Stop Auditing Your Faith

Pastor James Cole

We have all been there. It is Sunday morning, the music is beautiful, the sanctuary feels quiet, safe, and, well, holy. Truth feels easy here. But then, Monday morning hits. You are sitting in gridlock on the highway, your inbox is already at forty three unread messages, the coffee machine is leaking, and suddenly, that peaceful feeling from yesterday feels like a different universe. We have this almost reflexive human tendency to leave Sunday in the sanctuary. We treat those insights like a museum exhibit, something beautiful to look at, but certainly not a blueprint for the real world. And that is where the danger creeps in.

Pastor James Cole

There is a passage in the letter of James, chapter one, verse twenty two, that gets right to the heart of this. It says, "But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves." Now, that word "hearers" is incredibly specific in the original Greek. The word is akroates. And in the ancient world, akroates was a common term for persons who were attendants at a lecture but not disciples of the lecturer. They were, quite literally, university style auditors. They showed up, they listened to the great philosophers for intellectual entertainment, but they had absolutely no skin in the game. No homework, no exams, and no obligation to actually change how they lived based on what they heard.

Pastor James Cole

And James is warning us that it is incredibly easy to audit our faith. We show up, we listen to the sermon, we maybe even get a little emotional, and then we go home unchanged. And the scary part is what he says next, that we "delude ourselves." The Greek word there is paralogizomai, which means to deceive yourself through faulty reasoning. It is a sort of spiritual trick we play on our own brains. We mistake the warm feeling of agreement for actual obedience. We think because we nodded along with a sermon about forgiveness, we have actually forgiven that person who hurt us. But we have not. We have just audited the lecture on it.

Pastor James Cole

But James does not leave us in the lecture hall. He gives us an alternative. He calls us to be "doers." And the Greek word for doer is poietes, which comes from poieo, meaning to make, to create, or to perform. Do you hear the English word hidden in there? Poietes is where we get our word "poet." Isn't that beautiful? A doer of the word is not some spiritual robot grinding through a dry, heavy checklist of rules. A doer is a poet of faith. You are taking the raw, beautiful truth of God and you are actively crafting, shaping, and composing it into a lived life.

Pastor James Cole

So, how do we write that poem on a Monday? How do we stop auditing? Well, it starts very small. Take a verse like James one nineteen, "be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger." To audit that verse is to say, "Yes, that is a wonderful way to live." To write a poem with that verse is to actually pause for ten seconds before you type out that defensive, angry reply to your coworker's email. It is choosing to yield to the person who just cut you off in traffic, not because they deserve it, but because your life is a canvas for grace today. It is taking the abstract and making it concrete, one small, creative choice at a time.

Pastor James Cole

So, I want to ask you this morning, what is one truth you heard yesterday, or read this morning, that you are currently auditing? What is the lecture you are sitting in on without actually enrolling in the course? Let us decide today to step out of the lecture hall. Let us pray. Father, give us the courage not just to listen, but to live. Help us to take the truths we love to hear and turn them into the life we actually lead today. Make our actions, our words, and our patience on this Monday morning a beautiful poem of your grace. In Jesus' name, amen. Go write your poem today, my friends.