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In this video 0:00 Building a Faith That Works
Building a Faith That Works 0:02 Welcome to the men's global livestream. I am stoked to be with you and to be kicking off a 5 week journey through the book of James. And we're calling this series, James for Every Man,0:14 Building a Faith That Works. My name is Dusty Davis. I'm a member of the teaching team here at Everyman Ministries. And today, we're gonna begin strolling through, 1 of the hardest hitting and 10:26 of the most practical books in in all of scripture. And you can just imagine how unique James' perspective of Jesus must have been. Right? This is James, the half brother of Jesus, who did0:38 not believe that Christ was who he claimed to be until he encountered the resurrected king. James would then go on to become a pillar of the early church, and he would0:50 offer this letter of encouragement to the church. The entire book of James is about true and real faith. The kind of faith that we pray God1:02 will build in every man walking this journey with us. And our walk through it, our journey through the book is not gonna be a conversation where we're gonna argue1:14 the merit of faith or works as if we could separate those 2. No. We are looking to be men who have a faith that1:26 works. Now if you and I are gonna have a faith that goes the distance, right, we need to understand what real faith looks like, how it's developed in God's man, and then what has to be done to1:38 protect and nurture it. And that's gonna be paramount for us as we follow Jesus. And 1 of the really important things to understand as we get into the book of James in the way of context
1:50 is who James is writing to. It gives a lot of weight to both the encouragements, and it really clarifies the challenges that James offers his readers.
2:02 He lays out his audience right there, James chapter 1 verse 1. This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm writing to the 12 tribes,
2:14 the Jewish believers who've been scattered abroad. Now depending on your translation, it might say to the 12 tribes of the dispersion, but you get the idea. James is writing
2:26 to a group of people whose faith in Jesus has forced them to flee where they were from, their homes, their families, their friends. It's cost them their lives, at least the
2:38 lives that they thought they were going to lead. And this gives us context because those are the people that James is speaking to. These people who must have had a
2:50 real faith, the kind of faith that would get them through the long weeks and days and years of living in a culture that was walking in opposition to the very belief that had
3:02 caused them to be scattered throughout the Roman Empire. He's trying to encourage them in the middle of a very serious and daily trial. And I think there's an encouragement for us as God's men,
3:13 living amongst a society where our faith is not held in common. We may not have been scattered throughout the places that we live, but we're certainly learning to live set apart.
3:26 And what I love about the book of James is the incredible practicality of it. And that's not that James didn't have a firm grasp of of theology. That's just not the aim of the book of James. It's interesting. The book
3:38 of James was actually contested during canonization. And the famous reformer Martin Luther even called it the epistle of straw, claiming that it was just theological fluff.
3:50 And yet it remains 1 of the most often memorized and most commonly quoted books of scripture because it just practically informs what it looks like to live the Christian life. And so
4:02 as we walk through James chapter 1 today, that's my prayer. That's my hope. God, that you would make us wise as to how we are to live out our faith. You're also gonna find along this journey, boys,
4:13 James is incredibly concise. He just says things like they are. And in a world where truth is getting twisted and it's hard to discern someone's stance, or
4:25 maybe we're overwhelmed by how forward people are with their stances, James is gonna ask for us refreshing truths in short order. Now with all that being said, there is the
4:37 reality that organization really isn't 1 of James' strong suits. He kind of is flighty with his ideas. I love it because I'm flighty with my ideas. But we're gonna bounce around within the
4:48 chapter a little bit in order to follow James' thoughts through to completion. But this study is gonna provide a framework with insights. But I wanna encourage you,
5:00 as we're studying the book of James, whatever context you find yourself in right now, if you're in a small DNA group or triad with 2 or 3 other men, if if you're watching this with all of the men from your church in a
5:11 conference style or a larger men's gathering or you're just going through it yourself, here's my challenge. During this series, submerge yourself fully into the book of
5:23 James. Reread the book of James chapter 1 until you watch session 2. Stay in it. Allow the Holy Spirit to open your eyes and to speak to you. Meditate on it. Scripture tells
5:35 us to allow the word of God to dwell richly in our hearts is how Paul encouraged the church in Colossae. I'm encouraging you in the same way. Let the word of God through brother James
5:47 get into your heart and minds this week. Let's jump in James chapter 1 beginning in verse 2. Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way,
5:59 consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow. For when your endurance is fully developed, you'll be
6:11 perfect and complete needing nothing. Right away, we're hit with it guys. This verse is so challenging and it's often misunderstood. We're told
6:23 that whenever troubles come our way, that we're to consider that an opportunity for great joy. But oftentimes as believers, the first mistake we can make is to think that this passage is telling us that everything
6:35 we walk through is good. That every situation is good. But that's not what James says. We can wrongly believe that the things that come our way should all be received with a smile, should
6:47 all be celebrated as something good because we know it's doing good in us. Right? Because that could lead us to wrongly believe that God's heart for us is to have experienced all of the terrible things we've experienced
6:59 in a fallen world. James is not telling us that everything is joyful in and of itself. James offers us something very different. Now,
7:11 we can wrongly misinterpret that from ourselves. We can also wrongly encourage someone else in the middle of a trial while they're still learning and being tested, while their faith is
7:23 still being purified, while they're still grieving some tremendous pain or still processing the loss of a relationship or a career or a loved
7:35 1. And we can jump in and tell them to consider it pure joy, brother. Let's allow the spirit to do its work. James never says bad things are
7:46 good. He never says to receive and celebrate the thing. What he says is this, we are called as god's men to consider tough times and opportunity. We're called to
7:58 consider the tough things we are going through and opportunity. That's where the joy comes from. The understanding that God is at work. This is radical thinking that runs very counter to your
8:10 flesh and to my flesh. But the truth remains. The testing of our faith is an opportunity for us to joyfully celebrate what it is God is doing
8:22 in us and what he'll do through us. But let's unpack the idea of testing because that might be where we go wrong in our understanding of this passage. Right? How is testing
8:33 different from being tempted? It's different from simple challenge. It's different from reeling in the effects of sin in my life. The word testing is
8:45 actually something that silversmiths came up with. That's what James is actually referencing. It's the process by which a silversmith would take a bunch of raw silver, and he'd place it in a giant cauldron
8:57 pot, and he would heat it up to incredible heats. And what would happen is the pure silver and the dross, right, or the impurities would begin to
9:09 separate. It was only when the heat was turned up to incredible levels that we began to separate out the real silver from the dross.
9:21 This is the picture that James is calling us to. That the heat that the Lord Jesus allows in our life would heat everything up and would begin to separate the things in our life that
9:33 demonstrate real and true faith in him and the impurities. The sin, the doubt, anything that would keep us from our father. Now the silversmith would repeat this process. This wasn't a 1 time thing. And for any of
9:45 you who've walked with Jesus for any amount of time, you know, the testing of our faith is not a momentary, but it's a process. It's a part of the development and the strengthening and the ongoing
9:56 encouraging of the faith of God's man. And so this process would continue. They would heat it up and they would remove and they would heat it up and they would skim that dross off the top and they would heat it up until
10:07 check this out. Until the silversmith could lean over the edge of the pot, look down and see his own reflection. That's when he knew the silver had been
10:19 purified. Isn't that a beautiful picture? Same thing is true for you and me, boys. That the Lord would allow the temperature in our life to be heated, that he would remove from us those
10:31 impurities until our father in heaven could look down into the hearts of his men and see his own face reflected. His own heart reflected in our hearts. That as
10:43 we go through those challenges, as we go through heavy financial trials, that we would learn where true provision comes from. That God would see his face reflected in our hope and our trust in him to
10:55 provide that when we go through relational problems, even the loss of relationships, that that would instruct us to know that our greatest relationship is with the good shepherd, the lover of our
11:06 soul, our champion Jesus. That even our health issues would ultimately remind us where true healing comes from. That the Lord
11:18 would look down and see his own reflection as we become more and more like him. Here's the problem. I want happiness, not holiness.
11:31 I want an easy life, if I'm honest. Look at all the things we do to create comfort and to avoid pain. I actively avoid anything that's uncomfortable. I want to
11:43 skate through life. Technically, in my case, I'd prefer to surf through life. But I don't want anything opposing me, testing me, or challenging me. And that feels
11:54 harsh to say about myself. And so, oftentimes in the middle of a trial, in my sinful flesh, I'll even turn and question
12:06 God Almighty or blame Him for what's going on in my life. In the middle of the struggle, I'm even tempted to question His love and His care for me.
12:18 Because bad human logic says this, a loving God would not let me experience pain. Turns out it's always been like this. Reminds me of the time the disciples were in a
12:30 boat bouncing around the Sea of Galilee as the storm grew while Jesus was asleep. And they wrongly then, like I do today, attributed the
12:41 sleeping of their savior to be apathy and to be a lack of love, interest, and care. They thought Jesus didn't care about their current situation. Mark chapter
12:53 4 verse 38 says this, while Jesus was sleeping, they woke him up and said, teacher, rabbi, don't you care that we're perishing? Have tough
13:05 times in your life led you to ask the same question? Because if our heart is left unchecked, tough times will lead us to question whether God sees me or whether god cares for me.
13:17 Is he aware and does he care? Wrongly interpreted struggle in my life will have me wrongly question the lord who loves my soul.
13:30 Guys, but let's follow this type of theology until it's bad end. So if the presence of pain makes me doubt the goodness of God, if the the presence of tough things in my life or the absence of great things in
13:42 my life makes me question this God then, that bad theology plays out like this. So what makes him God is keeping bad things from me. Doesn't that make
13:54 me God and him my servant? You see how off the rails we can get just by following the natural inclination of our hearts. Does this mean that the follower of Jesus then
14:06 seeks out trials? Like, okay, if I'm gonna get the real faith, I better get out there and start being tested. Where's my next struggle? And then we somehow go out and walk into bad things in the hope that it will
14:18 produce good in us. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. But it does mean that as God's men, we will think differently about those times when we are tested. We'll
14:29 understand the difference between testing and tempting. Those are 2 very different things. James even gets into it. Because temptation is only an opportunity to sin,
14:41 while testing is an opportunity to trust. Go along here with me in this. I said before that I'm a surfer. Right? My desire is to surf through light. I come from a long line of surfers. When I go out
14:53 into the ocean, especially when the surf is big, I test my equipment. I make sure the board has wax. I don't want my feet to slip. I make sure my leash doesn't have any kinks or
15:05 frays in it because I don't want it to snap. I don't wanna swim to shore. I check my fins. I make sure they're they're securely in the board. Why? Do I test those things? Do I pull on the fin because I
15:17 maliciously wanna break my fins? Do I yank on the leash because I hate this leash and I wanna rip it? No. No. No. No. No. I test my equipment because when the time comes, I
15:28 want it to perform. When the time comes, I want my equipment to do what it's supposed to do. What if the same thing was true of you and
15:40 me? What if our great God looks down at our hearts, our trust in him, our faith, and says, when the time comes, I want their faith to be able to go the
15:52 distance. I want their faith in me to be strong enough to stand underneath the weight it's gonna be ass to shoulder. The same thing was true of Jesus Christ. He meets the enemy in the
16:03 desert. He's tested. He's led by the spirit. He's tested. Why? Was God allowing the enemy to try to crush him? No. God knew. If Jesus is gonna walk into my purposes for him, there's a
16:15 testing of his faith. I need to make sure it can go the distance. So let's not settle for some false view of faith, of bad theology of faith
16:27 that says an easy life makes strong faith. Untested faith can never be strong faith. Faith is less like an idea and much more like a muscle.
16:39 But like we said, my problem is I don't wanna lift a spiritual weight, but I want a strong faith. It doesn't work like that. Things grow under tension. The same is true of
16:51 our faith in Jesus. If it's not tested, it can't grow. It can't be strong. And that's why it's considered an opportunity for joy. We also have to encourage
17:03 ourselves, if I want the life that Jesus promised, I have to be willing to accept the lifestyle that Jesus lived. If I want his life, I've got to accept his lifestyle.
17:15 We just said that Jesus himself was not above testing of his faith. Hebrews chapter 2 verse 10 says this about how Jesus was made right for his calling. That God brought him into glory.
17:27 How? And it was only right that he, God, should make Jesus through his suffering a perfect leader fit to bring them
17:39 into their salvation. If Jesus Christ was qualified by suffering, why would my life be any different? And this is what allows us to
17:51 see the trials in our lives as having a purpose. It does not make bad things good, but it does give context to our suffering. And we get this in a
18:03 lot of other places. I understand if I wanna be healthy physically. I've gotta lift weights. I've gotta watch what goes into my body. If I wanna be strong financially, I'm gonna have to say no to some things. I'm gonna
18:14 have to deny myself. I'm gonna have to set up parameters and ways to make wise decisions. If we want our spiritual lives to be strong, And we need to pick up some
18:26 weights. We need to endure some testing. We need to let that faith muscle grow under tension. Jump with me down to verse 12 because James kind of
18:38 finishes this conversation around what what it is that we're called to endure. He says this in chapter 1 verse 12, God blesses those who patiently endure testing
18:49 and temptation. Afterwards, they'll receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. So God gives us further instructions on how we're to face these trials. We consider them joy with our
19:01 new framework, our new glasses that let us see that God's doing something. And then we patiently endure. And he promises a blessing to those who go through
19:13 the endurance, to demonstrate perseverance after we keep on keeping on. And we can dismiss that as perhaps being overly simple or that James had no
19:25 idea what I'm going through today, but remember who he's talking to. To believers who had given up everything in order to follow Jesus, who were living in a culture that wanted nothing to do with the things of
19:37 God. That's who he's writing to. People who had left everything in order to follow Jesus. And I love it. Isn't it interesting that even though we get this encouragement to
19:48 patiently endure, look at who it says the crown of life is promised to. To those who avoid sin? To those who never question God? To those who overcome all the
20:00 temptations? No. It says those who love him. The crown he promised to those who love him. Who make the decision that through the trials that choose to
20:12 love Jesus no matter what. Those are the victorious. That's the kind of faith that we want that chooses Jesus over what we can see, over what
20:24 we feel, over what we believe is right. Those that choose to trust. And as we talk about a faith that works, we gotta know this. True faith
20:36 is chosen. Real faith is a decision. It's not a reaction. It's not a response. It's not an emotion. It's not an idea. It's an ongoing
20:48 everyday decision just like real love. Real love is a decision to continually put the needs and the benefits of another in front of myself. True faith is something that I have to choose.
21:01 It's not a passive feeling. It's not gonna happen to me in response to life circumstances. It's It's a conscious decision to trust that God is who he says he is. That he's gonna do what he
21:13 said he's gonna do. And it's a choice to value most the things that our king values most. That's real faith. And it requires a decision.
21:25 Look at John 14 chapter 15. I love it. Because what is the motivator for that decision? Why is it that God's man continually chooses Jesus? Is it fear? Is it desire for reward?
21:37 No. It's love. Love is always the why. It's always the motivator for God's man. We have been loved much, loved perfectly on the cross. And so now God's man
21:49 loves much. Jesus said, John chapter 14 verse 15, if you love me, then you'll keep my commands. If you love me,
22:01 you'll hold on. You'll receive that crown of life. Love will be your motivator. But here's the problem. Super easy to love God when I'm getting what I want. Super easy to love
22:12 God when finances aren't a problem, when health is not a concern, when the surface is good and the wind is offshore, easy to trust God. Easy to love God. When life is comfortable and
22:24 uneventful. But what about when he says, Dusty, I'm gonna allow some things into your life. I'm gonna allow that heat to start creeping up because there's some dross.
22:37 There's some impurities that I need to take out of your heart, son. If you're gonna go where I wanna take you, there's some sin that you need to leave behind. There's some things you're gonna have to go through if your
22:47 faith is gonna be strong enough to go the distance, son. And the question remains, will I still love him even then? Will I trust that he has a plan? Will I trust that
22:59 he's doing something in me and through me and for me even when it hurts? I love it. We said James is flighty. Right? So here
23:11 comes another squirrel. Let's go back to verse 5. It's a different thought, but it's an important 1 for us as God's men. In our world today, it's getting very very hard. It's getting near impossible to find out what's
23:22 true and what's real. I watch 1 news head, he tells me this. I watch this other talking head, he tells me this. I watch conflicting documentaries. I'm supposed to eat meat. I'm never supposed
23:34 to eat meat. Plastic is bad. Plastic's okay. There's conflicting truths all over the place. And I can support just about any line of thinking I want. I can even support
23:46 it scientifically. I can always find someone out there who agrees with me, and so it's getting hard. And that same bad logic, that same untruth is creeping its way into those
23:58 who profess the name of Jesus. People are expanding on God's word. They're deconstructing their faith and calling it freedom and progression. They're rewriting his plans for us and saying
24:10 that it's a new future, a new trajectory. And it makes it feel as though it's almost impossible to gain true and godly wisdom. But verse
24:22 5, if any of you lacks wisdom, ask our generous God and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.
24:36 How beautiful is this promise for your life and for my life? For the man of God, wisdom isn't hidden. It's promised. Doesn't that feel good? Wisdom is a promise in a world where it's hard to
24:47 uncover what's real and right and true. God's man is promised that his generous God will give wisdom if he just asks. He'll illuminate our path.
25:00 But none of that matters if we don't ask. He's the source of all wisdom, all knowledge. He promises it, but he will not unleash it until we ask him to. If we never ask
25:12 God for wisdom, how can we be surprised that we don't have it? When we spend all of our time on social media, when I when I spend all my time devouring books
25:24 and podcasts and lectures from people who don't profess the name of Jesus or who aren't talking about moving his kingdom forward, when I'm gaining my wisdom through every other source except for God's
25:35 word, then why am I surprised that when life starts squeezing me, God's word is not what comes out of me? That I'm not more full of the fruit of the spirit, the love and the joy and the
25:47 peace and the patience. When I'm being more filled with confusion and doubt and fear and worry, I have to question where I'm going as my source of wisdom and truth.
26:00 Because we can only have 1. We can claim whatever we want about where our source of hope is, about where our true north is, where we find what is real and right and true. But here's the question,
26:12 where do you and I run to when we need wisdom? When we have a decision to make, what's our MO? Is it to hit our knees and ask the God of the universe? Or is it only
26:24 ever to ask Google what it thinks? James even encourages us how we're supposed to ask. He doesn't just say so ask God for wisdom. He says, this is
26:36 important enough boys. I'm gonna tell you how to do it. Verse 6, but when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Be sure your faith is in him alone. Don't waver.
26:48 For a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Listen to
26:59 this. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world. And what's the net result it says? They're unstable in everything they do. We
27:11 can stand on, trust in, align with, support, hope in Jesus Christ or this world, but not both. It's like standing on a boat as it starts to pull away from the dock. You got a
27:23 decision to make. You're either all in in the boat or you're staying on the dock or you're ending up in the water. That's what it's like to try to straddle the world and the word.
27:36 To try to have Jesus be my source as well as my flesh or this culture. I'm gonna fall. I'm unstable in all that I do. There can only be 1 source, so we have to choose what will it
27:47 be. Will we approach God's word expecting it to change and instruct to train and correct, to fill us up
27:59 with the knowledge of God that we don't have in us until the Holy Spirit makes us wise for it. So we can follow all that, or we can do what culture tells us to do.
28:12 Just trust our hearts. Just trust what's inside. Just trust your own desires. That your desires, if you have them and they're natural, then they must be followed. That if you have truth that seems right to you,
28:24 then it must be true. Yet James tells me what goes on inside of me. He goes back in verse 14. He goes back to the talk about temptation and says, temptations
28:35 come from your own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires then give birth to sinful actions. James is saying, if you look inside, you're
28:47 gonna find the culprit, not the cure. The scripture reminds us that temptation is the response. It's the desire of our sinful flesh when our wisdom
28:59 gives free rein to our desires, which ultimately lead us away from our savior. The cultural shift to just do what feels natural runs completely
29:11 contrary to God's word which tells us we need to be led by the spirit to do what's supernatural. When we respond to and live according to our flesh, we're never gonna move towards God or people
29:23 in love. We need the spirit to create new desires inside of us. Then we deal with the temptation at a root, at a source level, at a heart level. And I don't spend my time playing sin
29:35 management. Let's follow that stream all the way back up. Let's remove what's polluting it, and let's watch the fresh water flow. We have to then intentionally lay
29:46 aside our desires and our wisdom, and come with a posture of humility. Verse 21 says this, get rid of all the filth
29:58 and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word that God has planted in our hearts. For it has the power to save our souls.
30:11 As followers of Jesus, as God's men, this is our charge to humbly accept the word. We don't sit in judgment
30:23 over this book. I don't take out a red pen and remove the things that no longer feel right culturally. I don't remove the things that contradict what I desire or what I
30:35 even believe to be true because as God's men, we sit in judgment under this book. Not in judgment over this book. This book changes us, lest we be tempted to
30:47 change this book that it would fit into our lives. That positioning, humbly accepting the word. It's it's a hard posture of of coming alongside and
30:59 then we bend. We bend in order. When we scripture tells us to look intently into the law that gives us light. To look carefully. That's a picture of leaning in for a closer
31:10 view. You notice that it's me that's moving. It's me that's contorting. It's me that changes my life to fit the scripture in it. It's me that moves to get underneath the scripture. I don't move the
31:22 scripture around to fit into my life. It says, we humbly accept the word. Why? Because it has the power to save our souls. The word
31:34 has the power to shape our hearts, to change our hearts. God has the power to give us new hearts, to restore broken relationships. We just saw to bring wisdom, to allow us to live
31:46 above our base and sinful desires. It'll move us out in love to those very furthest away that the kingdom of God would
31:58 come. That's the power of the word of God that Paul talked about in Ephesians when he talked about the sword of the spirit, the rhema, the spoken word of god. It has
32:09 power. James is reminding us if we humbly submit to it, now it has free reign to do what it's capable of doing. 1 of the things I love most about the book of James, I
32:21 told you in the very beginning is he is straight up blunt. He just tells you what the truth is. He just gives us wisdom that meets us right where we're at. Look at this, verse 19. Understand this.
32:33 It's almost like, listen up boys. You all must must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
32:45 Because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. It's so clear. Human anger accomplishes nothing. Nothing. Just
32:57 last night in a conversation with 1 of my sons, I gave full vent to my anger. I just I just let my anger run away with my mouth. What I spoke was true, but my tone,
33:10 my boys deserve more. My God commands more and my anger accomplished nothing. And this morning, I woke him up and I told him I loved him and I asked for his forgiveness. But we
33:21 give full vent to our anger all the time. You might even hear that and think, but wait a second Dusty. You say human anger does nothing? What about when I get really mad when I look around at all the spiritual injustice
33:32 that's going on? What if I get really mad when I when I see opposing viewpoints setting themselves up against the knowledge of God and then you know what I do? I get on social. I start blowing people up. I roast those
33:42 morons on Facebook and I tell them how wrong they are. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do? Is it? Is that accomplishing what God desires
33:54 to accomplish? Has anyone ever read a Facebook rant and hit their knees in repentance? Because the bible I read reminds me that it's God's kindness,
34:07 not the anger of his believers that draw me into repentance. For the kingdom to move forward, I cannot give anger a seat at the table. You know, I look at the
34:18 scripture. Jesus basically got really mad at 2 different groups of people. 1 was Satan. The other was the religious elite. Those who thought they were better than everybody
34:30 else. That's about it. Not angry at the sinner, not angry at the 1 that's lost. I'm not saying that we should tolerate sin, that it should make us feel good, or that it shouldn't stir up emotions within
34:42 us. I'm saying when I look at my king, his most common response to those that were lost, to those living in opposition to his will, was sadness. When
34:54 we look at our world and we see those lost, lost in gender identity, lost in untruth, lost in believing that true life is found apart from God's precepts, our response
35:06 should be sadness. It should be a desire to see that person restored. The person across from you even if they're on opposite sides of the political aisle is not your enemy. They're your goal.
35:18 Our greatest hope is that every mouth would confess the name of Jesus and experience his transforming love and be saved. And our anger is not the vehicle that's
35:30 gonna get us there. So he talks about anger. He talks about a fool giving vent to his anger as we read in Proverbs. But it all starts not by biting
35:43 our lips. It doesn't start by rehearsing different ways to quell or quench our anger. It starts by listening. It starts by listening. Jesus so often
35:54 listened when he was a boy and his parents lost him, which can you imagine that conversation on the way home? Mary, how did you lose the son of God? I didn't lose him Joseph. I thought he was with you. It's neither here
36:06 nor there. They go back and they find Jesus sitting amongst the religious leaders. Jesus, the embodiment of all wisdom. You know what he was doing? Listening to them and asking them questions. And it says
36:18 they were amazed at his understanding. That's a beautiful reality for us today. We need to listen more. But here's the problem. We don't really listen. We
36:30 wait for our chance to speak. We're listening for the starter's gun that's gonna send us off. We just want to get our point across. We wanna be understood far more than we're
36:42 willing to understand. And here's the problem. Social media, all of our messaging apps, they're they're 1 direction. It's me having the full ability to put my thoughts out into the world
36:53 in a moment and it never asks me to listen. It doesn't demand anything of me. It's always ready for my rants and my raise. If we wanna set ourselves apart as God's men, let's be
37:05 men that listen. Let's be men that truly listen. Let's shock the people in our life by the amount of care they feel by our loving listening.
37:17 But I'm usually the opposite. Right? We're encouraged to be quick to listen. I'm usually very slow to listen. I'm supposed to be slow to speak. I'm usually immediate
37:29 to speak. As soon as I have a thought, I share it. Get a text, send a text. There's no pausing to consider. I express thoughts fully and send them out immediately.
37:41 And James is just telling us, that's not gonna lead you towards where the Lord wants to take you. Now at this point, James has been giving us a lot of truths and while challenging, there's this feeling like, yeah,
37:53 This is all this is all really good. And you might be nodding your head as you listen. You might be thinking, I really agree with a lot of this. It's easy to value something
38:05 as a great idea. It's very different to put it into practice in our lives. Verse 22, but don't just listen to God's word.
38:18 You must do what it says. Otherwise, you're just fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don't obey, it's like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see
38:29 yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, we talked about that. We talked about carefully looking
38:41 into this book of truth. And you do what it says and don't forget what you've heard, then God will bless you for doing it. James is reminding us of an
38:53 incredible truth. A truth that's gonna be foundational as we walk through these 5 chapters. The Christian life is 1 of action. It's 1 of action. It's not just a set
39:05 of ideas. It's not just a belief system. It's not just a list of standards. That's why I love the fact that the early church, the early followers called themselves followers of the way.
39:18 It was a way. It was a it was a manner of being. It informed every aspect of their life. It was truly a faith that worked.
39:30 It was real. And and and it completely changed the way they spoke to 1 another and about 1 another. It changed the way they use their money to bless 1 another. It changed theShow more
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