Keith Battle - Target Practice

My subject today is target practice. Target practice—I am borrowing that terminology from the world of archery, where archers shoot arrows at targets to perfect their aim. I chose this theme because I see in this passage four targets, four goals, if you will, and each goal has a pathway leading to it. Each target has specific practices that you must engage in to reach it. For example, in verse 19, we find the first target; verses 19 and 20 form the first target I see, which I will write up here: the target is anger management. That’s target number one. Anger management states, «Understand this: Human anger does not bring about the righteousness that God desires.» The reason I refer to this as target practice is that the target is anger management. But how do you hit that target? He says here’s how: «Be quick to listen and slow to speak.» That is the practice. You must shut your mouth and slow down when responding to people.

The second target is in verse 21, and it is accepting the word. He says, «Accept the word humbly; accept the word of God, for it can save your soul.» Well, that’s the goal, what we’re trying to hit. How do you do this? He states it right there in verse 21: by first removing filth and evil from your life. We remove the filth and evil from our lives so we can create sacred space to receive the word.

The third target in this passage is found in verses 22 to 25, and that target is applying the word. It’s one thing to receive the word and to hear it, but then James comes along and says, «Don’t just hear it; you must do it.» The target is the application of the word. Well, how? What’s the practice? Right there in verse 25, here’s the practice: You have to look carefully at it, then you must do what it says, and then you need to remember what you heard. That’s how you practice hitting that target of applying the word to your life. You can’t just hear it; you can’t just accept it. Many people accept God’s word but show little interest in applying it. The real target is to apply it.

Then, the fourth target is what I would call authentic religion. He says that if any of you claim to be religious but do not control your speech, you are fooling yourselves. He states, «Pure and undefiled religion is this: care for orphans and widows and keep yourself unspotted from the world.» Each target has a practice to hit it. You can’t just hit the target by accident. You must stay focused on it. If you’re tracking with me, say, «I’m tracking.» Now, let’s walk through each of these targets.

The first one is to manage our anger. He says, «Understand this, brothers and sisters: every one of us needs to be quick to hear, quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.» Why? Because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. So we understand this: the target is that human anger doesn’t produce the righteousness God desires. Here’s how we get there: quick, slow, slow. Everyone say that after me: quick, slow, slow! Quick to hear, slow to speak, which results in being slow to get angry.

Quick to hear, slow to speak—this sequence matters. If we reverse the order and become quick to get angry, then we are likely to be slow to listen. «I don’t hear anything you have to say. As soon as you opened your mouth, I didn’t want to hear anything else.» If we get angry quickly, our listening will be slow and our talking will be fast, leading us to say things we shouldn’t. How many of you have been there? How many of you have been so angry that later you thought, «I shouldn’t have said that»?

Let’s have one more show of hands. How many of you have gotten angry and said something you regretted? Oh, I just snapped; I lost it. Or sometimes, if you’re quick to get angry and slow to listen, you might also become slow to speak, even to the point of stopping altogether. Now, we aren’t just hurting people with our words—we’re hurting them with silence. As Johnny Parker calls it, it’s «silent violence.»

So, this has to happen in the right order. It can’t be inverted. If you’re quick to speak first, you’re being slow to listen, and that often leads to being quick to anger. The order has to be: quick to listen. Listen first! Try to understand; slow down. I think we could manage our anger much better if we would just refrain from talking so fast and so much. Some contemplative, introverted people excel at this, while the rest of us tend to talk too much, too fast, and too often. How many people, like me, just talk?