A look in the Mirror

A woman rushes to see her doctor, looking very much worried and all strung out.

She rattles off, "Doctor, take a look at me. When I woke up this morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my hair all wiry and frazzled up, my skin was all wrinkled and pasty, my eyes were blood-shot and bugging out, and I had this corpse-like look on my face! What's wrong with me, Doctor?"

The doctor looks her over for a couple of minutes, then calmly says, "Well, I can tell you one thing ... there's nothing wrong with your eyesight!"

The mirror of the Word of God will reveal our spiritual flaws.

As that joke makes clear, looking in a mirror won't correct any problems you have, but it may make it clear that there is a problem! That is exactly the point James makes to early Christian believers:

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 observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. (James 1:22-25)

Looking into the mirror of the Word of God will reveal our spiritual flaws that need to be corrected — and sometimes this mirror will reveal an ugly sight! However, unless we take steps to apply God's Word and change what we see, we haven't accomplished any good. With the Holy Spirit's power, God's word will not only convict and convince us of our need for change and action, the Spirit will also empower us to that needed change and action. Let's not just take a glance in the mirror, but use it to alter our lives to honour God!

Have you looked in that mirror lately?

Written by Alan Smith
(http://www.heartlight.org/)