Don't Be Deceived
James Chapter one is probably my favorite chapter in God’s word. Every single verse gives practical life-changing instruction to every believer. James 1:22-25 “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling (deceiving) yourselves. 23 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24 You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. 25 But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.”
James is talking about not just listening to a sermon and going away and forgetting what we heard but listening to “do”; to put into practice what we hear until it changes our behavior. Listening+doing=discipliship. Jesus told his disciples before ascending to heaven…”Go and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you…”Matthew 28:19a-20a.
When we simply attend Church every week and do not implement or learn to practice what we learn we forget it. We become a people going through the motions of Christianity but not experiencing Christianity. James gives some crucial instructions that can help us. Lets dive into those.
James 1:2 “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. Trouble will come. It comes to us all so James tells us when it comes what we should do…consider it an opportunity.
When life is trouble free we don’t have to exercise endurance or any fruit of the Spirit. But that verse is telling us trials give us the chance to strengthen our endurance by using it, so we can be fully developed, perfect and complete needing nothing. Now that is a goal I would like to achieve!
Trial is defined as “an experiment to test quality, putting to the proof, a test of ones ability especially to perform well under pressure.” These tests show us where we are spiritually by how we react to them. #ouch Our reactions are a gauge of sorts. If we lash out in attributes not consistent with the fruit of the spirit then we know what we need to work on. It’s really that simple.
It does not matter how wrong the other person may be, you are not responsible for their actions only your own. If it doesn’t involve a person but a circumstance ask yourself “can I do anything about this to change it?” If not accept it and pray for Gods direction on how to navigate through it.
Whether we choose to use the trial to develop or not they will continue to come. I hate that. No one is exempt from our enemy’s attacks so we might as well learn to turn them around for our benefit. Muscles are only built through use. The more we use our endurance muscle the stronger we become until we cannot be moved by anything we face.
When a trial hits the first thing that rises up is our flesh. It wants to react, to scream, cuss, throw something, blame someone around us etc. But verse 19 tells us “Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.” Any reaction of the flesh will only produce fleshly results. We must do what verse 5 says “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you.” Immediately turn inward to the Holy Spirit and ask for the wisdom we need.
For example lets say someone hurts us. How do we act; do we get defensive, angry, do we lash back? All of those reactions are signposts to us. They say we have not developed love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness that are the fruits or evidence of God’s spirit in us. We develop them by not reacting in the flesh but stopping, asking for wisdom, then choose to practice what we are learning.
The more times we choose to put what we know of God’s word into practice, the easier it is to not react in the flesh. The way I started to practice this was when I was faced with a situation especially with another person, before responding I would think “does what I want to say or do line up with Scripture”? If it did not I would choose to deescalate my emotions and wait. I would especially think to myself, would that reaction be loving? If the answer was no I knew what to do.
How many times do we read through scripture or hear it preached and nothing in us changes? We must study scripture to learn how to practice it. We must practice it to change. That is basic discipleship. Letting God’s word disciple us into Christlikeness. When we say we are Christians people are looking for the evidence…could we be convicted in a court of law that we are Christians on the evidence we produce? #selah