Step into A Foreign Land and Be open to your HEART being shattered, walls broken, and the scales to fall off of your eyes.
Wow- James really packs a punch doesn’t he. It’s not a very large book, but the challenge that it’s putting on my life right now is great. I felt like this afternoon all i wanted to do was read James, i had other plans, but I couldn’t stop, I just needed to focus on this book .. these words. Then tonight pastor tyler unpacked 1:12-15 for us, and there is just so much meat in those couple of verses. SO much chance for GROWTH. Just one of the many challenges tonight was to turn what is home into foreign and what was foreign to us into home. To put ourselves under Christ’s authority and let him change our perspectives on JOY and Blessings, and by changing those definitions we change how we view our lives. My perspective on what Joy is affects my response in good and bad situations. What I believe to be a blessing affects how I praise God and how I view him as my good daddy and my creator. How is it that Paul in chains could praise God and consider himself blessed? B/c his definition of Joy was based on eternal things, not worldy that could vanish any second. His Joy is eternally constant, and unconditional because Joy is knowing Christ, and that’s not something that can be taken away, so in any situation he could be Joyful.
” Dear Brothers and sisters WHEN troubles come your way consider it an opportunity for great JOY. For you know when your faith is tested your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed you will be perfect and complete needing nothing.”
First of all not IF, but WHEN. This is not for people going through hard times, but all of us all the time.
We can respond in two ways to trials and suffering:
To turn to our Creator, our Father, our God and glorify him in the situation or to turn to ourselves OR the world for comfort.
I don’t know about you, but too many times the world fails to deliver, people are not always dependable, finances will only get you through so much, material pleasures don’t satisfy the soul, but the love and wisdom we gain from seeking God in a trial and drawing near to him, thats something that is eternal. The closer we draw to him the more we know him- that’s what we were created for- this is what creates a Joy in our heart. That is why Paul can say with confidence in (Romans 8: 35)
“Can anyone seperate us from Christ’s love?”
Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have calamity or are persecuted or are hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death?
No, despite all these things, overwhelming VICTORY is ours through Christ who loved us. And I am convinced that NOTHING can ever seperate us from God’s love. Neither Death nor life nor angels or demons, neither our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow- Not even the powers of Hell can seperate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or the earth below- indeed nothing in all of creation will ever be able to seperate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Paul held firm to these truths and lived them out.
* What does my life look like- what does your life look like if in any situation when we turn our hearts over to Christ?
* What if instead of responding in a way of entitlement or injury we respond in humility and dependency?
* What if my smile is just as big when I am among friends and well fed as when I have been robbed of my possesions and beaten in a foreign land?
In both scenerios God is with me, He never changes. And just like Tyler said tonight, the temptation is to write these thoughts off as crazy, to write this lifestyle off as crazy- just for the apostles, that’s not really, literally what Christ intended for us.. or is it?
When we write these spiritual truths off as crazy, we deny God, we reject what he has for us, and we walk out of the amazing inheritance he has planned for us (Psalms 16:6 )- that evolves from us seeking to know him more and HIS JOYS- not my version of them.
(Psalm 16:5-8) ” Lord, you alone are my inheritance, my cup of blessing, you guard all that is mine. The land you have given me is a pleasant land. What a wonderful inheritance! I will bless the Lod who guides me; even at night my heart instructs me.
I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken. He is right here beside me.”
