When we were in VA, I saw a picture GG had with James 1:22 written. My dad has thought us not to just read a verse, but read the verses around it to get the full meaning. So that's what I did.
"Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger: for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
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 looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and a keep oneself unstained from the world."
-James 1:19-27 (ESV)
(I looked these scriptures in my dad's ESV study Bible, and orphans and widows is referring to the oppressed.)
Since I have been going thru this storm, I haven't been a doer... I haven't been extending grace to others... or loving them like I should. But this really convicted me. In the ESV study Bible, it says, "1:23-24 Looking intently at his natural face in a mirror and then forgetting what he was like demonstrates the folly of examining oneself in God's "mirror" of the "implanted word" (v.21) and then doing nothing about it (v.22). When one sees imperfections (as when looking in a mirror), common sense says something should be done about it." I want to look in God's "mirror" and do something about it, but only he can give me the grace to do it. This is definitely an EGG.
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