Wheat field Banner

Gleanings From The Word

Category: Matthew

  • # Right Belief Must Become Right Living

    Recently, I slammed my hand in a door. I’m ashamed to admit that a stream of pre-Christian expletives came out of my lips. By and large, I’ve done a good job of removing those words, but I can still slip. There are times when what I do or say doesn’t align with what I believe or who I profess to be.

    Theologians have two words for this, and you do not need a seminary degree to understand them. Orthodoxy means right belief. Orthopraxy means right living. For most of church history these two words have walked together, because they were never meant to be separated. You cannot claim one and discard the other and still call it biblical Christianity.

    Scripture is not gentle about this. What use is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but has no works? Can that faith save him? Faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself (James 2:14, 17). That is not a suggestion tucked in a side verse. James is asking us to look honestly at whether our lives back up what we say we believe.

    Before this goes somewhere it should not, let me be clear about what this is not saying. We are not saved by our good works. It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). Nothing about right living earns you a place at the table. But the very next verse will not let us stop there either. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (Ephesians 2:10). The works do not save us. They are what saved people were made for.

    This is where orthopraxy actually shows up, not in grand gestures but in the ordinary texture of a life. It is patience with the person who tests you twice in one day. It is honesty on the tax form nobody is checking. It is showing up for the friend whose crisis is inconvenient for your schedule. James puts it plainly: prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves (James 1:22). A faith that only ever lives in your head has not yet become the faith Scripture is describing.

    There is a warning built into this too, and it cuts the other direction from where we might expect. Jesus said not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father. Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you (Matthew 7:21-23). Right belief without right living is not a small inconsistency. Jesus treats it as evidence that something never took root at all.

    So orthodoxy and orthopraxy are not in competition, and they are not optional extras for the especially devoted. They are the two halves of one whole life. Sound doctrine without a changed life is a faith that talks and never walks. A changed life without sound doctrine is a house built on whatever feels right that year. We need both, and Scripture never offers us the choice to pick only one.

    If you have spent more time defending what you believe than living it out this week, that is worth sitting with honestly before God. And if you have been busy doing good without rooting it in the truth of who Christ is and what He has done, that is worth examining too. The way we live matters, not because it earns us anything, but because it is supposed to be the visible proof of what grace has already done.

    I still catch myself in moments like that door slam, where what comes out does not match what I claim to believe. That is not proof grace has failed. It is proof I am still being made new, and that the gap between profession and practice is meant to keep shrinking, not stay the same size forever.

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God)

    Be blessed,

    Kevin

    You might also enjoy

    He left the 99 behind to find you.

    Some thoughts on finding a good church

    Find a good church

    Live in Abbotsford? There are many good churches. This is where I attend.

  • Small Steps, Big Kingdom: What Beavers Teach Us About How God Grows His Church

    Aerial view of world'slongest beaver damn - small steps produce big results

    The beaver is famed for being an industrious builder. Stick by stick, twig by twig, packing with mud as they go, they close off waterways. It’s all accomplished in small steps.

    According to Parks Canada “The world’s largest beaver dam is visible from space in satellite images. It is almost 800 meters long from end-to-end, and holds back run-off water from the Birch Mountains in the southernmost end of Wood Buffalo National Park.”

    The front of the actual dam runs approximately 775 meters in length. The entire perimeter of the dam area is close to 2000 meters. The surface area is approximately 70,000 square meters. The pond formed by the dam is probably one meter deep, which means it would contain about 70,000 cubic meters of water.”

    There is one major lodge on the site, which means 4-8 beavers. This likely took 40 years and multiple generations to build. That’s an incalculable number of small steps.

    It reminds me of the way Jesus built his church. The kingdom grows in small steps. It’s spread person to person, one soul at a time. Why the Lord chose to do it that way is a mystery to me. Surely there must have been a more efficient option.

    Yet somehow it makes sense. 

    God’s kingdom often begins in ways that appear small, weak, or unnoticed, but through His power it grows steadily and accomplishes His purposes.

    He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is fully grown, it is the largest of the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-32

    Ordinary people, like you and me, spread the gospel. We grow the kingdom step by small step. 

    Before the day of Pentecost, Jesus’ ministry had produced about 120 converts. There was a miraculous supernatural harvest on that day, but typically it’s spread one-to-one.

    From humble beginnings, now over 2 billion people claim to be followers of Christ. We know that figure includes many who are not true believers, but person by person and generation to generation, the small steps have paid off.

    As a believer, you are part of something much larger than you can imagine. Keep taking those small steps of faith and obedience. Incremental change over time yields huge transformations.

    Keep sowing and growing. The harvest is plentiful. Lets do our part.

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God) 

    Be blessed 

    Kevin 

    SUMMARY:

    Just as beavers build the world’s largest dam one twig at a time over generations, God’s kingdom grows through small, faithful steps — person by person, soul by soul — from 120 disciples to over 2 billion followers of Christ.

     

    KEY POINTS

    The world’s largest beaver dam stretches nearly 800 meters and took an estimated 40 years and multiple generations to complete, built entirely through countless small, incremental actions.

    Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed — the smallest of seeds that grows into the largest garden plant — reflecting how God’s purposes advance through what appears weak or unnoticed.

    From 120 converts before Pentecost to more than 2 billion today, the gospel has spread one person at a time, reminding believers that their small steps of faith and obedience are part of something far greater than they can see. 

    You might also enjoy “Busy beaver, another helper” and “God is closer than you think.”