Have you ever heard Screen Door by Rich Mullins?  I loved that song when it came out.  I thought it had to be the coolest song ever!  I don't think I fully grasped the concept of what the lyrics were trying to convey.  I certainly never realized it was as deep as it is, nor that the inspiration had to have come from the book of James.  I just knew that “good works” didn't save you but faith did.

Over the past several weeks I've been working through a study on the book of James (James:Faith that Works).  It's not as though I've never read the book of James before.  I grew up in church and was in every Bible School program known to man.  Even with the inordinate amount of exposure I've had to the Word of God, there is always something God is trying to teach me in a fresh new way.  He most often uses the passages I've heard the most and this study of James has been just that so far.

The discussion in the first several chapters of this study has been centered around how you cannot have faith without works.  If you truly have faith, there will be works to back it up.  When the study took us in this direction I immediately thought of the lyrics to that song I loved all those years ago (Screen Door).  “Faith without works is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.”  Think about that for a second.  A screen door on a submarine would indeed be pointless.  And a song that couldn't be sung?  Well, that's a waste for certain.

So, if we say, “oh yes, I have faith in God”, and yet we still walk about doing everything on our own - where is our faith?  There's no “action” to back up what we “say” we believe.  We say we have faith that God will take care of us if we do His will, and yet, what are we doing.  Nothing.  Sometimes having faith, true faith, faith with fruit, requires us to stretch.  It requires us to relinquish some control.  Human beings don't enjoy that too much.  I know I certainly don't.  I mean heck, I whined and complained for months because I couldn't “control” how this blog looked lol.

We say, for example, that our priorities match up with God's priorities (God, spouse, kids(other relationships), job, church, others) and yet how many of us out there are shuffling the kids to every extra curricular activity under the sun and not having a regular date night with our spouse?  How many of us are working long hours at our jobs and then sleeping in and not having a regular alone time with God?  How many of us are busy doing “good things“ for people but don't take the time to read our children a story before bed?  How many of us are saving for retirement but aren't giving anything back to God?

We say we have faith but does the way we live our life show that faith?  The old saying, “actions speak louder than words” is true in regards to faith also.  So truly, faith without works is useless because it will accomplish nothing.