The Companion of Faith

Our faith is the single most important aspect of our Christian walk today. Its absence means we can't receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, trust God to meet our needs, or develop the spiritual fruit that is essential to our spiritual growth.

However, there's a great companion of faith that we Christians often overlook. By that, I simply mean something that should be a natural outgrowth of what we believe ... something that supports an active and mature commitment to our Lord. That "companion" is simply works.

James 2:14-18 makes this point crystal clear. While upholding the absolute central importance of faith, James challenges us to note how our beliefs play themselves out in our actions. It is not sufficient just to pray for the hurting and hungry people in our world if we have the means to help in tangible ways. Perhaps a meal for a hungry person or something of that nature to take care of immediate physical needs. The point is: our actions in the matter reveal the substance, genuineness, and purity of our faith.

Isn't this the very same example Jesus Himself set for us? Peter describes in the book of Acts the way the Lord "went about doing good" (10:38). And in Eph 2:10, Paul brought this idea even more personally to the believers in Ephesus ... and to us ... when he wrote: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." The point is that we are created to be like Christ, and when He walked the face of this earth, He constantly went about doing good works.

What do our actions reveal about our faith? While we certainly can't work our way into heaven, if we believe in Jesus, we have a responsibility to be His hands in this hurting world we're in. It is imperative to understand that our salvation is not based on whether or not we do good works or whether we obey all the rules and regulations. But out of our salvation, come good works of faith. That is why to have faith without works is to have no faith at all. If our good works aren't there, then neither is the salvation from which they come.

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I'm late with my blog today because I decided that I had to get some housework done today if it killed me and so I decided that I should do the work and then blog. If I started out with my blog first thing this morning, I might not get back around to the housework so I buckled down and got half of it done. We have the kids coming over from San Francisco this weekend and I knew that something had to be done this week or I was going to be too embarrassed to invite them in. So I cleaned my hubby's bathroom first. What a chore! Not only was it three layers deep in dust and lint and hair (animal and human), but the toilet was a mess and all my little bottles of bath products were covered in at least two of those same layers. I must have 65 bottles of shower gel and lotions, there on our shelves, in every fragrance imaginable. So I took them all out and cleaned the cupboard and shelves and then washed each bottle before putting it back in it's place. It must have taken me 90 mins or two hours just to do that. But I am utterly ashamed that I let his bathroom get so bad and he never complained! I have promised myself that I won't let it happen again. It's pure neglect, irresponsibility, and laziness to let it get that bad! But I got everything cleaned in his bath except for the floor which I will do Friday when I mop and wax all the floors. Then I moved into my bath, which is the bath anyone borrows if they are visiting. And because it is used by guests and is out here in the front of the house, its dust and hair was only one layer thick. I did have a lot of hair in that bathroom. That's the bath where I shed most of my hair and even though I'd worked at keeping the loose hair in the waste basket, there were still hairs everywhere. What a mess!! So I got my bath all cleaned too except for the floor. Every thing is so sparkling and bright now. I love a clean bathroom. My bathrooms are usually the cleanest rooms in the house. But I had been just letting them go what with dealing with the disaster of losing all my hair and pure laziness, it seemed easier to let them go with a promise to do them soon. I still think it's amazing that I haven't gone into a depression over my hair ordeal! (God's grace!!) It only took me about 35 mins to get my bath glistening and sparkling. As I said, mine wasn't nearly as bad as M's bath. But then men are so messy in the bathroom anyway: I cleaned spattered toothpaste off every thing within reach of that sink!

From there I moved on into the living room and I vacuumed all the cobwebs around the ceiling and then I dusted all the paintings and wall hangings with the vacuum and then I dusted them all again using a dust cloth. I vacuumed all the animal hair from the lamp shade and desk tops, including all the 100 or more bottles of nail polish and cuticle oil. And then vacuumed the carpets and then I wore out!! I will do more tomorrow after we get home from shopping across the river. And will finalize everything again on Friday and get all the floors done. I didn't get every thing done like I had hoped but considering I could barely move when I got up this morning, I don't think I did too bad. I had to take a couple Aleeve pills for my low back. But they took care of the kink in my back in no time and then I started in with the housecleaning. M washed a couple loads of laundry to help me out. Today was the day that I just had to step back and let him do it even when I knew it wouldn't be done the way I would do it. He had his mind made up that he wanted to help me and so I decided it didn't matter if he forgot to put in the fabric softener or washed them on the wrong temp setting. It only mattered that he wanted to help me and I had to let him. Such a sweet gesture on his part!!

After I quit cleaning I decided to get to my blog but wouldn't you know it, our server was down? So I had to wait for an hour to get our internet back. Comcast has had a lot of troubles lately. Seems like it's down for an hour or so at least once a day. Don't know what's up with that. But it's frustrating!

I got a beautiful scarf from one of my readers (thanks Robin!) in yesterday's mail and I was so surprised. Thank you so much, Robin. It really is beautiful. It's hard to believe that you made it yourself. It's breath-taking. I tried it out yesterday in several different styles to see how it would look. The way I liked it best was folded into a large triangle, placed over the top of my head and gathered at the nape of the neck and made into a "pony tail" using a stretch bracelet I have. It really looked good that way and it was so easy. Today I've been wearing one of the knit caps from my sister but I got so hot while doing the housecleaning that I had to take it off and I haven't gotten back around to putting it back on. I've just now stopped sweating. We are sitting at 111 degrees here and our little cooler can't keep up with those kind of temps. Therefore, we sweat a lot if we try to do anything. Even typing this blog makes me sweat! Men are so lucky that they don't have to wear tops. They can run around barefoot in a pair of shorts and nothing more and be totally acceptable. This may be weird but I've always wondered if I had a double mastectomy done, I would go topless? I mean, the breasts would be gone so why not? I still don't think I could do that. I would just feel too weird. But anyway, thank you again, Robin, for the surprise. It means a lot to me and always will! That was so sweet of you to send it to me.

Debra, I read your comment on my blog and then somehow managed to delete all the comments. I don't know how I did it but I did. (I'm good at doing things like that!) I read your comment but it was when I tried to go directly to your blog that I deleted all comments. Could you please send me your blog addy again? I'd like to check out your blog. I don't know if there were other comments besides yours but yours I read and I'm hoping there weren't other comments that I deleted. I love to read the comments.

I'm going to keep this short today since I got such a late start on it. It's time for me to feed all my animals and then it will be time to cook dinner. Seems like there's always so much needing to be done. We'll get up super early tomorrow to get to the Medical Clinic by M's 8:30 appointment (we are not normally early risers). And then we'll head on over to WalMart and come back by Cost Less and then get home before it gets too horribly hot in the afternoon. If we go early enough we can usually get our shopping in before we roast. We're just going to cook a pizza for dinner tonight. We buy DiGorno's cheese pizza and we precook some Italian sausage. We scatter the meat around on the pizza, add a few chopped onions, a little anise seed, and a little shredded cheese and we come up with a delicious pizza. I don't know why no one ever carries sausage pizzas. That's our favorite. I don't like pepperoni because it's too spicy for me. Better get to my animals before they get too worked up.