Listening And Doing (James 1:19-27) God's Word and The Message Translation

James 1:19-27 (God's Word Translation)
19  Remember this, my dear brothers and sisters: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and should not get angry easily. 
20  An angry person doesn’t do what God approves of. 
21  So get rid of all immoral behavior and all the wicked things you do. Humbly accept the word that God has placed in you. This word can save you.
22  Do what God’s word says. Don’t merely listen to it, or you will fool yourselves. 
23  If someone listens to God’s word but doesn’t do what it says, he is like a person who looks at his face in a mirror, 
24  studies his features, goes away, and immediately forgets what he looks like. 
25  However, the person who continues to study God’s perfect laws that make people free and who remains committed to them will be blessed. People like that don’t merely listen and forget; they actually do what God’s laws say.
26  If a person thinks that he is religious but can’t control his tongue, he is fooling himself. That person’s religion is worthless. 
27  Pure, unstained religion, according to God our Father, is to take care of orphans and widows when they suffer and to remain uncorrupted by this world.

James 1:19-27 (The Message Translation)

19-21  Most this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

22-24  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
25  But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.
26-27  Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.