Living What I Believe

"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, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." James 1:22-25

I learn, but do not retain what I learn because I fail to apply this new-found wisdom.  I'm distracted by life's busyness and the nothingness that wastes so much of my time.  I have a hunger to learn more about doctrine and God's ways, but little time to study.  I must be content in studying bits here and there and purposely seeking to understand God's ways and attributes through my daily walk with Him:  in nature, in the godly music playing in the background, in my relationships, in the mundane circumstances, and in the answered prayers.

Today I had a chance to read a few pages from Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology:

You are what you believe.  If your life does not adorn your biblical doctrine, it suggests not that the Bible's doctrine is untrue but that at some profound level, that truth has not taken hold of you yet.  It ought to be our aim to out-live, out-rejoice, and out-die the critics of theology and doctrine - to adorn our doctrine with our lives.  -J. Ligon Duncan III