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The Word for today:
1 Peter 3:1-12

The story is told of a little boy who is watching a ventriloquist perform. Willingly suspending his disbelief (as kids do) he imagines the dummy is alive. Moreover, he wants to bring the dummy home so they can play together.

The boy perceives the ventriloquist to be the dummy’s father, so he waits until the performance is over, then goes backstage and asks the ventriloquist if his new friend can come over to play. The ventriloquist tries to change the subject, but the little boy keeps on asking. Hemming and hawing, the ventriloquist doesn’t know what to do.

Then the boy walks over to the box where the dummy is laying. “I tried to ask your Dad if you can come over and play, but he wouldn’t say. So I’ll have to ask you—“

To which the exasperated ventriloquist finally replied to the boy, “Kid, I don’t know how else to tell you this, but he just talks. He doesn’t do anything.”

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So many of us are like that dummy. We talk the Bible but don’t live biblically. We usually mean well, but because our words are not consistently translated into action, our testimonies are not taken seriously. We become nothing more than verbal pests to be avoided.

I’m guilty of that kind of pestering—of words that are not authenticated by my life. So on behalf of others like me, I propose a new motto: "Be doers of the Word and not sayers only."

Let’s listen as Peter proposes the same thing, exhorting wives to let their actions speak so loudly that they won’t have to say a single word!---

In the same way you wives must submit yourselves to your husbands, so that if any of them do not believe God's word, your conduct will win them over to believe. It will not be necessary for you to say a word. (1 Peter 3:1)

I, and most of us, would be far more persuasive about the power of the gospel if we were more like those wives and less like that dummy.

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