James 1:21-24(NLT)
“21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. 22 But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. 23 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24 You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.”
You and I have a job to do! And it’s going to require more out of you than your comfort zone may allow, but – when the job is finished, your soul will be saved. God has given us specific instructions. He tells us to get rid of the filth and evil in our lives, and make no mistake, God says what He means, and He means what He says. Not only must we remove the cancerous evil from our souls, but we must humbly accept the Word that God has planted in our hearts. This is plain and simple instruction. All of us have some stuff we’re holding on to that is blocking our blessings and keeping us from being who God has called us to be. Our spirits are perfect through our new birth transformation, but the soul is another story. It’s the soul that keeps us from receiving the blessings we desire most.
We all have some cleaning up to do in our lives. It is essential that we commit to this work so that our souls will accept the Word that God has planted in us through His Holy Spirit. The Word is there, deep inside our human spirits, but our souls have a different agenda. The soul wants to keep holding on to the things we used to do before Jesus Christ became the head of our lives. These are the things that the devil is using to intercept our blessings, and this is one of the reasons why we get close to what we want, but it slips away. It’s stolen from us because some of our old habit patterns provide just the opening that satan uses to come into our lives and rob us.
God warns us in James 1:23 not to be the kind of person that listens to His Word and doesn’t do what it says, because we’re only fooling ourselves when we do this. Our circumstances and situations will always be the proof in the pudding. They will always show us exactly where our heads and hearts are. They will show us whether we’re just giving lip service to God, or whether we genuinely and sincerely aim to please Him with our whole lives.
Hebrews 12:1(NLT) tells us, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us 0strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” Some of us are carrying weight from previous hurtful relationships, and we have never taken the time to ask the Father if the weight of deep pain we’ve gone through is slowing us down and tripping us up.
Sometimes, the hurt we’ve experienced causes us to go for the jugular in disagreements. We go from zero to sixty when something is said or done that hits our sore spot. When we’ve gone through situations where our partners indulge infidelity, many of us shutdown our hearts. We don’t let anyone get too close, and we put on a façade, never allowing new people to see who we really are. Then, there are women that have made the man they are involved with their everything. In Matthew 6:33, Jesus Christ commands us to seek God first in all that we do. Our relationships with God must be our number one priority, but many women conduct themselves in direct opposite to the commandment of Christ. In their past relationships, they focused all their energy on the man, and ignored their relationship with Heavenly Father. This is a sin that they’ve never repented from.
The fear of experiencing the pain of loneliness is what drives many of us to undermine our own spiritual well-being. We don’t stop to think that God is the One who holds everything together, and without His blessing, nothing will work the way it should. He’s the One that we should be seeking, because He takes care of us. Our Heavenly Father sees everything, and He sees what we can’t see in our past, present, and future. He knows when we are not walking by faith but yielding to fear. He doesn’t punish us, He helps us.
One of the toughest jobs that we may endure is understanding how to recognize the specific thing(s) that hinder our walk with God. This is why He’s given us His Holy Spirit and placed him in the inner sanctum of our beings. We’ve got work to do! As future wives and/or mothers, we are to be conduits of God’s love, and this means that we can’t allow ourselves to be buffeted by satan and all the fear he tries to bring into our lives. We must trust Hebrews 11:6, that God is a Rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. He rewards us when we put Him first, study and obey His Word, and release the things that hold us back. We should forgive ourselves for past mistakes, but our first order of business is to confront this stuff, seek God’s forgiveness, and get on with the business of growing and maturing in Christ.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“We Have a Job to Do!”, written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2021. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.