Knowing and Doing
In his book Primal, Pastor Mark Batterson writes about the inseparability of "knowing" and "doing". Enjoy this excerpt:
The Bible is not an end in itself. In other words the goal
of knowing the Bible isn't Bible knowledge. The goal of knowing the Bible is
knowing God. Anything less is bibliolatry. One of the great mistakes we've made
in Christendom is equating spiritual maturity with knowledge acquisition; butt head
knowledge never has been and never will be the litmus test. The truth is that
most of us are already educated way beyond the level of our obedience. We learn
more and do less, thinking all the while that we’re growing spiritually.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it
says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a
man who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes
away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But the man who looks
intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not
forgetting what he has heard, but doing it — he will be blessed in what he
does.
James 1:22-25
The Latin word for ‘listen’
is where we get our word audit. When
you audit a class you take in lots of information but you don't do anything
with it. You don't do the homework or if you do you don't turn it in to get graded.
You don't take the tests. And you don't get any credit either. The same is true
in our spiritual lives. You don't get credit for auditing Scripture. You got to
put it into practice. Every word of Scripture…must be translated via obedience.
In the Western world, we make a distinction between knowing
and doing. But there was no search distinction in ancient Jewish thought. Knowing
was doing and doing was knowing. If you didn't do it you didn't really know it.
Knowledge isn't enough. Truth must be translated with your life.