Do More Than Speak Truth
Love. Know. Speak. Do. These are four essential elements to a discipleship relationship—or any friendship, for that matter—if you are willing to be used by God to help another person experience the transforming power of grace.
Last week, we discussed speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) and the importance of providing gentle, patient, and ongoing rebuke.
But here’s my concern and observation: most personal ministry relationships stop at Speak. We quit too soon.
Love. Know. Speak. Do.
Most of us are tempted to think that change has occurred before it actually has. We confuse growth in knowledge and insight with genuine life change.
While vitally important, hearing and receiving the Truth is only the beginning. Insight alone is not change; biblical knowledge should not be confused with active, biblical wisdom.
The Truth about who we are, who God is, and what he has given us in Christ must be applied to the heart and life of the person we are helping change.
In two decades of seminary teaching, I met many brilliant, theologically astute students who were incredibly immature in their everyday lives. There was often a vast gap between their confessional and functional theology.
Students who could articulate the sovereignty of God were paralyzed by worry. Students who could expound on the glory of God would dominate classroom discussions for the sake of their own egos.
I counseled students who could explain the biblical doctrine of progressive holiness while nurturing secret worlds of lust and sexual sin. Students who could explain the biblical teaching of God’s grace were harsh, judgmental legalists.
Many young men who were months away from ministry could preach brilliantly on the love of God yet had little love for the real people they were about to start pastoring.
Don’t be too quick to assume heart change has occurred just because acknowledgment or affirmation has been verbalized. Yes, we first need people to see, know, and understand, but we also need them to apply that insight to their daily lives.
For many people, it is much easier to know what is wrong than how to change it. A sister in the Lord may understand the major themes, truths, and promises of Scripture, but she may not know how to use them in certain situations, struggles, and relationships.
A brother in Christ may have confessed a selfish, idolatrous heart and even seen and mourned how it negatively impacts his relationship with his wife and kids. But it will be much harder for him to think clearly and creatively about repenting and functionally loving his spouse and children in specific ways.
God calls the person you are helping to change not just to hear his Word but to actively do it as well.
“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).
Don’t confuse insight with change. Don’t quit too soon. And don’t give up on your friend when that process of change is slow.
Change is always a process, not an event. And that change takes place in 10,000 mundane moments of everyday life.
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
A Prayer for Today: God, help me to be a person who genuinely experiences growth and change in my life and not just a person who is able to talk about it with eloquence and knowledge. Help me also to care for others well and be patient with them, knowing that change is a process and not an event. By the power of your Spirit, help me not to quit at knowing, but help me to press forward into doing as well. In Jesus’ name, amen.
God bless,
Paul David Tripp
Discussion Prompt for Children
Why is what we do a better way to understand what we believe than just what we say? If someone says something about the way they live, but then they live in the opposite way than what they said, what do you think they really believe? Why is what we do a true reflection of what we believe?
Reflection Questions
1. Why is growth in knowledge and insight not the same thing as genuine life change? Why is it so dangerous to confuse biblical knowledge with active, biblical wisdom? Why is the application of knowledge and insight to our daily lives more important than knowledge and insight itself?
2. Why is it easy to confuse insight and knowledge with genuine life change? How have you been blind to this in your own life? How might God be calling you to help others see their blindness in their areas of sin?
3. If a friend of yours knows a lot about how to change, but never actually changes, how can you lovingly offer help to him or her? In what ways can you continue to love them and spur them on when the process of change is slow? How can you encourage your friend in love to be a doer of the word and not just a hearer?