Jogging Through James

 

James is a very unique book.  It is a challenging book.  It is a book originally addressed to the Hebrew believers scattered across the known world, but truly directed to every believer that wants to draw closer to God.

It is unique in that it was the first book chosen locally as an all-inclusive study for the month of March 2020.  Every class from junior high to senior adult to Wednesday evening study groups read, studied, and discussed James one chapter each week. 

The condition for beginning this study was that church members would read the chapter designated for the week every day.  That means that each chapter was read 7 times in a week, preached from the pulpit, and the topic of discussion both in and out of the church building.

Below is a short review of the messages.

 

James 1

Double Minded Doubters

Listening and Doing

James 2

Live by the Royal Law

Christian Forensics

James 3

Caution to Those Desiring to be Teachers

Evidence of God’s Wisdom

James 4

Free Ride?

Making Plans?

James 5

Rich Oppressors, who me?

Powerful and Effective

 

When did Christians give up on Christ?

When did Christians give up on Christ?

Well, that’s a provocative statement.  Where’s it coming from?

I see more and more people who profess to be Christians noting that prayer just makes you feel good.  It really has nothing more than an emotional satisfaction for the one who offers the prayer.

I understand the sentiment.  People feel frustrated and helpless, especially in today’s world where one issue is given center stage by media of all sorts and it seems that nothing happens to address the problem.  It seems like nothing is happening.

But why trivialize prayer?  What does that accomplish?

Warning!  This next segment is about the thickness not the color of your skin.  Stop here if the truth offends you.  Trivializing prayer is the tool of the devil.  The Father of Lies wants you to think that your prayers are not powerful and effective.

I scroll by dozens, maybe hundreds of nonsensical posts most days, but when I seen one in which false premises are used to subtlety twist God’s holy word, I see the devil at work and often stand in the gap so that believers will not be deceived.

Jesus calls us to ask, seek, and continue knocking when we need something. 

Trivializing prayer is cowardice.  Remember God reminding Joshua to be strong and courageous.  God was not making things easy.  He was going into battle before and with Joshua as he had promised through Moses.

But why call this cowardice?  Because God may not give you the answer that you want and you might just be afraid of what he will call you to do.  

You might be afraid of what he calls you to do!

What if the change needed must come first in your own heart?  What if God calls you to replace shame and guilt with obedience to him?  What if God tells you to extract the lumberyard in your own eye before insisting that everyone see things your way?

But there are problems that need to be fixed and they require action not prayer.  

The statement about problems is accurate.  The attached condition is of the devil. 

If God calls you to action, then act.  If he calls you to more prayer, then pray.  The two are not exclusive.

In fact, prayer often leads us to action.    Action without prayer often spoils our best efforts.  Remember that Nehemiah prayed when put on the spot by the king as to what he wanted.  The king could give him whatever he thought would fix things, but he prayed first.  As it turned out, what was on his heart and God’s desire were most compatible.

God will not call you to minimize the work of his Son or to mock God in any form, as to say that his word returns void.

A cause of action feels good.  Rallying cries abound.  Emotions run high.  We can do this if everyone will get on board!  We can build a tower to heaven and make a name for ourselves!

We can do this if everyone will be of like mind with me!  Don’t let prayer get in the way!

You can do things that way.  It will be like eating candy as your complete diet.  You will have a rush and then a stomach ache.  The only question will be, will your teeth rot before your cause dies a whimpering death?

For those who truly study the Bible, and some caught up in the current schemes of the enemy still do read their Bibles on occasion, God’s words lay out a simple dichotomy.  There is God’s way and there is everything else.

If you are on the everything else path, you will be consumed in your quest.  Without God’s sustainment, your efforts won’t last long.  They will have no efficacy.  You will feel helpless and hopeless in a few months, which by the way, is exactly where the enemy wants you.

You will feel like you are full of purpose for a time, but if it is not God-given purpose it will neither last nor produce the fruit that God desires.  It’s like God telling you to plant broccoli but you want to plant tomatoes.  You plant the tomatoes and ask God to bless your crop.  Then a few months later you say that God doesn’t hear your prayers. 

Pray without ceasing.  Have an ongoing conversation with God.  Don’t give him a list of acceptable options.  Listen to him.  His Spirit will lead you in accordance with his word.  There may be plenty of challenges in what he calls you to do but there will be no dissonance.

Don’t let the devil use your anger to disconnect you from God.  Anger is a natural human emotion.  Sustained anger and anger in which we feel righteous comes easy but does not produce the righteous life that God desires. 

But nothing seems to be happening!  We need action.  You guys need to get onboard!

If you are at this point and it seems that many are, ask:  Did I pray and expect to receive?  Am I a double-minded doubter?

Was my heart hardened when I prayed?  Did I only want action from others?  What if, I never actually surrendered my life to my Lord?

What if I am trying to fit God into my box?  What if I am trying to conform God’s will to my own? 

If you believe that prayer only makes you feel good, you have been deceived.  The question is are you content in the deception in which you live?  Your emotions may say yes, but the truth says no. 

For the Christian, the Spirit of God that lives within you is inviting you to confess and trust in God’s promised pardon.

God wants you back in the race and our race often has some hurdles along the way.  He has great plans for you, some of them might even involve fixing those things that are on your heart, but you can’t go it alone for long.

Sometimes as much as we think we are ready for action, we must let the Lord have his way with us before we can impact the world.  Sometimes, he has prepared us in advance. We must trust him over the voice of the world to know when the time is right and the course the Lord has given us.

Yes, we must know that his ways are not our ways, but we must take courage, for we have been given the mind of Christ.  He has overcome the world and because he lives in us no challenge in the world is too great.

You need to know the voice of your Lord.  Know his voice.

Now is not the time to discount or dismiss prayer as something good only for an emotional fix.  If you believe in Christ and the odds are that if you read this far, you have professed him as Lord, why would you discount his directives?

The prayers of a righteous person—one made right with God in the blood of Jesus—are powerful and effective.

Do we ignore the problems of the world?  No.  We ask God what part he has assigned us and we do not argue with him if it’s not what we had in mind.

Know that his answer will be covered in, rooted in, and guided by love for he is love and Jesus has commanded to love each other as much as he loves us.

Will we pay lip service to God and do things our own way or will we wait upon the Lord and trust him to tell us exactly what we are to do?

We can’t discount prayer as just a feel good about ourselves device and expect to impact problems in this world. Prayer is a real connection.  We are guided by the Holy Spirit as we study God’s written word and as we seek him and listen to him in prayer.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Powerful and Effective

Read James 1-4

Here’s your Christian attitude for trials of all kinds:  God is with me in this.  My part is to be faithful to him.  He will bring me to grow in his grace.  

Because of this Christian maturity that is in store for me, I will be joyful.  I will be joyful even in my trials.

Ask God.  Don’t doubt.  Don’t be like a wave tossed about the sea.

Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.  Human anger doe not improve our discipleship.

Don’t play favorites.  God’s love is for all.  The judgment seat is taken.

The only person honored and revered in our worship service is God.

Live by the Royal Law, the law of love, the law rooted in loving God and loving one another.  It’s not I’m not very good at obeying the commandments, so I think I will dabble in the law of love.  Be governed by this law.  Be passionate about living in response to God’s grace by living a life governed by love.

There will be evidence of our faith.

Faith without works is dead.  Good works—deeds which God planned before you were born—are the evidence of our faith.

Faith and works work together.

The tongue can be the spark that starts a forest fire or the rudder that turns the ship off course. 

A salt spring doesn’t produce fresh water.  A grapevine doesn’t produce figs.  The words of the believer do not blaspheme God and praise him at the same time.  If there is any doubt, it should be only the latter.  Our voices were designed to praise God.

Biter envy and selfish ambition are indicators that we are living by the wisdom of the world instead of the wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God is pure, peace loving considerate, submissive, full of mercy, producing good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

It’s less about the devil made me do it and more about wrestling with our own sinful nature.

You can’t be a friend of the world and a friend of God at the same time.  Christ died for us while we were his enemies.  Let’s stick with being a friend of God.

Don’t expect God to grant your petitions if they are from the wrong motive.

God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will flee.

Humble yourself before God and be ferocious before your enemies.

Stop being double-minded. When you sin, you need to check that it’s no problem because grace will abound even more attitude, and put on the sackcloth and ashes mindset until you have confessed. 

Remember that repentance is a complete turnaround.  We leave behind the old mind, the old ways, the old life and completely exchange it for the new.  In this case, we are to live as Christ’s disciple.

When we judge one another, we are putting ourselves in the Seat of Moses and desiring to make the law conform to us.  We are taking on a role reserved for Christ.  We are not focusing on our discipleship.

When we condemn our neighbor, we are trying to put Jesus out of a job as the only one who can rightfully judge our sins.  Remember the first part of the Great Commission:  All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Jesus didn’t opt for early retirement.  There is no job opening.

Planning is good.  It is very educational and good in the practice of stewardship.  Just don’t get married to your plan.  God tells us that he has good plans for us.

Do the best you can as you plan what you will—your plans will be more and more pleasing to God the closer that you draw to him.  But take the best plan that you have and put it at the feet of Jesus.  Put it at the feet of Jesus. 

Thy will be done!

Plan away but know that the Lord directs our steps.  We know it’s the Lord’s will for us to love him and love each other.  We don’t have to ask the Lord if that is his will.  He already told us that it was.

We should include in our plans in our daily dialogue with the Almighty, asking if our plan is in step with and pleasing to the Lord.

If you must boast, boast in the Lord not in your plan.

We are on this earth for such a short time.  We are but a mist.  Consider the psalmist’s counsel to learn to number our days.

Let’s talk sin.  If you know what to do and don’t do it, that’s your sin.

So, here’s a nugget to put in your plans.  Do the good that God planned for us before we were born.  The Royal Law—the law not only of love but freedom—liberates us to live as God designed us to live.

Bubble buster:  You are rich.  Get over it.  It’s for real.  You who are listening today, you are rich.  Go take the interrogative series I put together for the first part of this chapter.

You are rich!

But does our wealth get in our way and is it used against others?  Do we leverage blessings to help others or to manipulate them?

That’s our flyover of James at 30,000 feet.  I hope that your personal study and your classes got down to tree top level.  Perhaps you found a landing zone and got down in the weeds for some of this.

Do you see how some frame James as the Proverbs of the New Testament? 

Now, let’s finish the chapter and the book.

Read James 5

We have been told that we are only on this earth for a short time.  We are but a mist, but sometimes it feels like a long time.  We do not yet fully understand the eternal perspective.  So, what do we do?

Be patient.  Take note of the farmer who does not plant on Monday and harvest on Friday.  The farmer knows patience.

If you go a few pages past the end of James, Peter gives us these words:

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

James says, his is coming is near.  We don’t know the day or the hour but it’s the next big thing on God’s cosmic calendar. 

That’s cool.  We don’t know when but we should be ready now.  Anything else?

Stand firm in your faith and quit grumbling and picking at each other.  That’s not what you want to be doing when the Lord comes again, and he is coming again.

Consider the prophets.  Consider how Job persevered in the face of suffering.  He did not lose his faith and you know what the Lord brought about for him.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.  Keeping the faith is worth it.!

We need to talk about swearing.  I’m not talking profanity, but the kind that says, “I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles.”  Does the number of Bibles in the stack increase the veracity of you statement?  Must all Bibles of the same translation or does some variety help?

“I swear on my grandmother’s grave.”  For the person with a Christian grandmother, that might seem like a powerful statement, except she’s not there.  You are swearing on a chunk of ground with a headstone.  OBTW—what do people say if their grandmother was cremated her ashes scattered?

Well, how do I get my point across that what I am saying is the truth?

Always speak the truth.  Answer yes when you should answer yes.  Say no when you should say no.  Watch out for caveats and exceptions.  Think before you speak.

Sometimes that is difficult.  Here’s some counsel.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Let people know what you say is trustworthy because that’s the way that you live.  This whole faith being manifested in our deeds rings true with our speech.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.  Don’t try this in geometry where sometimes the answer is y=mx+b.

Now we come to confession and prayer.  Which brings us to prayer in school.  So long as there is testing in school, there is prayer in school.  Perhaps there is more prayer in the homeschooling approach these days.

OK, that one is not from James, but if are in need, in trouble, or just struggling, then pray.  We are doing our best to consider all of our trials with joy, but we are not called to do it alone.  Pray.

If things are great, sing to your Father in heaven thanksgiving and praise.

If you are sick and need more than your own prayers, get put on the prayer list, or better yet, call for the elders of the church to pray for you.

Prayer is the vehicle to healing and forgiveness.  Pray all the time.  Keep the conversation going.  Listen more than you speak.  Believe in the power of prayer.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Great!  I have to be righteous for my prayer to count.  Great.  I’ll never get there.  Hey, I’m not Elijah.

That’s true if you think you can get there on your own.  Even David when he sinned with Bathsheba, knew that if endless bulls and goats were sacrificed, it would not make him right with God.

But the blood of Jesus made you right with God.  You have been made right with God

We are still called to live up to the standing that God gave us, but you have standing to come before the Throne of Grace with confidence and ask God for what you need.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Believe it or not, no just believe it, that’s you!

Pray!  Pray for others.  Ask others to pray for you.  Prayers are powerful and effective.  For the one made right in the blood of Jesus, our prayers are powerful and effective.

God is all knowing.  He knows what comes next and he also wants to walk with us in prayer as we live moment-to-moment in faith.  Pray!

Faith without works is dead, but understand our prayers are evidence of our faith.  Hopefully they are not the only evidence, but our prayers are convincing evidence of our faith.

Here’s something that we don’t do much of these days:  Confess our sins to one another.  We need accountability partners.  We need a real friend that can speak the truth in love to us and us to them.  We need to be that kind of friend to a few others.

Let’s consider the coupling here:

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

And now we come to the end of the chapter and the book and James tells us to Connect the disconnected.

OK, he didn’t use those words but if there are those who are not drawing closer to God and enjoying God grow closer to them, then go bring them home.  Home does not have to be inside the church building.  The first century church spent a lot of time in gathering in homes of believers. 

Connect the disconnected is still possible in this age of social distancing.

If there are those running away from God, bring them home.  There are blessings in connecting the disconnected.

March is the month of the Bible.  Our classes and sermons have come to an end, but March has two more days.  If this journey through James was more than the flavor of the month to you, then meditate upon the words you read, the words you heard proclaimed, and the discussion that ensued for these past weeks. 

Dedicate the last two days of March.  Make comments, add more questions, put your evaluation on the Book of James Facebook page.

I pray that this month was pleasing to God and produced good fruit for you.  If you think that something like this bears repeating, talk to one or more of your elders currently serving on the session.

Amen.