It Shows By Your Actions
LIVE IT | Week 4
James 2:14–26 (NLT)
Pastor Ryan · September 27, 2026
Bottom Line: Your faith will only ever come alive when you cooperate with God in doing good works toward those He's intentionally put around you.
Where We've Been
Week 1: God plants the seed of faith through His Word; our job is to cooperate and let it grow.
Week 2: Hearing isn't enough. A faith that only listens and never moves is deceiving itself.
Week 3: When faith moves, it looks like mercy, not favouritism.
James isn't contradicting Paul. Paul answers what puts us right with God; James answers how you know a claimed faith is real. Both are true.
1. What Good Is It?
"Stay warm and eat well" is free to say and changes nothing.
Faith with no action isn't weak or immature. It's dead.
Good intentions aren't the issue. The gap between what we say we believe and what we're willing to do is.
2. Show Me
Faith and works aren't two separate lanes. Good deeds are the evidence of faith.
Good deeds: Holy Spirit–led opportunities to bless someone else in a tangible way.
Right doctrine matters, but even the demons believe. What separates belief from real faith is what it produces.
3. Abraham: Faith Completed
Abraham's faith and actions worked together; his actions made his faith complete (the same root as "mature" in James 1:4).
He was declared righteous by faith in Genesis 15, decades before the altar in Genesis 22.
Faith is the root; works show the root is alive.
4. Rahab: The Surprising Witness
An outsider with no pedigree and only secondhand reports about God, yet she believed and acted at real risk (Joshua 2).
Most of us know far more about God than Rahab did. This isn't a standard for the spiritually elite; it's for anyone whose faith is real.
5. Body and Breath
A body without breath is a corpse. Same shape, no life.
Breath (the Holy Spirit) is given, not manufactured. Works don't replace grace; they're what a living body does.
Real faith breathes, and breathing things move.
Two Wrong Turns
Working to earn what God already gave freely.
Treating faith as private, never costing anything or showing up anywhere.
This Week
Where is your faith laying low? Where has belief stopped short of costing you anything?
Find the gap between your claim and your actions. Ask the Holy Spirit to lay a specific person on your heart.
Remember what makes the body alive. Ask God for breath, not just willpower.
Show, don't just say. Pick one real need this week and respond with something that costs more than words.