This is part one of a three part series on Christian discipleship.

St. James tells us, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:17; NIV)  We have often heard James’ teaching put this way: faith without works is dead.  I suggest paraphrasing James a little differently. Faith is exercised in our daily lives or it is no faith at all.

Since the Reformation and the Reformers’ emphasis upon salvation by faith alone, theologians and preachers have tossed this passage in the Epistle of James to and fro in arguments about the role of works in our salvation.   This passage is a favorite among those who remind us of our Christian duty to relieve the suffering of the poor, the oppressed, and the dispossessed.

These readings of James are not bad or incorrect.  However, they narrow the scope of what I believe is James’ original, much broader point.  His message touches every corner of our lives each moment of every day.  Let me explain by considering the usage of the word “faith” in our day-to-day TV and radio listening or print media and website reading.

Writers and commentators often use the term “faith” to mean the opinions individuals hold.  In today’s multicultural, increasingly secular world, it is especially the case that “faith” is understood to be the purely subjective beliefs that an individual may hold or reject for his or her own private reasons.  There is great cultural pressure to treat these beliefs as private, that is, to keep them to ourselves.  It is considered intolerant to impose our faith upon others, since “faith” has come to be defined as my purely subjective opinions, and we believe that everyone has a right to his or her own opinion (although we do not have the right to make any of our opinions true; that is reality’s prerogative).

This all sounds very civilized until we look seriously at what St. James teaches us.  Faith involves actions or it is no faith at all.  Being a Christian is not just about the ideas we hold to be true.  Nor is Christian faith merely a credo of good works based on a theory of social justice or moral conduct.  First and foremost, Christianity is about following Jesus Christ with our whole mind, heart, body, will, imagination, time, and substance.  We believe ideas and model our behavior according to certain patterns because we trust him and follow him.  We can’t keep our faith to ourselves.  To be faithful is to have an impact on the world around us.

Faith is not a set of opinions that I can just keep to ourselves.  Faith is the posture we take toward our neighbors and our world as an expression of our relationship with God.  To put this in a slightly different way, faith is how we engage the world we inhabit as people who follow Jesus Christ into that world.

Let me return to that paraphrase of James again: Faith is exercised in our daily lives or it is no faith at all.

So what does exercising our faith look like? We will be talking together about this for the next two installments of The Evangelist.  We will talk about our moral life, the place of Christian study, the importance of committing ourselves to a ministry within the church, evangelism, outreach, and tithing.

Let’s begin at the beginning: our devotional life.  The Christian life begins in prayerful response to God’s loving initiative toward us.  Worshiping our Lord is an act of surrender.  We give ourselves back to the one who has given himself utterly to us.

In brief outline, this is what faith in action looks like in our prayer life:

• Weekly worship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
• Daily personal prayer devotions at set times.  Make a date with God to give thanks, ask forgiveness, seek guidance, intercede for others, and above all give our Lord praise.
• Daily devotional Bible reading (I will distinguish this from study in a later article).
• Saying the blessing before every meal.
• Spontaneous silent prayers during the day in response events around us or thoughts that occur to us.

Much more can be said about each of these dimensions of our devotional lives.  But that will have to wait for another time.  In the present context I invite you to remember that Jesus leads us in exercising our faith.  And exercise will only have its most positive effects if it becomes a daily habit.