practice.
J. Vernon McGee said, “There is a difference between being a student in a class and being an auditor. I used to have quite a few folk who would audit my classes when I was teaching at the Bible Institute in downtown Los Angeles many years ago. I had more trouble with the auditors than I ever did with the students. Those auditors never had to take exams; they never had to make preparation; they never wrote any papers; they never got a diploma. They didn’t do anything. They just sat there.”
God does not correct us so that we know we are wrong; rather He corrects us so that we will change. The Bible is the standard by which we evaluate our spiritual condition. When the Word shows us a shortcoming in our lives, it also gives us the power to change that so that we come into alignment with God’s purpose and will.
 

Today’s Growth Principle: 

It is only as we put into practice what we learn in the Word that we experience spiritual growth.