"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says"

Well, this is a verse from James, a book in the new testament of the bible, that I have known for years. It's taken me a long time to actually grasp what it is saying.
What I mean is, for too long I've thought that I was cruising along ok...I listened hard in church, even taking notes so that I would come close to remembering what was taught, I was a diligent bible study member getting involved in the conversation and things like that...but lately, mainly because of an indepth study of the book of James in our church and it's bible study groups, I've come to realise that that isn't good enough. I really need to know the bible for myself...that is, picking up my bible and opening at church, to do bible study prep and, well, to be honest, that's probably about it, just ISN'T good enough for someone that claims to be a follower of Jesus...which I do!
So, a friend & I from church have been meeting regularly for a couple of years now in an accountability type set up but we have both always confessed that we STILL haven't achieved the art of having a personal bible reading time. So we set the challenge to read a chapter a day. When I say read, I mean read and take notes so that we are actually taking notice of what the chapter is saying. Although I still haven't managed to work out the knack of reading every day, I catch up when I haven't so I'm on target...I'm really enjoying the affects it is having. I don't know if my actions are following the thoughts as yet (hopefully they are) but I'm starting to question my priorities and laziness...so it's a start!

One thing that I was challenged by today when I was reading Titus was this...Titus 2:13b-14 says "...Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good."
It made me think...am I allowing Jesus to make me his very own or do I only give him part of me...the conclusion I came up with was "I'm ripping Jesus off". I want to be "eager to do what is good" so I started to try and think about how I could make this an action instead of a thought...and that is where I'm at now, trying to act out my desire to do good for the one who gave his whole self for me, who was and never will be perfect in my own right, even though he was perfect and didn't deserve it, and give him my whole self in return gratitude!