Devotional for April 14
April 14, 2008 by Dan
“Not everyone who says…but he who does” (Matthew 7:21).
Closing the gap between our talk and our walk can be one of our greatest challenges. Words come easy; actions take effort. The ethical behavior described in the Sermon on the Mount has been praised by many and lived by few. This is why Jesus called it the strait gate and the narrow way that not many will find (7:14).
Closing this gap between talk and walk is of great importance for both the Christian and the observing world. Without walking the talk, Jesus said no man shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Without walking the talk, the world will not enter the kingdom either, because they will not believe the message.
Let’s not misunderstand, both walk and talk are important. They are complementary. The walk is the demonstration needed for talk to be believed. The talk is the explanation of the “how” and “why” of the walk.
The talk without the walk however is detrimental. Lips and life must testify to the same thing. There is the familiar story of a psychiatrist who is assigned to a new wing in a psychiatric hospital. While making his rounds he comes to a room with two men in their beds. The first man irritates the psychiatrist with his behavior so the doctor says, “Excuse me, just who do you think you are?” The patient replies, “Napoleon.” The psychiatrist is intrigued, so he probes deeper. “That’s very interesting, and who told you that you are Napoleon.” He replies, “God told me.” At this point, the man sitting in the bed next to him says, “I most certainly did not!”
Anyone can claim to be anything they want, but reality is not created by talk but by actions. A woman once told me, as I approach the door to a psychiatric hospital that she was “Jesus”. I was perplexed as to how to respond to her. She was clearly the wrong gender, was living a bit late in history, and made her home in an institution for the mentally handicapped. Her lips were saying one thing, and her life quite another and she had an excuse for such a disparity.
The mentally competent have no excuse for such a gap between the talk and the walk. While I was flying in the seat next to a doctor’s wife several years ago, she told me in grieving tones how her husband was having an affair with a nurse. She explained the devastation felt by her teenage children. He had preached one thing to them all his life, and now he was living something radically different.
His life was a sad and extreme example of how shameful we all look when we divorce our words from our actions. If we want to save ourselves and those who hear us, our talk and our walk must be joined in an enduring union.
