40 Days in the Word - Day 31: James 1:22-25

Girl Looking Into a Mirror by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Verses 23-24
For if you listen to the word and don't obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.

My Thoughts: What is James saying here? Can you really forget what you look like? Or, is the image you remember the same as the real one? In context, James is using this metaphor to compare listening to the word of God and then forgetting what it says. It seems ridiculous that you would forget what you look like. However, what do we do to remember what we look like? Most of the time, we look into a mirror. But, sometimes, we want to remember what we looked like in the past, so we look at a picture of ourselves then. The problem with using an old picture to remember what we look like, is that we change. The person I was, say twenty years ago, does not look like the person I am today. I like to sing the Chevy jingle, “Like a Rock.” There is a line in this song that gets me every time, “Twenty years now, where they go? Twenty years, I don’t know? I sit and I wonder sometimes, where they're gone.” 

The word of God helps me to be who I am really suppose to be. The way God intended me to be when He created me. As the years go by and things happen in my life, especially bad things, I lose sight of this and behave according to those experiences instead of according to who the word of God helps me to be. James goes on the tell us if we not only listen, but do what the word of God tells us, we will not lose sight of who God designed us to be or forget the person He created us to be. God created each of us uniquely and with unique purpose for our lives. When we read and study God’s word, remembering it by putting into practice what we learn, we discover and maintain the person, God wants us to be (James 1:25).  

Application: My whole life. These verses impact my heart, soul, and mind.