Thursday, May 29,
2014, 8:16 a.m. – the Lord Jesus put the song in mind, “May Christ Be Seen in Me.” Speak, Lord, your words to my heart. I
read James 1 (NIV).
Faith Tested
Consider
it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let
perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not
lacking anything…
Blessed
is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that
person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who
love him…
I think that, in our natural selves, that is one of the
hardest things to do, i.e. to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of
many kinds. That just goes against human nature. Yet, praise Jesus, because of
his grace to us in saving us from our sins, and because we have been given new
lives in Jesus Christ, and his Spirit now dwells within us, we can rejoice,
even when going through some of the darkest times in our lives. We do this
through submitting ourselves to God, believing that he cares and that he is
completely sovereign over every aspect of our lives. And so we trust our lives
into his care, believing him to work all things for the good of us who love
him; who have been called according to his purpose (See Ro. 8:28).
As we trust him more and more, he increases our
understanding of the purpose of our trials. They are what help us to grow in
our walks with the Lord Jesus, so we become mature. They humble us, too, so
that we are not easily given over to pride.
Believe, Not Doubt
If
any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all
without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must
believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea,
blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything
from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do…
I believe that one of the biggest reasons we may begin to
give in to doubt is that we get our eyes off of Jesus and we begin to fear the
opinions and/or rejections of humans. We pray for wisdom. God gives us the
wisdom. We act on it. Then someone says something to us that begins to work in
our minds. And, so we begin to question God and/or ourselves. There are times,
I believe, when we need to question ourselves, because maybe we were listening
to the flesh and not to God, nonetheless, if we have prayed, and God has
assured us of what we are to do, and we have trusted him, what good are we if
we keep going back and forth all the time? At some point we need to just know
God did answer us, he gave us the wisdom we asked for, and so we just need to
trust him with the results, believing he knows what is best. We need to commit
our lives into his hands, and we need to not allow ourselves to be so easily
swayed by the opinions and/or potential rejections of humans.
Dragged Away
When
tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by
evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are
dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has
conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth
to death.
We should not blame others for our own failures. Some people
blame God. Others blame the devil. Still others cast fault on other humans. This
whole “blame game,” though, is used as a ploy to keep us from taking personal
responsibility for our own sins. A common teaching today says that, once we
have been regenerated of the Spirit of God, we are truly good at heart, so if
we sin, it is because the devil made us do it, or something to that effect. If
we can convince ourselves that fundamentally we are good, and thus if we sin it
must be someone else’s fault, then we will never conquer the sins in our lives
which so easily entangle us, because we can always convince ourselves that it
really wasn’t us that did it. Wow! Satan is such a deceiver! The Bible does not
teach this, though. Over and over again in the New Testament believers in Jesus
are called upon to take personal responsibility for their own sin – to forsake
it; throw it off; get rid of it!
Therefore,
brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live
according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if
by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. ~
Ro. 8:12-13 NIV
Every Good Gift
Don’t
be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from
above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change
like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth,
that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
God does not tempt us with evil. No! He gives good gifts to
his children – his grace, mercy, peace, forgiveness, salvation, eternal life,
compassion, and freedom from sin. He is truth and he is love, and he never
changes. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. We can always count on
him. He is completely faithful. He died so we would be free from the control of
sin over our lives, and he will daily help us to resist Satan and to draw close
to him.
Quick to Listen
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. Therefore, get rid of all moral
filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in
you, which can save you.
James is writing to believers in Jesus Christ. When we come
to faith in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven of our sins, Christ’s righteousness
is credited to our accounts, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin, and
we are made alive in Christ Jesus to now walk in his righteousness and holiness.
Yet, we still live in flesh bodies, which means we still have the propensity to
sin, only now Jesus Christ has set us free from the control of sin over our
lives so that, through him, we can now say “No” to ungodliness and worldly
passions and live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age
(See Tit. 2:11-14).
But, it is not like Jesus just comes into our hearts and now
makes us puppets on a string and that we no longer have the ability to make our
own choices. Each day we must choose to serve and to follow him or to revert to
following after our own flesh. This is why we are given so many instructions in
the NT on how to live godly lives. So, we must daily choose to resist Satan and
his temptations, and we must yield to our Lord, follow his word, and do what he
says. Yet, we do all this, not in the power of our own flesh, but in the power
of the working of the Spirit in our lives. Then, we can learn to be quick to
listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because daily we are submitting
to our Lord, yielding to the Spirit, and we are trusting in the Lord with our
lives and with our circumstances. When we come up against difficult situations,
we pray for wisdom and peace, and we choose to obey God.
Listen and Do
Do
not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who
looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and
immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the
perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they
have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
I believe that one of the greatest reasons Christians give
way to sin, don’t live in victory, go nowhere with their Christian lives, and
just kind of float through life doing their own thing with little regard for
God and for his truths is that they fail to apply the knowledge that they take
into their minds. They read and/or study the word of God, but then they walk
away and forget what they read, if they are even taking in his word at all. We
can’t just spend a few minutes in personal devotions each day thinking we have
now met our obligation if we don’t apply to our lives the things we are
learning. When Jesus speaks to our hearts, and he puts a finger on something in
our lives (like looking at ourselves in a mirror), but then we just walk away
and forget about it, it makes the exercise of reading his word kind of
pointless, right? Why bother at all if we have no intention of doing what he
shows us? The whole object of time spent in the word should be for us to learn,
and then to apply what we are learning to our lives, i.e. for us to do what it
says. I can tell you that it is really awesome when we do what the word teaches
us! There is no other way to live!
A Tight Rein
Those
who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their
tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God
our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and
widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James has a lot to say about the tongue. Wow! This is so
true! We must yield to the Holy Spirit in this. I pray regularly that the Lord,
who knows the words on my tongue before I even say them, would speak to my
heart before I speak, and he does, so that I don’t say some of the things that
cross my mind that should not be said. Yet, when he prompts us, we must listen.
We can totally undo our testimonies for Christ if we try to speak his grace and
then have what is sinful come out of our mouths, too. Yet, we must also ask
that he show us what is in our hearts, because scripture teaches that out of
our hearts our mouths speak. Sometimes we need to first allow the Spirit to
clean up some things that are in our hearts so that they don’t come flowing out
of our mouths when we are put under pressure.
We should put our faith into practice, too, by ministering
to the needs of others, and by not allowing ourselves to get caught up in the
trappings of this sinful world. Scripture teaches that we are to come out from
the world of sin and to be separate. We should take this seriously, and not try
to blend in with the world in order to be accepted.
Open My Heart /
An Original Work / July 2, 2013
“Be wise about what is good and innocent about what is
evil” (Rm. 16:19b).
Open my heart. Let
Your truth in.
Make of me a servant,
pure within;
Sing of Your praise
all of my days.
Let Your Spirit
transform all my ways.
Jesus Christ died on a
cross to
Save me from my sin.
“Repent of sin. Be
cleansed within.
Obey all of His
commands today.”
“Why do you doubt? Why
do you fear?
Jesus Christ will wipe
away your tears.
He cares for you. He
feels your pain.
Die to sin, and life
with Him you’ll gain.
Follow Him where’er He
leads you.
Talk with Him each
day.
Then you will know what
He has planned
For your life before
your world began.”
“Come unto Me, weary
in heart.
Let My love and grace
to you impart.
Believe in Me. Trust
in My care.
Take your burdens to
the Lord in prayer.
He will meet all of
your needs,
And give you peace within.
Rejoice in Him! Tell
of His love.
He will give you
comfort from above.”
No comments:
Post a Comment