bible and theology on words vs. actions

He rightly reads scripture who turns words into deeds.

Well done is better than well said.

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

It's ironic that most evangelical churches are filled with people who live very much like the world but look different from it. It should be exactly the opposite. We should look similar to those i...

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

There is something profoundly hypocritical about praising God for God’s mighty deeds of salvation and cooperating at the same time with the demons of destruction, whether by neglecting to do good or b...

Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.... When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making ...

To hold to a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by.

For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.

A theology of response does not need to be Pelagian; it need only be a theology in which the reality of the human is taken seriously.

Mahatma Gandhi speaking to Christians, “You Christians have in your keeping a document with enough dynamite in it to blow the whole of civilization to bits; to turn society upside down; to bring peace...

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, do...

Imagine, if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country and spend an extended period of time abroad. So he says to you and the other trusted e...

Many churches today remind me of a laboring crew trying to gather in a harvest while they sit in the tool shed. They go to the tool shed every Sunday and they study bigger and better methods of agricu...

A police officer pulled a driver aside and asked for his license and registration. “What’s wrong, officer,” the driver asked. “I didn’t go through any red lights, and I certainly wasn’t speeding.” “N...

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

Context We continue through the body of the letter as we move into a different image for practical, Christian living. Next week will become much more specific in Paul’s exhortations for living in re...

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

We humans may say, “Let there be light in this room,” but then we have to flick a switch or light a candle. Our words need deeds to back them up and can fail to achieve their purposes. God’s words, ho...

Father God, we confess that the actions of our hands do not often match the words of our mouths. We say one thing and do another. We give you praise and curse a friend, we sing songs of thanksgiving a...

The book of Proverbs is, in ways, a treatise on talk. I would summarize it this way: words give life; words bring death—you choose. What does this mean? It means you have never spoken a neutral word i...

Have you ever heard the expression, "words create worlds?" It's been attributed to various people, but what's most important is just how true it is. I think I first grasped this in c...

There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.

God of justice, you repeatedly call us to action, but we so often fail to respond. Your word convicts us, demonstrating that inaction is just as sinful as the wrong actions. Lord of mercy, forgive us ...

Lord of Hosts, we remember the words of your servant, James: whoever knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, sins. Oh Lord, have mercy on us. Too often we have failed to act when the world...

The kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power, that is, in works and practice. God loves the 'doers of the word' in faith and love, and not the 'mere hearers,' who, like pa...