A Faith that Works in Obedience

REFLECTION QUOTES

“Some of us live a Christian life as if we’re always under the stern, watchful eye of our Father and he is very impossible to please… No, God delights even in our heartfelt attempts at obedience.”

~Kevin DeYoung, American Theologian and Author

“While salvation is a free gift, the ‘winning Christ’ can only be through unreserved consecration and unquestioning obedience. Nor is this a hardship, but the highest privilege.”

~Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), Missionary in China

“The great test of life is obedience to God.”

“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”

~Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994), U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

“I think that is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanks-living. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by submission of our desires to His will.”

~C.H. Spurgeon (1834 -1892), Pastor

“One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German Pastor and Theologian

“…you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It’s a shocking message: Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.”

“Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.”

~Timothy Keller, American Theologian and Author

SERMON PASSAGE

James 1:16-27 (ESV)

16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.