Wanna know what you look like? Check your Mirror.

23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does. James 1:23-25

God’s Word is a mirror. I’ve always heard that but today I really stopped to think about what that means.

In the physical realm, mirrors are really important. Regardless of whether you only look in the mirror in the bathroom as you brush your teeth in the morning or check the mirror in your purse every 30 minutes… if all the mirrors in the world were taken away, you’d probably get a little freaked out. Why? Because mirrors help us to understand ourselves better.

In fact, without a mirror, there’s actually no way for your eyes to know what you look like. Yes, you could see your arms and your legs, etc etc. But try and look directly at your face right now. … I'll wait.

Exactly. It’s impossible. Your eyes have never actually “seen” your face in the first place – you’ve only seen a reflection of your face in a mirror.

So mirrors are pretty useful, right? Yeah, I think so too. So how is God’s Word actually a mirror for us?

Well, simply put, the Bible shows us what we look like. Just like a mirror in the physical realm shows us our physical attributes, the Bible shows us our spiritual attributes as Christians. It’s like a spiritual mirror.

Cool. But why does God want us to have a spiritual mirror?

Well, if you believe that Jesus is your personal savior, then you’ve undergone a pretty drastic spiritual transformation. Second Corinthians 5:17 says that you’re a completely NEW creature. That’s a big deal. But without a spiritual mirror, you have no idea how much you’ve really changed. You’d say, “Well, I don’t feel any different. I don’t look any different…” And that’s true. You might not look or feel different, but that’s why God gave you a mirror for you to see your spiritual nature for yourself.

Look at it this way. Now don’t be offended by this example lol it’s the first thing that came to mind… So say you just had this major plastic surgery procedure done on your face… Some things have been permanently altered in your physical appearance. Although you know what you looked like before the procedure, you have no idea what you look like now that the procedure has been completed. You have absolutely no idea, because you weren’t the one doing the surgery… you were just the one being operated on. So, the only way for you to know what you look like now is for someone to hand you a mirror. Then you can study your reflection and really understand your new-and-improved self.

So, just like plastic surgery in the physical, God has done some ridiculous “work” on you in the spiritual. But without believing what the Bible (your mirror) says about you, you’ll forget how much you’ve changed (like the man described above in verse 23-24). What I think is interesting about the man in James 1:23-24 is the fact that he did look in the mirror but his downfall was not actually believing what he saw. In other words, we can read our Bibles, but if we don’t believe what God says about us and actually walk it out, it’s about as effective as not having read it in the first place. On the other hand, the man who gets the reward (verse 25) is the one who continually reads the Word and believes what he reads and acts accordingly.

(I promise this is the last of the plastic surgery example) But just think for a second. If you really did get plastic surgery and were about to look into the mirror for the first time, how would you feel? Scared? Nervous? Excited? What about when you first look in the mirror… what would you say?

I’d probably say something like, “OH SNAP. Is that… me?!” Then I’d put the mirror down and pick it back up again, like “OH… SNAP! That IS me!”

Sometimes the Word really amazes me with what is says about me – often in a great way but sometimes in a rather convicting way. But regardless of how it makes me feel, I always have to accept what I find as the truth. Because it’s my mirror. It’s the only mirror I have for my spiritual life and I know that it only reveals the truth.

So, I’ll end with just that. The Bible is your mirror. Your only true mirror. Keep looking into it and believe that you are what you see.