RPG Adults
WHO IS A HEARER-ONLY?
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22
James 1:23-24
Psalm 119:15-16
“…I will not forget thy word.”
WHO IS A HEARER-ONLY?
Here is an analogy of who a hearer-only person is. If a person hears the Word and does not do it, he is like a man who regularly looks at his own face in the mirror, and when he turns away from the mirror, he immediately forgets “what manner of man” (James 1:24) he is.
As one beholding his face in a glass: The Greek word translated “beholdeth” (James 1:24) means to endeavour by careful and patient observation to discover what he looks like. He stares at the mirror and considers his appearance, turning his face from side to side. This is the attitude a believer must have in searching the Scriptures. He must be a diligent student (2 Tim 2:15), and study the Word carefully.
As one forgetting what manner he was: For whatever reason, when this man stops observing himself in the mirror and goes away, he immediately forgets what he has just seen. Does this happen to you? The Spirit of God reveals to the believer how to apply the words of God that he has read if he reads diligently. But the problem is that after reading or hearing the Word, the hearer-only person does not do anything to apply what he has heard. He immediately brushes off what he has heard when he leaves. Thus, he is a person who claims to be a Christian but continues to live his old sinful life even after knowing what is right and what is wrong. He does not apply what he has learned from God’s Word into his life.
Let us pray that we will not be hearers only. Although we cannot remember everything we hear and certainly cannot apply everything, we must not forget what we hear. And we have to ask the Lord to help us live out the words He allowed to remain in us. Let us cry with the Psalmist as he cried in Psalm 119:4-6. Dear reader, do you have the desire to correct your sins and transgressions according to what you have heard or read from God’s Word? Seek the help of the Holy Spirit to prick you and cause you to be a doer of God’s Word.
THOUGHT: Do I have the Spirit’s conviction to be a doer?
PRAYER: Father, let me be sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit so that I will not remain a hearer only, but instead be a doer of Thy Word.