No-Nonsense Faith

The Letter of James confronts all professing Christians:  are we serious about honoring Jesus Christ in all things, or are we (perhaps subtly) just using religion to shape lives centered on ourselves?

Authentic faith is for all-day-every-day.  Real Christianity permeates life, including our thoughts, words, and actions; there’s no corner of our experience over which Christ does not reign as Lord and King.

I’m both excited and sobered to begin a sermon series on James.  Please pray for me, and for our whole church family, as we receive this bold word from Scripture.  As a preview of the no-nonsense message of the Letter of James, let me list several key verses:

• Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds (1:2).
• Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger (1:19).
• Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves (1:22).
• 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 (1:27).
• Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it (2:10).
• You believe that God is one; you do well.  Even the demons believe—and shudder! (2:19).
• For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead (2:26).
• So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.  How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! (3:5).
• Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you (4:7-8).
• Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working (5:16).