”Actions speak louder than words” is an old, old saying that most of us have heard since childhood. While no one questions its truth, we all continue to say one thing with words and quite another thing with our actions.

We often wonder who we think we are fooling? Certainly not God, usually our families and friends are on to us, so perhaps it is only ourselves that we are kidding.

We may say that the truth is the greatest thing in our lives and that we love the Lord with all our hearts, yet when the time comes to take our place at’ lecture or a Bible class we are too tired, too busy or too something to go.

Perhaps others have heard us say that we regard television as a wonderful invention but a terrible waste of time and consequently we rarely watch it, yet when someone mentions seeing a particular show, we chime in that we also saw it, and a few minutes later we catch ourselves describing something we saw on another program.

All too often, we have the real reason for doing or not doing something, and this we keep to ourselves while we have a whole string of excuses which we give as the reason we did or did not do it. We sometimes chuckle when we see a little child doing this because it is so easy to see through but aren’t we to grow up? Paul said, ”When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

We need to be honest with ourselves. We need to realize that our actions are speaking much louder than what we say.

It isn’t necessary to tell others that we love the Lord with all our hearts, because if we really do, it will be abundantly clear by the way we act and the things we do. Conversely we can scream from the housetops how much we love the Lord and it won’t convince anyone if our actions show that God is completely crowded out of our lives.

This is the very point that James was making when he said ”Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.”

We need to have a living faith, not a dead faith. Without works, or action, faith is dead. Jesus put it another way when he said, ”By their fruits ye shall know them.” The fig tree that Jesus saw covered with leaves but having no fruit was like a man full of words but no action. We remember that Jesus condemned that tree and it withered away and died.

Jesus is the husbandman of the vineyard. We are the trees. Soon he is coming to see what kind of fruit we have. What will he find?

It’s not enough to be covered with leaves, there must be fruit. It’s not enough to talk a good fight. Paul said he had fought a good fight, and this denotes action. Remember, ”actions speak louder than words.” What are our actions saying?