12 That you would walk worthy of God
who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.
1 Thessalonians 2:12 (NKJV)
By Bro. John L. Cash
Whenever I need a loan for some project, I always go to Prosper.com. It’s a great website based on a great idea. Instead of getting money from a bank, regular people (like you and me) offer to lend me part of the money I 
need. When enough folks make offers (of $25 or more) that add up to the total amount of my loan, Prosper.com sends me a check. Then I make monthly payments to Prosper, and they reimburse my lenders — with interest, of course. Since I’ve never missed a payment, and fully repay every loan, it’s been a great blessing. I get my loan, my lenders get their money (with interest), and everybody is a winner.
Because others have blessed me, in addition to being a borrower on Prosper, I’ve also been a lender. When I first started doing this, the protocol at the company was a little different than it is now. People who needed money wrote essays in which they described themselves and their situations. Many times, people described themselves as “born-again Christians” and told about their involvement in their local congregations. As you can imagine, that description always helped sway me to make an offer on that person’s loan request.
After helping to fund dozens of loans, I made a sad discovery. Many of the borrowers who described themselves as Christians were simply not repaying their loans! (All of my borrowers who described themselves as “Jewish” always made all of their payments in full and on time.) It was embarrassing that the followers of “my” religion — Christianity — were doing such a sloppy job.
There’s an important lesson here. It’s not enough for the followers of Jesus Christ to “talk the talk.” If we are going to profess to follow Him, we must also “walk the walk.” After all, the Bible tells us to “Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only….” James 1:22 (NKJV)
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 31 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. (Until recently he had a desk-job at a public school, where he used to teach Latin on closed-circuit-television.) He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church (where tonight the congregation is hosting the 5th Sunday Singing.) Their kids include Spencer (age 26), his wife Madeline (age 25), and Seth (age 22), and his wife Leanne (age 21). You can send him a note at brotherjohn@ilovechurchcamp.com.
