An outline is an organizational tool.
It’s not the complete book or the entire report.
The outline is our guideline, and we fill in the details as we make progress.
James 1:21-25 gives us Our Outline for Following Jesus.
Verse 21 tells us we must step back from wrongdoing and spend time studying the Word.
“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
Verse 22 says we must live by what the Bible says. It’s not enough to listen to the pastor on Sunday and do what we want the rest of the week.
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
Verses 23-24 says if we fail to read the Bible and do what it says, we’ve become blinded to how we appear to others.
“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.”
Verse 25 is our guarantee of God’s blessing over everything we do when we live out what we learn in the Word of God.
“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.”
These are the four steps, the four layers to our Christian outline. The details in between are the lives we live. Yet, this gets us started. This is our guideline. If we come back to it when we find ourselves off track, we will build our successful Christian story one chapter at a time.
God has a plan. He wants us to follow him.
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Code: FGO.H.25.19b.vp.esv