9/25 Sermon on James, Part 1

I regularly attend The Family Church,  which is a non-denominational Christian church situated off Parker Road west of Gainesville.  The pastors here have always given pretty incisive and interesting Sunday morning sermons, based on the Bible.  They emphasize the importance of Jesus Christ as Savior and the need to accept him as such and depend upon him in our daily walk through life.  Our current head pastor, Philip Griffin, has just finished a series on the Seven Churches of the book of Revelation and last Sunday began a new one on the book of James...found toward the back of the New Testament.  I have to admit that getting wisdom out of the previous reading was akin to squeezing water from a rock, but James, although a short book, is loaded with sagacious exhortations...I myself refer to it as the "Proverbs" of the New Testament...

Sunday's sermon appropriately focused on the very beginning of James, covering the first chapter, verses 1-12.  In it the author, who naturally calls himself James, greets the twelve tribes scattered abroad and calls on them to persevere with joy through the trials they are experiencing.  For in those trials they will be made stronger and provided the wisdom God intends for them.  Comfort, while pleasant, is much less important than maturity...and that can only come about by going through, and learning from, difficult times.   And, as the pastor pointed out, while those difficult times may be unavoidable, they can also be useful in shaping character and faith.  He also stressed that "life isn't fair, but God is".  And regarding the attainment of material wealth, it is considered, from the perspective of James, to be more an impediment to becoming wise and mature than by experiencing a life marked with hardship and poverty. 

From my own perspective, I feel that the times in my life when I had to undergo difficult circumstances and then came out of them stronger and more understanding in retrospect were often the most meaningful and memorable. However, I have known of people...and you most likely do as well...who have taken their perceived negative life experiences and constructed a cynical narrative for themselves, along with a overly critical view of humanity in general and loads of specific examples to support that outlook.  Hey, y'know, I've fallen into this trap a number of times! So with that innate tendency to be reactive to bad times and hardships comes the need to seek divine guidance and empowerment in order to instead put things in their proper perspective and cultivate wisdom and maturity...and that, I believe, was the intention of James with the opening passages of this book...

By the way, you can watch any of The Family Church (of Gainesville, Florida) sermons on its YouTube site...

And here are those first twelve verses of James, in the NIV courtesy of Bible Gateway:

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:

Greetings. ² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

⁹ Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. ¹⁰ But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. ¹¹ For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
¹² 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.