Lessons from James - 5

There are so many great lessons in the book of James that you really ought to take time to study it for yourself. Every time I go through it I find new ideas and thoughts. I started to share a different idea from James and when thinking through it one more time I decided to focus on James 5:16.

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. NLT

I have to admit that this verse seems hard to me. The idea of opening my secret thoughts and telling them to someone is quite scary. What will they think of me? Who might they tell? How do we know who to trust? 

Clearly, James tells us that we should confess and pray for one another. Pray for a close friend and someone who will be a good confidant. This verse promises us blessings of wonderful results when we trust the Lord and confess and pray. 

You have Loved...

Lessons from James - 4

The 4th chapter of James focuses on worldliness. What is worldliness? According to the dictionary it is:

• 1. Of, relating to, or devoted to the temporal world.
• 2. Experienced in human affairs; sophisticated or worldly-wise: "an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere"

Ok, now we have a better understanding of that word but what kind of worldliness do we need to be concerned with?  Listen to what James, the brother of Jesus says:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions^[a] are at war within you?^[b] 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. ⁴ You adulterous people!^[c] Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?

Friendship of the world has to do with trying to walk that line...you know the one, the line that lets us put one foot in the world and the other in the Lord/church. Well, it will not work. We cannot be a friend of the world and be acceptable to God.

James says we have to "humble ourselves before the Lord and He will lift us up."

Love Never Fails

Lessons from James - 3

Wisdom from Above

In the 3rd chapter of James we read about the tongue and James closes with a few remarks on wisdom. 

¹³ Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.¹⁴ But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. ¹⁵ This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. ¹⁶ For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. ¹⁸ And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

How can we tell who is wise? James says it will be evident by their works. Not by their words or their abilities to teach or talk a good talk but by their works. These are sobering thoughts. Wisdom is from above. I refer you back to the 1st chapter of James...

⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.⁶ But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man,unstable in all his ways.

Are you seeking God's wisdom or wisdom from the world. As I have been reading in I Corinthians this month I am reminded that Paul says the wisdom of the world is folly to God. (I Cor. 3:19) Whose wisdom are you seeking?

It’s All Good

Then God said to him in the dream, "Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her.” 

[Gn 20:6 ESV]

Now that’s a rather intriguing verse, don’t you think? Mind-boggling, to say the least. But what encouragement! To know that the Omnipotent God is for us—to keep us from sinning. He is not some hardened ogre watching and waiting for us to mess up. Especially when we don’t mean to. He wants to keep us from sinning; for when we sin, we sin against Him, The One most hurt and offended.

 Here, Abraham had deceitfully claimed his wife Sarah to be his sister (for the second time!). Abimelech, king of Gerar, was not aware that she was another man’s wife. God approached this pagan in a dream, warning him so that he might then choose to do the right thing and be spared judgment.

 There are two aspects to this verse that encouraged me. First, there are times when there is more to a situation than meets the eye. We approach it with “integrity of the heart”, unaware that it will lead us to sin. Thankfully, God sees our heart. That is when, I believe, the Holy Spirit convicts us, pricks our conscience to heed and change our course of direction. 

And the second is the fact that God is willing and able to help us in our weakness to avoid sin. As He said to Abimelech, “It is I who kept you from sinning against Me.” The Great I AM, Creator of the Universe, Parter of the Seas, Sovereign Warrior is . for . us !

“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

 [Mt 26:41]

Jesus taught us to turn to God when tempted to receive power to overcome. He showed us what a holy life looks like, that our main line of defense is prayer. Calling upon the name of the Lord invokes the power of the Holy Spirit in order to defeat temptation. His brother James wrote that when we submit to God the devil flees from us. (Could that be where we get the saying, “run like the devil?”) 

May this thought encourage you to be empowered in your walk today, dear one. Whether in times of trial when we are vulnerable or times of plenty when we are comfortable. The tempter is always on the job--so is God. Turn to I Am in those times of tempting into deliberate sin and those times we become aware that we are unintentionally about to sin, when there's opportunity to choose to turn before it’s too late, that we may avoid hurting the God we love.

Lessons from James

I have faith and I am sure that you do too. But does it always show? How can you tell I have faith? James says that our faith is shown in our works. So, it is not just good enough to claim to have faith or to be a Christian. We must show it by our good lives, by our actions and by our deeds. 

James goes on to give us two examples or Old Testament people who were judged faithful not by what they said but by what they did. Look at Abraham. He did not just say he would obey the Lord. He actually prepared and set out to sacrifice his son because God had asked him to do it. Whew, I am glad He didn't ask me to do that!

Also Rahab. She was not even a Jewish woman...in fact, she was a prostitute, a woman of the night or even a "ho."  Whoa, James put her in his chapter on faith? Yes, check it out...
²⁵ In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? ²⁶ As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

Get out there and show God your faith!