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Welcome to Day 2122 of  Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom James – Wisdom is Faith in Action 4 – Listening and Doing – Daily Wisdom Putnam Church Message – 09/26/2021 James: Wisdom is Faith In Action – Listening and Doing We are continuing our series today on the Proverbs of the New Testament, better known as the book of James.  Last week we discovered why we should not be misled by sin because we are God’s Prized Possessions. Today our focus is on Listening and Doing.  Join me on page 1882 in the pew bibles as I read the Scripture for today. I would recommend keeping this passage open as we go throughout the message today: James 1:19-27 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. 22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. 26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. A debilitating disease is crippling the body of Christ—a syndrome so common that it seems to affect every believer with either a mild or an acute case. This insidious condition neutralizes the church’s impact and nullifies its testimony. It can diminish effectiveness and paralyze production. The problem? A divorce between confession and deed, theology and action, listening and doing. As a result, God’s Word fails to make it from the head to the heart for too many Christians. God’s Word gets lodged between the heart and the hands for many more. In developing his overarching lesson that real faith produces genuine works, James has already dealt with the Christian’s perseverance through trials, which proves our faith (1:1-12), and the believer’s victory over temptation, demonstrating our character (1:13-18). As our theme for this series states, Wisdom is Faith in Action.  In this final section of chapter 1, James zooms in on the believer’s appropriate response to God’s Word. The break in the relationship between belief and behavior may be pandemic among Christians, but James reminds us that the two estranged partners of the Christian walk can be reconciled.   -1:19-20 — James begins with a reminder: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this” Unquestionably, he’s writing to believers, brothers, and sisters in Christ. And he begins by acknowledging that they should already know what he’s about to say.  In the NLT, James