James 1: 2-26 “There’s A storm moving your way”.
Profiting from Trials
2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,
**Loss of a job, loved ones, home, car, health, friends, etc… One must view their trials as a Spiritual growth. You are not to rejoice in the trials itself, but rejoice for the possible results.
3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
**Testing is the idea of proven genuineness. Take away what is false.
**Without Faith it is impossible to please God.
4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
**Patience here is to endure: bear hardship: to experience pain, or hardship without giving up
**Perfect here does not mean absolute sinlessness, here it means being fully developed or mature.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
**Wisdom here is Spiritual understanding of the purpose of your trial.
6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
**When God grants you wisdom, God does it without reproach. Meaning God is not stingy.
7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
If you doubt God, you get nothing. When you doubt God, you are saying, God, I don’t believe or think you can do what I asked.
8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
**This is a person drawn in two opposite directions. Between belief and unbelief. They believe God can help sometimes and the other times they don’t believe God can do what He says.
12 Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
**Stand fast. Hold on to God’s Word. God said, believe it. God is not a man that He should lie.
**Do you know this scripture refers not to the life hereafter, but to life here and now, enjoyed more abundantly and in greater fullness?
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
**Can’t anyone tempt you with Fornication unless that is your desire. Same as with drugs, alcohol, lying, stealing, cursing you get the picture? It is in your heart, your desire.
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
**Meaning, what God has for you, is for you, and NO man can take it away.
18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
**You are bought with a price. 1Corthinians 6:19 & 20 says; Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? (20) For you were bought at a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
19 So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; 20 for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
**Learn to shut your mouth and listen. Do you know that the Word tells us to touch not my anointed nor do my prophets no harm?
**In The Book of Numbers chp 12, Moses brother and sister Aaron & Miriam spoke against Moses and the anger of the Lord was aroused against them.
21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
**This relays to the Sunday Church goer. He hears the Word on Sunday and Monday morning he’s back doing what he should not be doing. He’s forgotten what he heard.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
26 If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.
