In the winter when I was twenty-one years old, we had a severe ice storm in middle Tennessee. It was catastrophic. Ice covered every branch of every tree. I remember one night as the ice began to solidify, you could hear cracks and tremendous sounds like shotgun fire back in the forest all over the Bill Rice Ranch. Trees everywhere were groaning under the weight of that ice; their limbs were breaking and some even toppled over altogether.
The subsequent days we all tried to stay warm. It was severely cold, very slick, and dangerous. When it was all said and done, it had been destructive. When I went out on some of the trails I had been going on all my life either by horseback or hiking, there were trees all over that had fallen in the way of the trails. Many, many paths had been blocked. I remember the remainder of that spring helping to clear the brush with bulldozers and chainsaws just to make the trails passable again. Now, I could have gone out there and said, “Wow, there is a tree in the trail. I guess we can’t hike this trail anymore,” or I could do what I did, help to chop down trees and move debris out of the way so it could be passable once again. I could help people who had the insight to do that.
Proverbs 26:13 says, “The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets.” There are several verses here talking about the sluggard, the lazy, slothful person. The Bible is very vigorous in talking about the slothful. Here is a guy who says, “There is a lion in the street,” but does nothing about it.
This could be by way of excuse, “I can’t go work because there is a lion out there.” It could be a matter of complaining, “I can’t do anything. There is a lion in the street.” Maybe there really was a lion in the street and there was insight. Someone was enlightened by being told, “Hey, there is a lion in the street.” But insight without action is empty. It just will not do to say, “Someone needs to clear the brush out of the trail,” or, “There is a lion in the streets. Someone needs to take care of that.” Insight is wonderful, but insight without action is empty.
What is it that you know today that you just need to act on? Sometimes we wait as if we don’t know an answer, when the fact is we are waiting for someone else to take action. Sometimes we know more than we think we do and we just need to take action on what we know to be the case.
Seventy years ago, my grandparents were heartbroken because their daughter Betty had become deaf, and they were concerned that even though they were giving the Gospel to people all over the country, their own daughter had never heard that message. My grandparents were distraught because the message they had given their lives to they could not speak to their daughter in ways that she could understand.
They began looking all over to see if anyone was doing anything to reach Deaf with the Lord Jesus. In the late 1930s and 40s they could find virtually no one. One day it occurred to them that if they had a burden to do something, maybe they were the ones to do it. Maybe God wanted to use them. It would not do to make excuses or complaints or to simply point out something to enlighten other people. This world has been changed, not by the insights people have alone, but by the actions they take. Today, ask God to give you insight, clarity, and courage to do what you know to be right because insight without action is empty.