Written by: First Lady Shanan C. Burress
Posted: May 17, 2025
Can you imagine looking in a mirror, walking away and seconds later forgetting what you looked like? I use a mirror everyday and this has never happened. In fact, I glance at my face in a mirror multiple times per day and I have yet to forget what I look like.
James 1:23-24 explains to us that if we are only hearers of God’s word, and not doers, its similar to a man looking in the mirror and then walking away forgetting what he’s just seen. In other words, we hear God’s word on Sunday’s preached at church and then we go home and forget the entire message and continue living our lives as though we never heard it.
To be a doer of the word, however means that we hear the word of God, receive it and then attempt with our best efforts to live in the way that God’s word directs us to live. God speaks through His word but He also speaks directly to us in our situations. I’ve found that although God speaks clearly and often, I only hear and do a small portion of what He’s said. I’m not intentionally not listening to God, but there have been times that I’ve heard the Lord speak to me but I have refused to act upon or move in the way He directed me. In those moments, I’ve found myself trying to get some sort of confirmation or validation from a third party person instead of just listening to what God said.
I read another analogy recently in a devotion that explained these verses in James like this – “it’s like a man/woman looking in the mirror and seeing dirt on their face and then walking away from the mirror without removing the dirt from their face.” If you have dirt on your face, why not remove it? If you don’t remove the dirt, does that mean that the mirror didn’t do its job? NO! The job of the mirror was to show you yourself. It showed you the dirt but now it’s up to you to clean the dirt off.
In the moment of reading those scriptures, I became convicted because God had recently spoken to me concerning what to do and instead of doing it, I walked away without taking action because I was waiting on someone else to tell me what God had already spoken. Huh? I know, it makes absolutely no sense but I can’t imagine I’m the only one who has done this…
What I’ve learned now is that if God said it, then do it! You don’t need validation from anyone. You don’t need anyone to confirm what God said. You don’t need anyone to approve what God said. If God said it, then we can trust it!
God has given us all the tools in the Bible to succeed with a life of victory but we have to use the tools He has given. Don’t just read the Bible and then not do anything that it says. Be ye hearers and doers of the word of God!
Awesome read!