Lately I have been studying James…. again, LOL. It seems that I study this book a lot and EVERY TIME I am floored by the life in this letter. In Chapter 2 of James, we see him confront the sin of partiality. So what is partiality? This is how James describes it: James 2: 1-13 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For ...

Last lesson we talked about getting off the Axiom, stop being just a hearer and be a doer. At the end of Chapter 1 of James, we were given an example of a pure and undefiled religion before God, which was to visit orphans and widows. I want to follow up on that lesson to examine the large cultural problem, which I believe is still relevant today. In Mark 12, Jesus was being confron ...

James 1:27 says this: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. So all we have to do to have "pure and undefiled" religion before God is to visit orphans and widows? Is that what James is saying? Well, let's put this in the context of his complete thought. Just a ...

https://youtu.be/ueDdwgR0AaU ...

What does your spiritual walk look like on an "off" day? Do you know what I mean? I think everyone does... those days when you have a headache; those days when it's rainy and you just want to sleep; those days when the kids whine about EVERYTHING; those days when that one person in that one meeting just will not shut it! We have all been there, right? Be joyful always?? How?? My he ...

In working with people in need I have often heard this scripture loosely applied to how God allows calamity to happen "good" and "bad" people alike. Weather that is true or untrue is not what I want to discuss in this post. I just want us to take another look at the passage that is often referred to in support of that idea in the first place. Matthew 5:43-48 43 “You have heard tha ...