James 1:18 – In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creations. (NRSV)

My little ten-year-old friend Maggie, who lived in a second-floor apartment building, was asked to play a role in a play at school about a country girl living on a farm with a baby pig.

"How," she asked me, "can I be like her when I don't even know her or what it's like to live on a farm or own a pig?"

"Commit it to your imagination and pretend," I said.

Thinking later of my words to Maggie reminded me of our relationship to Christ. We want to be like Him, yet we don't take the time to study His life and His words recorded in the Bible. Even if on a daily basis we pick up a five-minute devotional written about Him by someone else, and even though we listen to a thirty-minute sermon once a week on Sunday, do we know Him well enough for Him to live in our hearts?

When we study the Word with an open mind, receptive to the truth, the living Christ comes and lives in our minds and hearts. The words of truth which are planted within become the conveyance for the reality of Christ within.

Do we know enough about who Jesus is for His Word to take root and grow within us into His likeness, or do we try to commit it to our imagination and pretend to be Christians?

Prayer: Lord, give us a hunger for Your Word, so that we may search the pages of the Scriptures to discover more about You. We desire to have Your Word grow within us until the likeness of Christ can be seen in our lives. Teach us to be doers of the Word we have within us. Amen.

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