Put your actions where your heart is

By Charles Christian

“Put your money where your mouth is,” has been a popular phrase for a long time.

In fact, it is believed to have originated in the 1930s and into the 1940s when Great Britain entered World War II. It was an attempt to get citizens to invest in National Savings Bonds to support the war. The idea is to do more than talk about supporting the efforts of the military. Citizens were urged to actually invest in these bonds to support the soldiers and the effort.

Today we often use the phrase to urge one another to give more than lip service to an idea or an issue. This phrase calls us to demonstrate through actions that what we say we actually believe.

The Bible is no stranger to this kind of language, although the exact phrase doesn’t appear there. “…let us not love only in word and speech, but in actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18), is an example of an early version of “Put your money where your mouth is.”

A longer version of this command to match our actions with our words comes in the Book of James: “For as the body with breath is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26).

We know how easy it is to express what we believe. We have an unprecedented number of ways to do so these days. Computers, phones and other devices allow us to share our words across the globe in a matter of seconds. While this can be a good thing regarding communication, it can be a hindrance to our corresponding actions.

Perhaps the best question for people of faith when it comes to issues and causes isn’t simply, “What do I have to say about this?” or “What does my favorite politician have to say?” Perhaps the best question is “What am I doing with my life and actions to support what I say?” or “What are they doing to carry forward the promises they are making?”

Answering this will allow us to “put our money where our mouth is” by putting our actions where our heart is.