Emphasis Preaching Journal

Johnny was a talker, and even though his talk often got him into trouble, he didn’t seem to learn. One summer, Johnny came to spend time with his cousins who lived on a farm. Johnny, a bright lad, read up on cattle farming so that he would be able to hold a conversation with his two cousins. He knew the lingo. Problem was, he began to brag. In fact, he bragged, he could wrestle a cow to the ground without working up a sweat. At first his cousins ignored his bravado and let him talk, but after a week or so, they couldn’t take it anymore. They decided that it was time to check Johnny’s talk. Early one morning, the cousins roused Johnny and said that they needed his help. They were going to brand some calves, and they needed him to throw the calves and hold them down. Johnny was unusually quiet at breakfast and lagged behind the others as they headed down to the corrals. The cousins explained that once they had lassoed a calf, Johnny should run over, wrestle it to the ground, and hold it there while they applied the brand. Shouldn’t be much of a problem for him, they said. Johnny hesitated but agreed. Then the cousins set to work. They herded the calves into a corner and threw the lasso. They got one. Then they yelled for Johnny to come and throw the calf. But Johnny was afraid that the calves would run him down. So he stayed rooted on the corral railing. He knew the words, could talk the talk, but he couldn’t walk the walk. James says we should be doers of the word and not only hearers. In other words, we can’t just hear the word and be able to spout it back at people, we have to live it. That is the hard part.