Daily Reading for Personal Growth, 40 Days with God

Exhortation To Practice Faith

¹⁹ Living by God’s Word.^[a] Remember this, my beloved brethren: everyone should be quick to listen but slow to speak and slow to anger. ²⁰ For human anger does not bring about the righteousness of God. ²¹ Therefore, rid yourselves of everything sordid and of every wicked excess, and welcome in all humility the word that is implanted in you and is able to save your souls.

²² Be doers of the word and not just hearers who only deceive themselves. ²³ For anyone who listens to the word and fails to do it is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror. ²⁴ After seeing his reflection, he goes off and immediately forgets what he looked like. ²⁵ However, the one who looks intently at the perfect law of freedom and perseveres—not forgetting what he has heard but putting it into practice—will be blessed in everything he does.

²⁶ If anyone thinks that he is religious but does not restrain his tongue, he is deceiving himself, and his religion is worthless. ²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and undefiled is this: to come to the aid of orphans and widows in their hardships and to keep oneself untarnished by the world.