Good Behavior

eDevotion

Encouragement for your daily walk with God

The most effective way to study your Bible is to simply ask two questions as you read: What does the Bible say? How do I live it out? Both are important, but living it out is the highest goal because knowledge without behavior is useless. It’s not enough to hear, or know, what the Bible says, you must do what it says. 

Take Joshua, for example. He knew the importance of behavior—living out the Word of God. “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” [Joshua 1:8].

That was sound advice. The key to Joshua’s great success was a people who obeyed the words they received by living them out.

James basically said the same thing. He told his readers to be “doers of the word.” He wasn’t asking them for periodic obedience, but for habitual obedience. Running in a race or teaching a class is one thing, but being a runner and a teacher is something else; runners are known for running and teachers for teaching. You might say it this way, what they do is characteristic of their lives. That should be said of every Christ follower—obeying biblical truth is characteristic of their lives.

Your testimony of loving Christ has the highest meaning only as you obey what He said to do in the Bible. A doer of the Word obeys what Scripture says. That’s good behavior.

Prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. James 1:22