Action, Not Motion (Hebrews 5:13-14)

Everybody, welcome. Welcome to 915 devotional. Even though it's 9:17, a little late start today. I'll I'll pick it up because we may have a tailwind. So, as a joke, but hopefully it landed well. Another pun. All right, I'm full of them today. All right. So, today we're going to be in at least I make myself laugh. Today, we're going to be in Hebrews uh chapter 5 and we're going to be in verses 13 and 14. And it's really at the end of 14 that I want to key on. Uh but let me set the stage. So the writer, we're not super sure who it is that wrote the book of Hebrews, but the writer is talking about uh those that uh should be farther along in their walk, and they're not.

And uh and so he's that's what verse 11 and 12 are. But we're going to jump into verse 13 and 14. And so let me read this for you. This is anyone who lives on milk uh being still an infant is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. Makes sense. Verse 14, we have this one awesome word in our text, the word but, which means there's something good coming. But solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. And that's kind of the point that I want to drive home. I'm I'm I'm not as interested in talking about the fact that there could be some people on the on this call or some people that you sit next to at church or the Christians that you have at work that are they're still they've been infants for 10 years.

They just haven't gone any farther than going to church on a on a Sunday morning. Um, but what I want to talk about is this last part with who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Uh, I'm reading I'm I'm reading uh this book again for the second time. I read it years ago. Um, and it's uh atomic habits. Great book. And uh there's a a a chapter in there that talks about the difference between uh motion and action. Motion can feel like you're doing something. It's it's maybe preparation. And so you you tell yourself this is good.

This is useful. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm I'm prepared. This is motion. It feels good. You you did this thing. But the real thing that we should be focusing on is the action side, not the motion side. And in this book, it talks about and and and many of you have probably heard this and and probably heard it stated, uh, you know, how many days does it take to build a habit? And I've heard 21 is probably the most common number, but the but the real science behind it is not a day. The amount of days is irrelevant. And and we have Adam Brockner on here.

who was a strength and fitness coach for an NFL team and he can probably speak to this as well too. The the habit doesn't come in the number of days. The habit comes in the repetition. You might build your habit in 10 days because you did it three times a day and that may be what you needed to to obtain that habit slide where now it's a habit. Or maybe you're only doing it once every other day. It might take you three months to build that habit. So it's not the number of days, it's the repetition. Well, Dwayne, how does that tie into what we're talking about today in this text?

Because being a mature Christian is not knowing the word. There are plenty of those. There are plenty of people who know the word. I mean, I' I've I've watched it in my entire Christian life. There are plenty of people. Being a mature Christian is using the word. It's doing the word. James says it. Don't just be a hearer. Be a doer of the word. And so, that's where this comes into play. So, how I've had people ask me doing, "Well, how do I how can I tell whether whether this is of God or not?" Well, there's lots of ways to do that, but one of the ways is because you've trained yourself to know that.

And how do you train yourself? It's not necessarily by reading the word. Reading the word is important. We definitely want to do that. But if we read it and then we don't do it, we did the motion, but we don't have the action, then what you just read is useless. It has no weight. It carries nothing. And so we are we're required to it's incumbent upon us to make sure that when we read it and this is why the Old Testament says to write it to the tablet of your heart. You're you're you're etching it. You're you're chiseling it in stone. It's becoming who you are.

It's what you are. It's who you are. It's what you do. And that's the difference between being on milk and staying that way and becoming a mature Christian. It's not necessarily, oh, I read the whole Bible. Well, that's great. Are you actioning the Bible? Because that's the part that counts. That's when you will now build the habit of being able to determine and discern, is this of God? Is this the path for me? Am I hearing God? Or am I hearing myself? Am I listening to me because this is what I want to do? or am I am I hearing the Holy Spirit tell me this is the path and direction that you need to go down.

And the way that you do that is by action. It is by repetitive action. It's by continuing to to be the person that you need to be so that you can then hear that, know it, and understand it. And the first part of this verse is exactly what it looks like if we use the example of our school system. You might have been going to church for 10 years, but I can't give you anything weighty. I can't even talk to you about it because you can't hear it. You can't accept it. You can't understand it. So, it' be like me going to a second grader and going, "Here's the trigonometry problem.

Solve it." Or, "Here's here's the trigonometry problem, and here's the formula to figure it out. Now, give me the answer. It would never happen. They can't. They can't hear it. They're not ready for it." And so, we are we're on a we're on a prayer call in the morning. We're starting our day. We're giving it to God. Now, we need to start taking what we're hearing, taking what we're reading, and we need to start actioning it so that we can become more mature. And why do we want to do that? We need to do that not not for our not necessarily for ourselves.

We need to do that for our spouse. We need to do that for our kids. We need to do that for the person we sit next to in the cubicle. We need to do that for the barista at Starbucks when we pick up our coffee. that that's why we need to do that. We need to we need to continually become more mature Christians. And we don't do that through the motion. We do that through the action. All right. Thoughts, comments, suggestions? A a simple formula I heard just the other day was every time you get into the word, just simply ask, Lord, what do you want me to know?

And what do you want me to do? What do you want me to know? What what do you want me to do with that? I love that. I'm like, man, I'm taking putting that in my pocket, taking that with me. I love that. What do you want me to know and what do you want me to do? Two questions. What do you want me to know and what do you want me to do? That's awesome. That's pretty easy to remember, too. What do you want me to know? And what do you want me to do? There's there's something that a lot of people sometimes they always ask, how do you know? And some people try to go by with the heart.

They got to understand sometimes that the heart is is deceitful also. So we always got to put that into uh context. So being careful with that and knowing that what is what is good is of God and was it's bad it's of the enemy. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. Anybody else? All right. Well, those are awesome words, Mr. Adam. Thank you so much for being on and sharing that. I know there are plenty of people on here who need to hear that. So, what do you want me to know? And what do you want me to do? What what what am I learning here?

And how am I putting this into place? What's my action? Not motion. What's my action after I get done reading what I've read today? Awesome. All right. Well, let's bow our heads. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for today. Thank you. Uh thank you for for the maturity. Thank you for having people who show up, who can be on here, who can speak life, simple little things like that into the rest of us. Things that we can take from this call that can make action steps for us as we go forward today and tomorrow and for the rest of our walk here.

And so, Father, I'm just so uh grateful to be able to have this time together in the morning to be able to learn your word, but but then to be able to learn and and and practical steps to be able to learn how we put that into action. So, Father, we just thank you for that. We thank you for guiding us today. We thank you that that that uh that although we needed milk and and we have no problem having that, but that at some point we have to get on to the meat. We have to guide we have to dive in deeper, Lord. and we just pray that you would continue to direct our hearts uh and our action steps in that in that way.

Father, we thank you for who you are and what you're doing in our lives. Father, I pray that you would watch over us this weekend until we have an opportunity to get together on Monday. I pray that there's anybody on this call who's not a part of a church, who's not a part of community. Uh Lord, that you would direct them, that you would put somebody in their path that to get them to the church or get them into that community, get them into that group. Uh because we know that that's how we live our lives. Father, we just thank you for today. Watch over us, guide us, direct us, allow us to continue to to grow from the inside out, to be transformed, Father, for for not just for ourselves, Lord, but for those that are around us, those that are important to us.

We love you. We praise you. And as always, in your son, Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, all we'll see you guys on Monday. Monday. Sunday. Thank you. See you Sunday. Hey, Luna. See you Sunday. Yeah. Happy day. Bye guys. Sunday some

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly edited for readability.