What about making plans?

Read James 4

If I don’t want to spend three times more than I wanted, I make a list before I go to the grocery store.  Sometimes I remember to read it while I’m in the store.

If I want to graduate college in 15 years or less, I make a plan as to what I will take and when I will take it.

If I want to get to my destination without too many stops for directions, I Google it.  Don’t ask Siri.  That girl will give you attitude, but Google is generally reliable.

If I want things to have a chance of going smoothly, I produce an order of worship.  There is not much variation from week to week.  Sometimes on Wednesday nights, I will change things up a bit more.  I even send a draft bulletin out to worship leaders and people who have an active role in the service.

Before we dived into Good News 2012, I wrote and published a plan.  Some of you might remember it.  It had worksheets for all of our outreach events.  It had reporting forms.  It had a prayer printed into the plan.

Over a decade ago, before I could be ordained, I had to be observed moderating a session meeting.  Reverend Dale Nease came over to watch me conduct a meeting.

Now realize by this point in my life I already had my Million Meeting Medal, Third award.  Running a meeting was not a huge challenge.  I had been producing an agenda, collating handouts, and all the other preliminary things needed for a meeting to go smoothly for the past 2 years.

But I was going to be evaluated on this meeting.  So, I made sure that the margins of the handouts were perfect.  The agenda had just enough detail to prompt the discussion but not so much as to preempt it.  I even spelled some of the big words right.

I was ready.  The session knew what was going on so they were extra nice during the meeting.  Dale was an easy-going guy and I didn’t expect him to throw a wrench into the works to see how I would handle it. 

Realize, I have been to training in which there are planned disturbances to what you are trying to teach or the meeting you are trying to lead.  Part of the training was how you address the disturbance and stay on course.  Dale didn’t bring any such fun to my meeting.

By meeting’s end, I knew that I had aced that sucker.  It might not have been the best run meeting in the history of the universe, but at least in the history of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. 

Dale pronounced his evaluation:  Tolerably Legal.

What!  It had to have been the best meeting ever.  I put some planning into that sucker.  Tolerably legal?  Give me a break!

Plans are a part of life.

Plans seldom go as planned.

There is a military axiom that a simple plan executed aggressively now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

There is another military truism that the plan never survives contact with the enemy.

So, we come to counsel from James on plans and planning.  On the surface, it might seem that James doesn’t think that we should plan at all, but that’s not what he is saying.  He said, don’t boast in your plans.  Don’t think that your plan is invincible.  The only invincibility, the only certainty, the only plan you can trust comes from the Lord.

If the Lord wills it, then he will bless our plan.

If it is the Lord’s will, our plan will fall apart before it has a chance to fall into place, then we can dive into his plan.

Are plans bad?  No, boasting about our plans is bad.  Putting too much hope in our plans mocks God and God is not good with that.

God sent people out to subdue the earth.  They made plans and began executing them to build a tower to heaven.  They wanted to make a name for themselves.  They were showing off what they could do with their own plans.

I don’t know if they thought they could get to heaven, but they would have something to boast about.  God said, “That dog don’t hunt.”

God has good plans for us.  They are plans to prosper us and give us hope and give us a future.

So, what do we do?

Make your grocery list.

Develop a plan to graduate college in less than a decade.

Produce a budget.

Plan the route for the trip.

Plan your vacation.

Plan for your children’s future.

Plan to leave your children’s children an inheritance.

Plan your day.

For those who have done any sort of work where you’re the boss, the employee, and the janitor, you know this saying:  Plan your work and work your plan.

Salesmen, consultants, and farmers know this.  They also know, that making adjustments to the plan is more likely than the plan going as planned.  Plan on it!

Planning is good.  It is good self-education.  Planning requires research and analysis and composition. 

Planning requires reading and assessment and synthesis of all sorts of input. 

Planning gives us the opportunity to use the gifts, talents, and abilities that God gave us.

Planning requires focus, dedication, and creativity.  Planning always leads you to the recognition of things still not planned. 

Planning is good stuff, but don’t get married to your plan.  Don’t boast in your plan.

Make big plans but don’t boast in your plan.  If you must boast, boast in the Lord.  That is where you find certainty.

We make these plans about what we will do next month or next year or for the next ten years and forget to realize that we are on this earth for only a short time.  James said we are but a mist.  It’s here and it’s gone.

Plan your work and work your plan but know that God has better plans.  The more we seek God and grow close to him, the more our plans will be like his, but we must remember that he alone is sovereign.

We have this wonderful thing called free will but God directs the steps of the believer. 

So, plan without worrying about tomorrow.  Invest yourself fully in your plans—don’t be lukewarm about them.  Work at them as if you are working for the Lord and not for human goals.

Plans are not bad.  Boasting in our plans is bad. 

Make your plan a work of art and science—the best masterpiece it can be in the time allotted—and then humbly place it at the feet of the Lord—ready to execute it or what the Lord gives you in its stead with equal enthusiasm.

And while you are making your plans, plan to do good at every opportunity for opportunities will surely arise. 

James wraps up with an advance admonishment for those who stick to their plans when the Lord has directed them elsewhere.

If you know the good you should do and don’t do it, that’s your sin.

Paul said in similar fashion, that which we do out of anything but faith is our sin.

Henry Kissinger had a style that he used in dealing with subordinate’s plans.  He would receive the plan, let it sit unread for a week or two, and then ask if it was the best that the planner had to offer.

If the answer was no or involved hesitation, he gave it back to be reworked.  If the person said yes, then he read the plan.  

Shouldn’t we always want our plans to be the best that they can be before offering them to the Lord?

If you are going to plan—and you should—make it full of faith, goodness, mercy, love, and a reflection of the good plans that God has for you.  Make it the best plan ever and then place it at the feet of Jesus. 

Thy will be done!

Amen!

Free Ride?

Read James 4

A long time ago while I was still in high school, a song called Free Ride by the Edgar Winter Group was near the top of the charts.  It had a good tune, but you didn’t give much pause as you sang along with the lyrics.

The mountain is high

The valley is low

And you're confused on which way to go

So I've come here to give you a hand

And lead you into the promised land

So (ooh, ooh, ooh) come on and take a free ride (free ride)

(ooh, ooh, ooh) Come on and sit here by my side (ooh, ooh, ooh) Come on and take a free ride

All over the country

I'm seeing it the same

Nobody's winning at this kind of game

We gotta do better it's time to begin

You know all the answers must come from within

So (ooh, ooh, ooh) come on and take a free ride

Come on and take a free ride.  It’s a catchy tune but it is also the theology of many Christians.  This whole grace business is just a free ride.  The gift is free but the ride that follows the gift should be another thing altogether.

What follows must be purposeful, deliberate, and intentional.  We are living for God and we are doing it on purpose.  The gift of life is all from God.  It is free when we receive Jesus as Lord.

The life that follows is about bringing glory to God with every breath!  We no longer just exist.  We are no longer in league with the enemy.

We have been here before.  Are we a friend of God or a friend of the world?  James says that you can’t have it both ways.

If you love the world, then you hate God—you make yourself into his enemy.  How can you do this?  While we were God’s enemies, he sent Christ to die for us.

Do we just say, That’s cool?  My sins are forgiven, now I can live it up like the rest of the world does?

Once again, we find that James is not the Lone Ranger in his challenges to us.  Paul challenged his readers to comprehend grace.

What shall we say then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound even more?

This was a rhetorical question.  It required no answer.  The answer was obviously no.  But considering the sinful nature of humankind, Paul answered his own question nonetheless.

His answer was: No, nadda, by no means!  Don’t you know we gave up all of that!

James is on this same track.  Why do you who claim Jesus as your Lord still have fights and quarrels?  It is because your sinful human nature is still with you.  You struggle internally because you can’t decide if you want to belong to God or to the world.

God placed a spirit within us when humankind was created.  That spirit always longs for God but sometimes settles for less.  That spirit finds satisfaction, companionship, fulfillment in the world.  We become a friend of the world, knowing that the world never truly reciprocates.

The world cannot truly be our friend and our satisfaction level is never quite what it was designed to be, but we settle for what the world has to offer.  We accept the world’s friendship.

We want the grace and forgiveness of God and the Free Ride through life as a friend of the world.  Here is the theological term for that:  That dog don’t hunt.

Once we received Christ as our Lord and Savior, we drew a line in the sand.  The devil, our sinful nature, and friendship with the world were on one side and we as a disciple of Jesus Christ on the other.

So we are up against the devil, our sinful nature, and the patterns of the world.  That’s a tough battle.  It might seem like we are surrounded. 

We are.  We are surrounded by our enemies.  Let me put this in Marinespeak.  We’ve got them just where we want them!  We can attack in any direction.

But how?  Resist the devil and he will flee!

Why would the devil flee?  C’mon, we’re surrounded.

We belong to Jesus and we know it with certainty.  We submit ourselves to God.  We don’t sit on the fence.  We are not double-minded.  We are his and his alone.  We are on the winning side.

That’s it?  That’s the plan of attack.  Every attack needs good logistics, so here you go:  Draw closer to God and he will draw closer to you.

Anything else?  Quit being the wave that is tossed about the sea.  Stop being double-minded.  Purify yourself!  Do the modern-day version of sackcloth and ashes.  Show God that you have repented of evil!

Instead of pointing fingers and throwing penalty flags at how other believers receive God’s grace and respond to it, realize that you are on the same team and your Leader is the Lord.  He alone will judge your response to his gift.

Once again, James is not the Lone Ranger.  Paul put it this way.  Who am I to judge another man’s servant?

We are humble before our Lord and ferocious before our enemies.  God opposes those whose strength is in themselves.

Where does that leave us as we consider this free gift of salvation?

We are a disciple.

We are a warrior.

We are a friend of God

We are growing in God’s grace.  The spirit within us from creation hungers to have the perfect relationship with the Spirit of God that lives within us now.

The gift is free.  The ride is full of challenges—struggles that might be received as adventures, which if we will recall from the very beginning, we should regard with joy for we are being made complete in Christ Jesus.

Amen!

Evidence of God's Wisdom

Read James 3

James continues with some Christian forensics.  We can ask God for wisdom and he will give it generously if we do not doubt.  But how do we know that our wisdom is from God?

The proof is in the pudding.  That is, there will be good evidence:  a life lived well, good deeds, and even humility.  You might think if you had wisdom, you wouldn’t be very humble.  If it’s God’s wisdom then humility comes at no extra charge.

But what if there is evidence to the contrary?  What if what we know and what we live involves bitter envy and selfish ambition.  What if I think I have God’s wisdom but still make my life all about me?

The evidence says that you are playing for the wrong team.  The evidence tells us that our practices are of the devil.   If you had your heart set on being the Lord’s disciple and discover this evidence, what should you do?

Repent and do the things that you did at first comes to mind.  Stop, turn around, leave this earthly and unspiritual lifestyle behind and seek the Lord like you did at first.

Don’t get so wrapped up in the mechanics that you lose sight of the path that the Lord has prepared for you. If you are on track with your discipleship, the evidence in the area of wisdom will look like this.

·       Pure

·       Peace-loving

·       Considerate

·       Yielding to the needs of others

·       Full of mercy and producing good fruit

·       Sincere

Such evidence suggests that you are genuinely following your Master and seeking the righteous life that God desires for you. 

Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

If you are true to who God called you to be, you will sow into the lives of others with peace.  You will be considerate of and helping to meet their needs, and your mercy and good fruit will be evident.

Notice how this part of the letter follows the section on Taming the Tongue.  Can we ever get to practicing God’s wisdom if we can’t get our tongue to submit to the spirit within us?

It seems that James is like the Proverbs where every few lines reveal a new piece of wisdom; however, the more we study, the more we see how everything he desires to teach us is tied together.

Once you have read and understood this letter, you may start almost anywhere within it and it will lead you to the full context.

Having accepted the challenge to read this scripture daily, you will also discover that no matter how challenging it may seem, it is not biblically unique.  The thoughts presented by James are in concert with those of Jesus and the apostles that he sent into the world.

James does us justice by pulling so many challenges together in one place.

You will be blessed for completing this challenge.

Amen!

Caution to those desiring to be teachers...

Read James 3

Therefore go, make disciples, baptize, and teach; but teachers beware.  Lookout teachers, you will be judged more strictly!

What the heck!  I am commissioned to make disciples, baptize, and teach but I better watch out if I do teach. 

What is the danger in teaching?  Consider the following excerpt from a recent sermon on the gift of teacher.

Consider two words you might want to remember as you study and especially if you feel called to teach—gift or no gift.

The first is exegesis.  That is to extract the intended meaning from a text.  We look at a text—a set of scriptures—and do our best to discern what the original author meant.  We seek to understand the message that God conveys in this part of his word.

The next term is eisegesis.  This is to take what we believe and try and make it fit into the scripture.  We should consider James’s warning when we catch ourselves doing this.  It is easy to do.  We believe something or want to believe something so we make what we believe fit into a scripture in which it doesn’t belong.

Those with the gift of teacher are equipped to produce good fruit.  They hunger to teach so others will hunger to learn, but be warned:  Teachers will be judged more strictly.

So, what are we to do?  Stick to the word of God.  Use your experience to help explain but don’t make your experience superior to the world of God.

Embrace the full biblical witness.  Don’t cherry-pick.  Don’t declare something out of context because it does not fit into your personal context.  Seek and you will find!  God’s word will speak to you.  You don’t need to coach it to say what you want.

Trust in the power of his word.

Now we come to one of the most challenging sections in this book and perhaps the Bible.  The tongue is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.  It corrupts the whole person.

So, did God design us with a defective part? 

Think back to the beginning of this letter.  Think of the term double-minded.  Think of being of God and of the world.  Think of asking God for something then doubting he can deliver it.  That dog don’t hunt.

We like to say that we are of God but live in the world, but sometimes the world is living in us.  The litmus test for this is often the tongue.

James describes the tongue like a rudder.  A small rudder turns a big ship.

The tongue is like a spark.  The tongue is not a forest fire, but it can start one.

People have domesticated all sorts of animals but the tongue seems to be a wild beast.  How do we deal with the volatility of our tongue—of what we say?

Let’s try this on for size.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

Earlier, we looked at meeting other’s needs by listening to them first with being slow to speak the concomitant of this leading premise.  Now let’s consider slow to speak on its own merits.

What if being slow to speak gives us a chance to restrain the wild beast that we speak with?  We are counseled to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.  What if between the time that we had the though and the time when we voiced it, there was a deliberate delay?

What if our tongue only praised God because we were very deliberate in what we said?

James used the term double-minded.  Native Americans once used the term forked tongue.  James is challenging us to have no dichotomy in our faith—that includes our speech. 

We believe and our prayer life is evidence of that belief.

We have faith and our actions are evidence of that belief.

We have a heart for God and our words are not in conflict with our hearts.

I have asked that in your personal study and hopefully you have discussed this in your classes, that you consider the power of words.  Think of these areas:

The words spoken over you.

The words spoken by you.

The words spoken by you with God’s Spirit.

The words spoken by you without God’s Spirit.

Don’t you want the words spoken over you to be filled with God’s Spirit?

Don’t you want the words spoken by you to others or over others to be filled with God’s Spirit?

No human can tame the tongue.  We will say something that will get us off course or be the spark that starts a wildfire.

But we are not without hope or without help.  If we will deliberately make time for the Spirit of the Lord to instruct us before we speak, our chances of saying only the things that bring glory to God go up significantly.

Once upon a time I taught cognitive restricting.  That’s programspeak for thinking skills.  One of the programs used a simple mantra:  Stop and think! 

In a community where good thinking skills were in short supply, Stop and think was the exact interjection require to give people a chance to make a good decision.

Let’s apply something similar here when it comes to the tongue:  Stop and Listen!

In this case it’s not listening to the other person to meet their need.  It’s listening to the Holy Spirit before we speak.  It’s our best shot at taming the wild beast we call the tongue.

Amen.

Christian Forensics

Read James 2

Some time ago we learned a verse from Hebrews about faith.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 

Faith is tangible yet intangible.  You can’t see it but we say it has substance.  We talk of evidence of things not seen.

What in the world is evidence of things not seen?  I get a perfect example for about 300 plus days each year from my office.  I look out of the window, that I am thankful we decided to put in what is now my office, and see the American Flag at the post office.  It is not hanging down the pole it is flying full mast with a full-value wind.

I can’t see the wind, but I can see the evidence of the wind.  I have seen the evidence of things not seen.

James says show me your faith by your deeds—by your works.  He gets a little terse here and there.  If you really believe in God then show me your faith by what you do.  That’s a good ole Missouri, Show Me!

You want to say that you believe, but consider the fact that the demons really believe in God.  They don’t have any doubt.  It scares the hell out of them because they know that the one true God is a righteous God and has consigned them to hell. They know with certainty their eternal destination. 

Make no mistake, they believe in God.

So how are we different?  James says, look at the way you live.  Do you live by the law of love or do you just love the fact that God’s grace keeps you from keeping company with the demons?

But I believe that God is real.  By the evidence of creation itself, I know that God has to be real.  I believe that Jesus died for my sins.  I believe that the Holy Spirit is with me now. 

James says, let me introduce you to Forensic Christianity.

If all that you say is true, there will be evidence.  There will be evidence of things not seen.

If you see a person who is hurting—maybe hungry or homeless—and you have the means to help but do nothing, then there is no evidence of this thing called faith.

If a person who does not believe in God helps this pitiful person, there is evidence of a good deed but no profession of faith in God.  You can have good deeds without faith.

Not everyone doing good things has faith in God and not everyone who claims faith in God seems to have evidence to support that claim.

There is a song by Everlast titled What It’s Like.  Most of you my age haven’t heard them and probably wouldn’t like them.  Some folks here don’t need to listen to them.  Their lyrics are very real but just too raw for most people.

We've all seen the man at the liquor store beggin' for your change

the hair on his face is dirty, dreadlocked and full of mange

he asks a man for what he could spare with shame in his eyes

get a job you blanking slob is all he replied.

Now the song is about walking in another person’s shoes and it goes into some situations where we could just point fingers of blame and excuse ourselves.  You got your own self into that mess, now deal with it.  That is, unless we were called to live out our faith.

Think to the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The man who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead should have known not to travel the road between Jericho and Jerusalem alone.  He was just asking to be robbed. 

But Jesus is answering the question, Who is my neighbor?  He uses this parable.  At the end of the parable, you know how this goes, it is the Samaritan who shows mercy.  It is the Samaritan who loved the man left for dead.  It is the Samaritan whose actions showed him to be a neighbor.

If you have received Jesus as your Lord, I will see your faith.  You will see my faith in acts of mercy.  My mercy does not make me faithful.  My faithfulness makes me merciful.

My acts of goodness do not bring me to salvation but my salvation brings me to acts of goodness and mercy.

I have told this story in different groups from time to time.  Once upon a time I was a newspaper manager for The Oklahoman.  I had a territory that went from Canute to Mangum to Cement/Cyril  and to Hinton.  After a couple years I was promoted and was responsible for things south of I-40 and west of I-35 with a little spillover here and there so a town didn’t get divided in half.

There had been trouble with service in Chickasha right before I was promoted.  It was really bad.  The area had gone through 7 managers over the past year and carriers were quitting every week.  As I interviewed manager prospects, I told them that Chickasha was a hornet’s nest.  Don’t ask for this job unless you are ready to deal with 100 customer complaints on day 1.   I spent most of my first two months putting Chickasha back together while culling through manager prospects.

Sometimes I would overnight there.  Sometimes I would drive back and forth.  I grew tired of Chickasha and the drive to and from this place.  Now, I had the other fourth of the state to take care of as well, but Chickasha was just sucking the life out of me.

One evening, I was ready to head home knowing that I would be back in a few hours.  I had not eaten all day, so I pulled into Arby’s to get the 5 for 5 special.  I don’t like drive-throughs so I went in to get my drink and 4 sandwiches and got in the car to head home.

As I looped around the back of the restaurant, I see a man digging in a dumpster.  I continued and made a left on the road heading west.  I was ready to be home and get my 2 hours sleep.  It was about half a block later that I made a U-turn.  I think it could have qualified as a Bat-Turn. 

My company car was a Dodge Magnum.  It had a long wheel base but I spun that baby around like a pro.  It took under a minute to get back to Arby’s and the dumpster and the guy was gone.  He wasn’t inside or walking anywhere nearby.  He was gone.

I knew that I was supposed to help that guy.  Yeah, I can eat 4 sandwiches.  I hadn’t eaten all day.  I was on the hungry side, but this guy was dumpster diving and I drove by him.

I knew exactly what the Spirit that lives within me was telling me to do.  I knew exactly what my faith was compelling me to do and I had not done it.

I should have taken those sandwiches back and gotten a refund because as I ate them on the drive home, they were the worst tasting sandwiches ever. 

My faith did not manifest itself into works, at least not as it should have.  I should have been so in tune with my faith and the Spirit that lived within me, it would not have taken half a minute to realize what I should have done.

I want you to consider two different and provocative concepts: Worthless faith and faithless works.

James uses the example of Abraham and Isaac and how Abraham demonstrated his faith by offering his son as a sacrifice to God.  No father here ever wants to have their faith tested in that way, but Abraham had faith that God would fulfill his promise that he would be the father of many nations and that promise would come through Isaac.

At the end of this example, James gives us the formula for faith and works.  Neither is a stand-alone entity.  Faith and deeds work together.  Faith is made complete in our works.

There is no such thing as an academic faith.  Faith moves us to action.  Our actions are incomplete without faith. 

But every time that I think of faith and works, I think about being saved by grace not works.  I am saved by grace through faith.  My salvation comes completely from God.

That statement should be rock solid in your foundation of faith.  I am saved by grace through faith!

Saved by grace through faith is absolutely true.  There are no asterisk or caveats.  It’s true.  But is it true for you?  Have you received Jesus not only as Savior but as Lord?

If we have truly professed our faith in the words that we know so well, Jesus is Lord, then we are helpless to do anything but respond to this incredible gift with action.  Sometimes our action is delayed but we are compelled to action nonetheless.

Our salvation comes from God in the blood of Christ Jesus.  Our salvation is completed in our response to his great love.  We could call this the fullness of our salvation.  I most often use the term discipleship.

Jesus said that once we believe in him, we pass from death to life.  Before we received Jesus as Lord, we were under a death sentence.  Our existence without Jesus was death. 

James makes the analogy as the body without spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.

We try to dissect God’s instructions to us.  His instructions to us are less for analysis and division and more for synthesis—receiving the full Biblical witness and unison—living in one accord as the body of Christ.

You can only dissect faith and works in a corpse.  You can’t do this in a living being.  I am going to patent the Faith and Works version of the game Operation.  There’s no bones or hearts or kidneys to remove, just faith and works. 

If you take either one out, that nasty buzzer sound goes off.  Your patient is dead!

Faith and works work together.  They are a package deal. 

Everyone who is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ is predisposed to good deeds.  That is your new nature.  To live otherwise is to deny the Spirit of God that lives within you.

So, here are the test answers for those taking the course for credit.

Faith and actions work together.

What you do completes what you believe.

Faith without works is dead.

Amen!