The Battery That Never Left the Package

A Duracell battery sitting in its blister pack on a shelf at the hardware store holds the same chemical potential as the one powering a child's hearing aid. Same copper top, same alkaline core, same voltage printed on the label. But one of them is actually doing something. One of them is translating a teacher's voice into sound waves a six-year-old can finally understand. The other just sits there, full of energy that never flows anywhere.

James knew this principle long before anyone understood electrochemistry. "Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17). He wasn't saying the battery on the shelf is fake. He wasn't questioning its manufacture or its composition. He was saying that a battery exists to be spent — to complete a circuit, to make something happen in the world.

Real faith works the same way. It completes a circuit between what we believe about God and what we do for our neighbor. When a woman in your congregation notices the single mom whose tires are bald and quietly pays for new ones — that's the circuit closing. When a men's group shows up at a widow's house on Saturday morning with rakes and trash bags — current is flowing.

The Almighty doesn't ask us to manufacture our own power. He supplies it. But He does ask us to get out of the packaging.