Show your faith by the way you live

James 2:14-17

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

James the writer of the book of James in the Bible is blunt. A person’s faith needs to show up in the way they live. In his very dramatic example, James demonstrates that saying the right sounding words does nothing to keep people warm on a cold night or well fed if there is nothing in the cupboards. Faith calls us to act – to act in showing care to people in need. Faith leads people of faith to getting in there and helping.

St. Francis of Assisi is quoted as having said, “Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary, use words.” (We have no evidence that Francis said those words.) The quote appears frequently as a justification for not telling others about the good news of Jesus, and instead saying, “People can see that I am follow of Jesus by the way I live my life.”

I am not interested in this short devotional to argue about speaking the good news, instead I want to turn to the second part – “My life shows that I am a follower of Jesus Christ.” James would say, “Go for it, live the life of following Jesus.” But if we are honest with ourselves, we will quickly admit just how hard that is, how demanding it is to live the Jesus’ way. It takes all we have and then some to be people who live out the love and care we see in Jesus, to live in a way that people can see Jesus in us.

Only through faith that God will change us and transform us by the Holy Spirit can we begin to live into being people whose lives demonstrate that we are followers of Jesus.    

PRAYER:

God of care and compassion, by our own strength and ability we will not be able to live lives that say we are followers of Jesus. That is only possible by the action of the Holy Spirit transforming our lives. Send the Holy Spirit so that our faith in Jesus is seen in our actions. In Jesus’ name. Amen.