Start Now (Friday Devotional)

 

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

- James 1:22

In 1974, Dr. Henry Heimlich invented a technique for rescuing a choking victim. By reaching your arms around the gagging person’s body, grasping your fist in your other hand, and thrusting upward quickly, you exert pressure on the diaphragm, compress the lungs, and put enough pressure on whatever’s lodged in the trachea to dislodge it. Since the doctor’s invention, the eponymous Heimlich maneuver has been taught as a basic emergency first aid technique to everyone from medical doctors to preschool teachers to Boy Scouts.

But despite the prevalence of the technique, Henry Heimlich never had cause to actually use it himself until 2016. Eating a steak in the dining room of the Deupree House, a senior living community in Cincinnati, he noticed the woman next to him start to choke. With more than 100 people looking on, he sprang into action, using his namesake maneuver three times until the woman coughed out the piece of hamburger lodged in her throat. More than 40 years after inventing the Heimlich maneuver, Dr. Henry Heimlich used it for the first time. He was 96 years old.

There are some things, like the Heimlich maneuver, that you can understand, believe, and even teach without needing to use them yourself. They’re break-glass-in-case-of-emergency practices, things you bust out only when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, they remain internalized, stored up for just the right moment.

But the commands of God’s Word do not fall in that category. Obedience is not something you learn about it, it’s something you practice—not tomorrow, but today. Sanctification is not something God has in store for you down the road, but something the Holy Spirit calls you to engage in now.

Maybe you’re just starting to read the Bible, to hear God’s Word for the first time. Or maybe you’ve been a believer for decades and the words of Scripture are as familiar as home. Whatever the case, the time to obey God’s Word isn’t later, it’s now. Don’t wait until you’re 96 to start living for Jesus.