Welcome back to the Kerygma Ventures podcast. Today, Dudley shares his monthly message about being a doer of the Word. This message relates to the book of James, including James 1:22, which encourages us to be doers of the Word, and not just hearers of the Word.

In this episode, Dudley also touches upon how it's common for people to resolve to read more of the Bible, yet reading the Bible sometimes gets us to ask questions such as, "How can we get the most out of reading Scripture?" We pray this message will encourage, challenge, and transform. As always, we invite you to share it with someone who needs it.

Well, glory. Good day. This is Dudley, and we are in the middle of 2024. And I know many of you are looking forward to this year, praying that it will be a better year for you than 2023. And there's certainly nothing wrong with that, because God has built hope into our hearts, and we are hoping that there will be a continual unveiling of how good he is and how much he cares for us, and that there will be a return to him on a societal scale.

Hey, several things I want to mention to you. I'm really excited about what we're going to talk about this week or this month. But before we get into that, I wanted to mention some things coming up that you want to be aware of.

First of all, I want to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. There are many ways you can get a hold of what we do, and we do a lot. We don't just do this one hour a month deal. We do a lot of stuff, and we'd like for you to be aware of it. So however you listen to podcasts, you need to register there. And if you can't find it anywhere else, go to the website and it will direct you.

So stay tuned to what all we're doing. We're doing several things simultaneously, different kinds of podcasts that try to meet your needs.

The events that are coming up are father-daughter. This is something we've been doing for years. It's a wonderful time for fathers and daughters to discover how they relate to each other, how God designed them to relate to each other, how they can be partners throughout life through the different stages of growth of the daughter.

And it's for girls 15 and up, and men can be whatever age they want to be. It doesn't have to be your biological daughter. Numbers of grandfathers have come through with daughters, father figures, uncles. But it's a wonderful time of seeing what the father-daughter relationship is supposed to be and what it can be.

So I want to encourage you now. I mean, like today, if you are a father or a daughter, go to the opposite one and say, let's do that. What a great gift that would be to your dad or to your daughter.

And then in March, we are having our annual EPIC conference, March 1 through 3. Did I mention that the father-daughter is February 16 through 18? March 1-3 is the Epi Conference over in Carrollton, Texas at Sojourn Church. They host this. This is the best conference you'll get to go to this year, no doubt about it.

Darren Babcock is our special guest this year. Darren has done a fabulous job of actually restructuring and reviving a whole section of Dallas, Texas, and now he's being asked to do it in other parts of the world. So we're seeing a man who is doing the Word, not just reading the Word, and it is having a fantastic effect.

Plus, you'll love Darren and his story. And then you've got all the other people that are normally at Epic, and I want you to be there. You can get group rates. So you need to register now, like now. So you can get a hotel room that we have blocked.

There are meals provided during the thing. You need to register. So call office, go on website, get registered, get 10 or more people from your area to come. You all get a discount. We're trying to make it easy for you, as easy as we can, because we know if you get there, your life will be eternally changed.

So that's the epic deal. Two or three other things we're doing. I think the long-range weekend is sold out, so no use in telling you about that, except that maybe next year you want to do it.

Scott, our manager on the ranch, is a former sniper in the Marines, and so he teaches people how to shoot long-range, not shoot each other, shoot targets long-range, like 1,000 yards and more. And it's a wonderful weekend for those who like that kind of thing.

And then April, April 19th, I think the week of the 19th, we'll be doing the annual Wildman retreat, and this is for all men, boys, to come and enjoy being masculine for a weekend, doing the things that we like to do, competing, laughing, telling stories, singing songs, helping each other, and learning things, learning fly fishing, learning shooting, and there are lots of fun stuff involved.

This would be great for any of you men. Plan to come and go ahead and register now because it will fill up.

All right. Those are the commercials for this month. And I look forward to seeing you there.

We just finished doing the New Year's thing. And so a group that was out at the ranch doing the New Year's thing were telling me about You know, silly game they played with New Year's resolutions, and they were doing a—you put in your resolution, somebody picks it out, whatever.

But they were struck by how many people in their New Year's resolution were including, this year I want to read the Bible more. I resolved to read the Bible a certain amount of moments a week. or month or whatever, and they were amazed at how many both adults and children, kids, set that as a resolution.

So I was thinking about that and asking myself, is that a good thing or a bad thing? He said, well, course, Dudley, it's a good thing for people who read the Bible. And that's true.

In fact, I was reading an article just today. About reading the Scripture. Listen to these statistics. Those who read the Bible four or more times a week are 59% less likely to view pornography, 74% less likely to gamble, 407% more likely to memorize Scripture.

That makes sense. If you don't read it, you can't memorize it. 228% more likely to share their faith with others. 231% more likely to disciple others. These same people are 30% less likely to struggle with loneliness.

That's interesting, isn't it? Just reading the Scripture. But I was also thinking about how you read the Scripture, and sometimes when you read the Scripture, It doesn't seem to produce a great deal of life. It seems to produce, I don't know, depression, confusion, frustration. Sometimes it produces religion or that is man-made religion.

So I was just thinking about how should you read the Scripture and how do you get the most out of it and what's supposed to happen when you read the Scripture?

So I wanted to take a passage that deals with that primarily, and it's in the book of James. So if you have a copy of the scripture, turn over there with me.

This is going to be exciting now. You say, oh no, Dudley's going to talk about reading the scripture. It's going to be boring. It is not going to be boring.

So grab your copy and let's read this text right here and see if we can get what James is saying.

This is the epistle, the letter of James, and chapter 1. And here's what it says, verse 16:

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers, for every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

Now hold your finger there. We're not through reading, but I want to just comment on that verse.

That's the whole Bible in a verse. It has the basic doctrines in here. Doctrine of election, of his own will, he brought us forth. The doctrine of regeneration. To being brought forth is like you've been brought from nothing to something. You've been birthed. You've been brought forth.

So of his own will, he brought us forth, regenerated us by the word of truth. So that tells you the nature of the scripture, nature of truth, nature of the gospel.

And then the purpose that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures, that we would be, if you are born of the word, that seed has been planted in you and that seed has come forth and it's produced a new creature, this new creature will act like new creatures act.

And the new creature is... is demonstrated for us, expressed through us, through the person of Jesus Christ.

This new creature that we're made into is we're made into reflections of, reproductions of, if you will, the life of Christ.

So what a great verse of talking about the role that the word of truth plays in this whole thing.

He goes on, though. He says this:

Know this, my beloved brothers.

Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.

Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your soul.

We need to get a hold of that implanted word, don't we?

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's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror, where he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the 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's religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own 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 to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Well, there's a lot in there, so let's talk about that. Does reading Scripture always produce joy in life? No, because if you read Scripture and you look into that mirror and you're not seeing what the mirror is reflecting, then the reading of Scripture either produces condemnation, or confinement, that is, it gives you a bunch of regulations to boundaries to keep you from doing what you want to do, or it produces a conformity, a conformity to model, conformity to behavior, even conformity to certain doctrines or statements like that.

So your life is basically characterized by being suppressed, contained, confined, and conformed. If you read Scripture and that's what happens to you, it's not helping a great deal, other than you'll finally get so miserable reading it that way that you'll cry out to God for mercy, and he will open your eyes, and you'll be able to see in Scripture what it's really saying.

So I want us to take a... I want to give you a shortcut if I can and say you can read the Scripture that way today.

So there's several things we need to know about this concept and about the Scripture. First is this, that biblical reality is not intuitive. You say, what do you mean, Dudley? Well, it means that we don't naturally think in terms of what the Bible reveals to us. We naturally think evolutionary. You say, well, what?

Well, we normally look at life as it's happening in a linear fashion, and we go, okay, this happened, this happened, this happened, that caused this to happen, this could happen, that caused that to happen.

And so this is the way life is. And so we, like the scientists, are doing a testable observation on life, and we conclude certain things based on what we're learning from observing the different interactions of life.

And so we... We kind of interpret life in a very observable fashion. Evolutionary, things evolve. That's not reality. Reality is so different from our natural view of things that it has to be revealed to us.

So let's read a couple of scriptures here that talk about that. Okay, this is 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

You're going to love this. And I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you a testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, but I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom. flowery words, in other words, like oratory, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although it's not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written,

what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of the person which is in him?

So no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Now, we've received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

Do you see what he's saying here? The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, the same Spirit that was a part of the creation, the same Spirit that... that allowed Jesus to live as a true human on the earth. That same spirit has come into us, the same spirit that inspired the writers of the Bible.

That same spirit is interpreting to us what? Interpreting to us the things freely given to us of God.

So when we read Scripture and the Spirit is interpreting it to us, we see the things freely given to us of God. We don't see laws and regulations and condemnation and stuff.

So that's the point.

Now as to the comment I made about we think evolutionary, let me see if I can explain that a little bit.

I'm going to read out a second. Peter.

And he will kind of deal with that whole thing.

Now this is the second letter that I'm writing. This is chapter 3, excuse me. No, 2 Peter.

Now, this is now the second letter that I'm writing to you, beloved.

In both of them, I'm stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord, our Savior, through the apostles, knowing this, first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their sinful desires.

They will say, where is the promise of his coming?

for ever since the fathers fell asleep all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation for they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God

And, well, let me just cut short here.

What he's saying is scoffers, the essence of scoffing is saying the only reality you can trust and believe is that which you can observe, that which may put in a test tube, that which can be testable. And everything's been going on regularly.

Life is a sequence of events that just happen.

And he's saying, no.

So biblical reality is that, that God did create time, but God also intervenes. God is the Lord over it all, and he intervenes.

He said, do you remember the flood? Everything was going along, and mankind thought things were going along like they should, just progressing along, mankind was developing.

God looked at it and said it needs to be destroyed.

So God intervened with something that was unheard of, surprising, radical.

So he comes to Noah and says, there's going to be a big flood. And Noah's like, flood? What's that?

Well, that's when rain starts falling down. Rain? What's that?

And I want you to build an ark. An ark? What's that?

So it was all surprising and radical when God intervened into the normal passing of time and did something that changed history.

It was the same when God came to Abraham and made the promises to Abraham.

And then he says to Abraham, you're going to have a son. It's like.

What? I'm 100 years old? I don't think so. Yes, you are. And Sarah, 90. I know. I'm past that age. Nope, you are.

He's going to do it.

And then the children of the descendants of Abraham are in Egypt for 400 years. And for 400 years, that's a long time for just day after day after day, getting up, making bricks, coming home, eating your onions and your leeks and whatever, going to bed, getting up, getting up.

And 400 years, 400 years, it's a long time. One day God says, okay, I'm ready.

Moses go tell them we're leaving. What? We're leaving? We don't have an army. We don't have anything. We're leaving.

God intervenes. History, biblical reality is about God's intervention into the world of time and sequence.

And so, of course, the biggie. Everything was going along pretty normal.

People were having babies and all that kind of stuff.

And then one day, an angel says to a little 13-year-old virgin Jewish girl, you're going to have a baby, but you're not going to have sex.

And this baby is going to be the Lord. He's going to be the Messiah. What?

That's biblical reality.

Here is the cleaned-up sermon transcription:

It's not the way things happen. You don't have babies like that. That can't be. But it was. And then.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter preaches and says, "Look, here's a sequence of events." Jesus came along. We all thought he was a savior, whatever. He did mighty things, and we knew he was a good man, all that kind of stuff. We thought he was going to restore. But then the Romans got involved, and the Jewish leaders got involved, and they got together, and they concocted a deal, and so he was crucified. But by the way.

He is now raised from the dead, fulfilling all the prophecies of the Old Testament. And he is now the Lord of everything. He rules everything. What? And so the whole... Church era, the whole time from then till now has been characterized by the resurrection of the dead.

So what I'm saying is if you don't have revelation from God, you will interpret life in terms of what seems to be the normal sequential way of doing things. And there's a lot of that kind of time. But biblical reality is God does things that are surprising and radical. So it's the scoffing mentality that says, nothing's going to happen. Jesus ain't coming back. There's no judgment in the future. There's none of that. Everything is determined by the rational and the observable.

So that's what I mean by that. So let's talk about looking at Scripture with the Holy Spirit interpreting it to us so that when we read the Scriptures, we see what God intended for us to see when he had the Scriptures written.

So looking at the Scriptures through a Christ-centered lens, what do you see? Well, let's look at this metaphor that James uses here. I have to be honest with you, there was a long time in my own life where I would read this verse, this passage, and it wasn't all that exciting to me because I had this picture of the Bible as like a mirror that I look into.

And when I look into it, I see me. And what I see in me is I see all my imperfections. I mean, that's what I do in the morning when I look into the natural mirror. I see, "Oh, you need to shave." You actually need a new face. That doesn't seem to be possible, but...

I see what's wrong with me, and then the metaphor is there. You look at it, but you don't do anything about it. You don't fix anything. You don't try to get better. You just look at it and go, "Oh, well." And so you wind up with a beard and a dirty face and all that kind of stuff.

So I saw it with that kind of metaphor. That's not what James is saying. He's saying when you look into the mirror of God's word, that same word that caused you to be born again, that same word that was implanted in you, that caused a new creation to happen inside of you.

When you look into that mirror, you don't see your imperfections. You see his perfections. You see yourself the way he sees you. That's what he's saying. So you are looking at you through God's eyes. And if you look at you through God's eyes, you look at you through what Jesus has done for you.

So if you want to see more about who you really are, you need to know more about who he really is. The more you see of him and his true nature and his true heart and his true mission, the more you know about yourself. Because now you are in Christ and he has taken your place so you can be in his place and you are your reflection of him.

So you finally see. When you look in Scripture, you see yourself the way the human was thought of when God thought of it in the Garden of Eden. So you see a human restored. You see a real human. You see a human that's not trying to be God. You see a human that's not in depression or in disillusionment or in loneliness.

You see a real human the way God designed you to be. You see yourself. In glory, if you will, you see yourself fulfilling what God had in mind. So what do you see when you look into the mirror? Instead of seeing laws and regulations and rules and techniques and all of that...

At best, the Bible becomes kind of a self-help book, but it does not produce transformation. It produces conformity at best and depression at worst, I guess.

So as we look at the Scripture, it says, "I want you to see who you really are, and then I want you to go out and do it." So what does it mean to do the Word? Well, you know, some people read that and they go, "Okay, I got to do all the commandments."

And so they go back to the Torah and stuff like that. Now what he's saying is, I want you to act according to what you've seen in the mirror. Who are you according to the mirror? Now act like that.

If you are a new Christian, act like a new Christian because you have all that. So we'll just pick a few things here. What do we see when you look in the mirror and you see a true human?

Well, first of all, you see someone that's valuable, someone that God ordained from the very first to be an image bearer. You are an image bearer of God that makes you of infinite worth.

And so is everybody else. And so the whole idea of human life having value comes from seeing what it means to be truly a human.

I see myself as a human the way God designed me to be. What does that human look like? Well, I see myself as one who is loved unconditionally.

I see myself as one who can't do anything to make God love me more and can't do anything to make God love me less. That he loves me because of the kind of love he has, goodness that's in me that would cause him to love me.

He doesn't love me because of anything I do. He loves me because of something he is. And so I see myself loved unconditionally, which, okay, if that's true, then how do I do that word?

Well, I don't run around trying to find love from other places. I don't try to make myself acceptable. I don't try to earn my standing with God or with other people.

I'm not... I'm not controlled by the desire for people to love me and accept me and affirm me and build me up and talk about me all the time. I don't have to do all that. I know I'm loved. I'm loved. I can rest.

If I want to do something, I can do it, but I don't have to do it in order to make myself feel loved.

So doing the word means I am actually living according to the truth of being unconditionally loved. Also, I am completely known.

There's something about all of us that want to be known. I don't want to be insignificant. I don't want to be out in the desert. I want to be known. I'd like to be significant. I'd like to play a part. I'd like to know that I want it in the family.

I'd like to know there's a spot in the kitchen for me. It's like all of us do that. That's true for everybody.

Well, God completely knows me. He knows everything about me. He knows things I don't even know about myself. And he certainly knows things you don't know or no other human knows.

And yet he loves me. He doesn't reject me. And so I'm not afraid to tell him the truth. Might as well. He already knows that.

So I can tell him the truth. And if I find somebody safe enough, I can tell them the truth.

And I can live my life in relationship with people, not trying to cover up or hide or to protect myself from shame or exposure. I'm already known. The book's open. I'm exposed.

And I'm exposed to one who says, "I know it all." I love you. And I want to walk with you.

How do you do that word? Well, you lay aside, as James says, lay aside all that filthiness and all that stuff that's keeping you from seeing the true picture in the mirror.

Lay all that stuff aside and look really at the mirror or at the image in the mirror. And when you will, when you do, you won't be conformed to religion. You'll be transformed by the Spirit.

The other thing you see, that image in the mirror, is you see someone forgiven eternally. You see someone who's standing there saying, "You know what? God knows all of my sins, past, present, and future, and he's forgiven me."

You see one who's already, through Christ, been to the judgment in the future, and God at the judgment has declared me innocent, forgiven, debt paid, and already.

So he has pulled the future into the present and basically said, "I think I'll let him know about it so he can live as a forgiven person now while he waits until the end."

So I'm justified. I am eternally forgiven.

How do you do that? Well, you live that way. You don't live with depression and guilt and shame about what you've done and whatever.

You live as a justified person. What does that mean? It means I've already been to the judgment and I've already heard the sentence, and the sentence is I'm declared innocent.

I'm declared righteous, as righteous as Jesus is. So I'm eternally forgiven.

And then I am empowered supernaturally.

See, he didn't just forgive my past or whatever. He has empowered me to be the human that God designed, thought of when he created Adam and Eve.

And so I am now God's supernaturally empowered person to represent him on the earth as we get back to managing the earth and affecting society with this light that has come.

this illumination of truth that pushes back darkness. I am that person.

So as I do the Word, that is, as I live according to what I've seen in the Word, as I do the Word, then it does have fruit. It does have works. It's inevitable.

It happens. We look at the early church and what happened to them.

Well, they were born of the Word of God, and as new creatures, they began doing things that society hadn't done before.

They began to create structures in society that would channel this new life that God had given to them.

And some of the structures looked similar to the old ones, like... You know, the Jews had learned to do the synagogue thing when the temple was destroyed.

And so they learned to gather together in a locality and, you know, have their services, their worship, their time together.

So when the new era came in, when the resurrection came in, the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, they continued to meet together kind of like a synagogue.

Only now they weren't talking about Torah and laws. purification and all of that stuff in the future, they were talking about who Jesus was, what he had done, and how he had fulfilled everything and how this was a new era and how do we live in this new era.

And so they created structures. The reason I mention that is so sometimes we get so... frustrated with our structures, with our institutions, whether it be the church or the school system or the welfare system or government in general or whatever.

So we say, let's get rid of all the institutions. Institutions are all bad. No, institutions are not bad.

The spirit needs a body through which to express himself. And so institutions are simply the structures that life flows through.

And sometimes it needs tweaking and changing, and it never needs to be worshipped and seen as the source.

But structures are important. And so the early church began to produce institutions, structures.

The church. The church had a structure to it. It had deacons in it who would take care of the widows.

It had apostles in it who would make sure they knew what the teachings of the Old Testament having been interpreted in light of Jesus, really were.

It had teachers in it, indicating that the biblical reality is not intuitive.

It has to be taught from a new angle, from a new perspective.

It had evangelists in it, those who would share the good news.

So yes, it had structure. Yes, it had hierarchy. Yes, it had offices. Yes, there was a structure through which the life could flow.

Otherwise, the wine all runs out on the ground.

So what's interesting is to see how these disciples in the New Testament, having looked into the law of liberty and seeing that truth and now trying to live it out together, how they began to change society.

You know, up until then, the appreciation of the human being was not very high. Humans were treated as just kind of the higher animal, and life was cheap.

But when the Christians began to affect society, they began developing laws and structures that protected the life of the innocent, protected the life of... humans.

And it didn't just happen to be for them. It wasn't just, we're going to do this just for Christians.

Well, they did it for one another, but what made an impact on the Roman Empire and the Roman Empress was that Christians didn't just care about their own little group.

They cared about society.

I mean, Julian, some of the bad guys would say, we don't like Christianity. We hate Christianity, but don't get rid of them all because they take care of the sick, that take care of the poor, and not just their own, they take care of ours too.

You know, you've heard stories, read stories about how society would, they didn't want a baby, they just left them out on the curb, or her most of the time.

Well, the Christians would go get them and raise them and teach them the Word of God, and that was part of the evangelism, part of the growth.

So the human was valued, the poor, Up until this time, there's always been poor people, but there was never a designation of there is this category of the poor, and that part of our responsibility is to take care of the poor.

And so the Christians are the ones who began doing the charitable stuff, who began making places for structures for programs for facilities for energies for volunteers for taking care of the genuine poor, and as well as the sick.

So, well, didn't they just pray? Well, they prayed, and then they used whatever facilities and whatever knowledge they had, and they did what was necessary for the sick.

It was the Christians who stayed with the sick during the plagues. The pagans didn't.

If a plague came through the area, all the healthy ones got out of town. It's like, I don't want to catch that. Even if it's my mom or dad or one of my kids, I can't catch it. So they would just abandon them.

So people during the plague just died lonely and died alone.

Christians said, nope, they won't die alone. I'll be with them.

They said, yeah, but you might get it. Well, a lot of them did, and they died too.

But they left the witness that we care for everybody that Jesus cares for.

And Jesus cares for the poor. He cares for the sick. He cares for the lonely. He cares for the orphan and the widow.

Isn't it interesting in this James passage that he said, true religion is this, those who keep themselves unspotted from the world, that is, they don't let the world tell them what reality is.

They let the word of God tell them what reality is.

And secondly, they visit the orphans and the widows.

You know, up until the time of the Christian invasion of society, orphans were basically abandoned. I mean, if you're an orphan, you just, tough luck.

Sometimes they would get adopted, but usually to be adopted by someone who wanted you as a worker.

And so the Christians put a whole new slant on caring for the orphan and the widow.

And so sometimes when we get all down in the mouth about how Christianity has been perverted and we're not doing the job and all that kind of stuff, back off just a little bit and see the bigger picture.

Christianity has affected society. Why? Because there were some people who looked into the law of liberty and saw what God had done for them and said, I got to act accordingly.

If I am the human that God created to manage the earth, then I need to get involved in all these things.

I got to get involved in every area where Jesus cares. And so that's the good works that were prepared for us to walk in them.

And so, yeah, you're not doing those things in order for God to love you more or whatever. No, you're doing them because you're a new creation.

You're doing them because... God has done in you something that is surprising, radical, different.

You're a species the world has never seen before Jesus came and was resurrected from the dead.

So act like that new species is what he's saying.

So being a doer of the word is living out the gospel, actually.

So, well, there's a lot more there, but I think you get the point.

So this year. I encourage you, make New Year's resolutions or mid-year resolutions, whatever.

Read the Bible more. When you read it, however, look at it as a mirror that's reflecting biblical reality.

What's biblical reality? Look at yourself in light of what God has done for you in Christ Jesus, and then act accordingly.

And when you do, you'll find that you will be involved in everything that God's heart cares for.

And as you do that, you will find joy because you are doing the word and not just hearing it.

If you are just a hearer, you are living in the mind or you're trying to live in the philosophical and you're not enjoying life as it is.

So isn't it wonderful that we have before us the scriptures and the Holy Spirit who wrote them?

and the subject of the matter, of the whole thing living inside of us.

So why wouldn't we enjoy reading the scriptures and looking into the mirror and then going and doing it?

So let me pray for you. Father, I thank you that you've made it possible for us to look into the perfect law of liberty and in doing that, find freedom and empowerment and fulfillment, purpose and meaning.

I pray that this year, this year, 2024, would be a year when people come out of their conformity, their confinement, and their condemnation and find in you, in looking at you and looking at your word, find the freedom of transformation.

I pray this will be true in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, it's been fun being with you. And until next time we get together, this is Dudley Hall.

with Kerygma Ventures.

Thank you so much for listening to the Kerygma Ventures podcast.

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