Gold Diggers

Patrick Parris 09/11/2025

I’ll say it…we should all be Gold Diggers.

Of course, not in the worldly sense. Nothing we do should make worldly sense, after all the world doesn’t seem to make sense most of the time on its own merit.

To dive into this more, I want to first focus on the book of James.

James 1:22-25 NKJV

[22] But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. [23] For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; [24] for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. [25] But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

Did I feel convicted when I read those words recently? Absolutely. I have been guilty of this time and time again, and likely I will continue to be guilty of it from time to time as I continue this walk…it’s unfortunate, but it is also written “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” in Romans and NO that doesn’t give us any excuse to continue walking in any guilt or conviction, that just gives us an explanation and motivation to do better. We can always treat the symptom, but we can’t forget that Jesus is the only cure.

Now when we examine the text in James, “hearer” in the Greek sense can also be roughly translated to “auditor.” Now if you don’t know what an Auditor does, they tend to collect a lot of information, but rarely ever interact with it beyond its immediacy or usefulness. Meaning, it serves a purpose in the moment for a specific occasion, but it can be filed away and forgotten about once it’s served its purpose rarely to be observed again until convenient.

God doesn’t want us to just be collectors of information – I can collect all the bibles I want and have every translation and language that exists, but it doesn’t do me any good sitting on display not being used. Worse yet, none of it helps me if I don’t obey what’s there to begin with.

When we go from hearers to doers that’s when reflection happens, but not on a surface level as most reflections exist. When we start obeying what the word says, our reflection changes. It goes beyond the surface and into our hearts. That’s the roots, everything flows from the heart and Jesus should be at the center of that reflection. We only get to that point by immersing ourselves in God’s word and applying it to our lives.

The Word isn’t a convenient tourist stop or attraction where you do all the fun stuff, feel good about it, then go home. You have to dig in, dig down, and dig deep.

I work in the mining industry in a quarry. We dig the rock out, we run out of rock, we dig some more to find more rock, sometimes it requires a lot more effort to get to, and it continues – we don’t just stop at one level of rock either, we always go deeper.

You think anyone mining for Gold finally finds Gold and then stops digging for more? That would be a bit silly to just settle for one small sliver, when you’re sitting on a mountain full of treasure right?

God’s living breathing word is way more valuable than Gold, but we need to treat it just like the miner who struck gold and didn’t stop there. We need to keep digging and never stop wanting to find more because the inheritance is far too valuable to settle and we need to tell our friends about it too. We need to share the wealth that’s there.

God’s word gives purpose and meaning to everything we experience; without it, the explanations are hollow. There is no nutritional substance, there are no valuable minerals. You might as well be digging in sand…when you try to grab and hold onto sand it kind of just falls apart in your hands and through your fingertips.

Just like building a house – we’ve all heard the expression, and it never gets old or any less true – You need a solid foundation to build any structure.

They don’t refer to the Lord as sand in the bible – He is THE ROCK!

2 Samuel 22:47

“The Lord Lives! Blessed be my rock! Let God be exalted, the rock of my salvation!”

Psalms 78:35

“Then they remembered that God was their rock, and the most high God their redeemer”

Jesus said in Luke 6:48

“He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. When the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock.”

Now you might try to make an argument that you need sand to make concrete, so it has value, right? On its own, sand has no strength. It is not until you add elements or other material to it does sand become something more foundational…for all intents and purposes we are the sand, we must add the word and the acceptance into our hearts that Jesus Christ died for all of us so that we could live.

Too many folks aren’t digging deep enough and sometimes I still don’t dig deep enough either, but as the world gets a little crazier my grip on the shovel gets a little bit tighter. We all need to check our grip and never stop digging deeper…we all need to be Gold Diggers.