Many years ago four men accompanied me on a mission trip to the West Indies. While visiting with people about Christ one day, a heckler said, “Practice what you preach!”
I later learned what was behind the taunt. A few years earlier a young man had professed Christianity and had become very active in the church. He had even done some preaching. Then he fell in love with a beautiful young girl in the church, and they started living together without getting married. The leaders of the church told him that he could not continue to live that way, so he left the church. However, the scars of his immoral living remained.
That is the challenge that every believer faces. Preaching is easy. It’s practice that is difficult. However, if our practice does not equal our proclamation, people will not respect us.
One of the tragedies of our day is that there is not a hair’s difference between many people who go to church Sunday after Sunday and those who openly deny the Christian faith. The world does not expect us to be perfect, but it does expect us to be different. The least it can expect of us is consistency in our Christian living. Let’s be sure to practice what we preach.