HOW-TO BOOKS

We’ve all done it. Read how-to books. If we wanted to learn new software, learn to play the harmonica, write in calligraphy style, create wooden toys, make a quilt. . . The how-to book list is endless.

Yet we have all experienced being so busy reading the how-to books that we never get around to doing what we wanted to do in the first place - the actual doing.

The other day I was in a Christian bookstore. There, too, were endless how-to books. How to love more, pray better, be more hospitable, find your gifts, how to study the Bible . . . and on and on.

I’m wondering if we don’t do the same thing in the spiritual realm of learning as in the natural realm - we are so busy reading about how-to that we never actually DO.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. James 1:22-27

Heavenly Father, please help me persevere in doing your Word. Please set me free from the hesitancy to do and gently lead me into doing what You want each day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.