Walking in the Word with Breast Cancer

13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"- 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. - James 4:13-17 While this passage may seem unattached to the other paragraphs in chapter 4, they really are connected. In this chapter, James is trying to address the reasons we end up in conflict with others in our life, and that reason can also be found in this last passage. Our own self-importance.  Every day, we make plans to which we attach our hopes and dreams. We look for those things that bring us satisfaction or joy. It may be our jobs, our homes

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. - James 4:17 The last sentence of this paragraph seems to have an abrupt subject change, perhaps that’s why it feels like a such a truth bomb. If you fail to do the right thing, when you know the right thing, you have committed sin. Once you have received instruction from His Word, you can not claim you didn’t know. Many Christians live a life of regular sin, claiming Jesus died for their sins so they’re forgiven for all, but James puts that notion to rest here. You cannot claim His forgiveness as a blanket when you knowingly commit a sin. That’s a harsh truth for some.  While this exhortation comes at the end of a passage about boasting in our arrogance, it isn’t only referring to making plans without submitting to God. The warning has much broader implications and references all that James has given instruction thus far.  Just as a recap, some of the major things we have been instructed on in t

15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. - James 4:15-16 God is sovereign, we are not. Far too often we go about our lives, making plans and trusting in ourselves, without any consideration to God. We only bring Him in when things get rough - that’s not how we’re supposed to live. He wants to be a part of our everyday plans.  It’s not that the people James was speaking about were wrong in planning to go work hard and make a profit. God mentions both planning and working hard in scripture as good things, and we are told we will reap financial benefits if we do. It wasn’t their actions that were wrong, it was their mindset. They were going about planning for their future without God. Their trust wasn’t in Him, but it was in their business ventures. They acted as if they were in charge of their future, assuming if they made solid plans, everything would turn ou

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. - James 4:14 What a great reminder of the greatness of God and the smallness of us. We make such mountains out of nothing when in reality, very little in our lives have eternal consequences. Life is short, but eternity is forever. The things we fret and agonize over are momentary, but our life with Christ will be the only thing that endures. Our lives here should be about figuring out what truly matters and holding fast to it. We should feel a sense of urgency in this verse - every minute of our brief existence on this planet counts. God has granted us such a short time here, the question we should be asking ourselves if what we’re doing will make any difference in the grand scheme of things. What will matter 100 years from now? Life is fragile. We are not guaranteed another moment here. As morbid as it is to focus on, the reality is you could be dead by sundown today. You just don’t know how long you’ve

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. James 4:13 James reminds us in this passage of the power of pride. The reality is that God's presence can be overwhelmingly intrusive in all the details of life. Pride cannot tolerate the intimate involvement of God running the details of our lives - we often convince ourselves that He is only in the big decisions.  Pride does not like the sovereignty of God.  He is in every little detail of your life, reigning over every single aspect of your journey. Now, God reigning over our lives does not mean He is making all our decisions for us. He still allows us to make plenty of poor decisions, but being sovereign over it all means He is at every outcome, determining our consequences and our blessings based on the choices we make. Mind you, the consequences and blessings are not a matter of punishment, bu

11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? - James 4:11-12 Probably one of the most misunderstood, misused, and disobeyed verses in scriptures. I frequently pray for Him to remove judgment from my heart, but I still struggle with the sin. Judgment is so deceptive and sneaky that it hides in our hearts and often we don’t recognize when it rears it’s ugly head. But James is trying to raise our awareness here with his words of caution.  Judgment shows up in many different ways, but it is always a manifestation of pride. The truth is we think we’re better than others, we think our way is the right way, or we we think we are the ones who can decide consequences. Many will excuse th

9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. - James 4:9-10 These are verses that cause newer believers pause when they first pass over them. They did for me. I remember thinking, what?  I thought giving my life over to Christ was supposed to be better. I thought I was supposed to be blessed now, happier, more joyful. Why would God want me to mourn and weep?  Why wouldn’t he want me to laugh and be joyful? As I did far too often when I was a new believer, I passed right over these verses and dismissed them because I didn’t understand them. I didn’t take the time to drill down on them as I should have, so I missed the instruction in them for a long time.  James writes these words just after he instructs us to cleanse our hands and hearts from our sin. In order to live in a right relationship with God, to enjoy that peace and contentment, to know true joy and la

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. - James 4:8 To draw near to God requires that we draw away from the world. If you are feeling far from God, as if you are walking through the battles of life on your own, God hasn’t moved, you have. He is always there, waiting for you to return to Him.  There are so many demands of this world that draw us away from Him. Our desire for material things, our sense of accomplishment, our relationships - they are all distractions from our true purpose here in earth. James is trying to grab us by the shoulders and shake us in this passage in an attempt to break us free from all that distracts us from Him. He reminds us God is there waiting for us to draw near to Him.  I’ve counseled many over the years who claim God feels very distant from them in their trials. They get into His Word regularly, but they just don’t feel the closeness they once felt or that o

6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. - James 4:6-7 In these verses, we are told to humble ourselves and to resist the devil as a way out of the conflict or struggles we find ourselves in. We cannot pass over these instructions lightly.  Daily, we need to remind ourselves there is a spiritual battle around us, there is someone fighting for our hearts that we need to resist, especially when we find ourselves in the trenches of a difficult battle. The conflict we experience, the heart-breaking emotions that we walk through as a result the trials we are enduring are so often the result of our listening to the lies of the enemy. He wants your heart, and he is sneaky in the way he goes about getting a foothold. He will convince you the suffering you experience is the result of someone else’s sin, and he will set up camp in yo

4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? - James 4:4-5 God created us to live in the world - the problem is we often get caught up in the world. We battle our flesh and desires on a daily basis, and so we are tempted by the things of this world. We are tempted to seek after all sorts of things - material possessions, reputation, accomplishments, relationships.  And when we are tempted, our hearts begin to go after those things - we make friends with the world. We start following the world’s rules and believing the world’s lies all so we can have those things our heart desires. We become a friend of the world. We want material possessions, so we hang on to our money over giving to God what is due to Him. We

1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. - James 4:1-3 These verses call out Christians on their prayer life. The reality is many of us do not pray faithfully. Some will argue they pray constantly - shooting up those arrow prayers whenever we are asked or they occur to us. Lord, help my sister.  Lord, help my finances. Lord, heal that boy. Or perhaps we say that same prayer we’ve been taught over and over without really thinking about.  We often don't pray like we should because when we do, God doesn't seem to answer. I have been praying for the salvation of my sons for many years now, and I’m still waiting. Why continue?  We stop praying when we haven't seen answers. Bu

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. - James 4:1-3 Being self-righteous means we are more concerned with the sin of others in our lives than we are concerned our own sin. We complain about how other people treat us more than we ponder our own shortcomings. Hear me on this - this is the single greatest reason relationships fail.  Our hearts are so deceitful that it clouds over the way we see ourselves, and blurs the way we see others. We think we know others' hearts as well as God knows them, we judge and assume what they are thinking rather than showing them grace as He shows us grace. Being in a right relationship with God means we are content with our circumstances. We a

1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. - James 4:1-3 James 4 has one of the clearest and most honest discussions of conflict in relationships in the bible. We all experience strife in our relationships, and we always want it to be the other person’s fault. The hard truth is that our relationships struggle because we ALL of us carry something destructive into the relationship - not just the other person. We all carry sin into our relationships.  Sin causes us to be self-absorbed and self-focused because it causes us to live for ourselves. The hope for our relationships is not found in us, or in that other person changing, the hope is found in His grace.  If you follow James

And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. - James 3:18 This verse has always caused me pause. It’s message is a bit complicated, so it takes a moment to decipher it’s meaning. After comparing the two types of wisdom, James summarizes the most important information in the passage with his analogy for peace. Using the agricultural analogy so popular at the time, James reminds us we reap what we sow. If we plant seeds in peace, then we will reap righteousness. Righteousness is doing what’s right in the eyes of our God and Father. It’s living according to His law, and following His counsel in all things. Given our sinful nature, righteousness is not something we can achieve in our strength. On our own, we are simply too self-focused and our efforts lead to self-promotion and self-righteousness. We need the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to truly be righteous in our actions in the eyes of God. It is only when we submit to the Spirit, that our w

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. - James 3:17 His wisdom is full of mercy. Mercy is not giving someone what they deserve. God showers us with mercy when He does not give us what we deserve, and He calls us to treat the people in our lives the same way. Though they may hurt us, we are to withhold punishment and show them mercy. Earthly wisdom encourages retaliation and revenge because it is self-serving and self-focused. The wisdom from above would never give what’s due, but chooses to give what they don’t deserve as God gives to us. This can be incredibly challenging, especially when the wrong against us is deep and wide. The only way past that pain is to look to the mercy He has shown us. We are so dead in our trespasses and sins we are only vaguely aware of our guilt before God—guilt that requires His mercy. We try to avoid our guilt by looking at others as worse sinners than we

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. - James 3:17 In addition to pure, His wisdom is peaceable, gentle, and open to reason. Peaceable means that his wisdom always strives for unity and harmony. It’s not open to conflict. So if you are making a decision or giving advice, the end goal should always be peace. His wisdom never promotes dissonance or dissension. It’s important to note that His wisdom is peaceable to all those who accept it. The reality is we live in relation with people who follow earthly wisdom. Wisdom of the world promotes self, so decisions are made that will be most self-serving. on It can be challenging to be in relation with people in this world who do not subscribe to His wisdom, and therefore do not always promote peace. There will be times when we are striving for peace, but the people we are doing life with will choose to be in conflict with us. In these situatio

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. - James 3:17 What a perfect list to think on when we are giving out wisdom to others. Is our wisdom pure, peaceable, gently, open to reason, full of mercy and food fruits, impartial and sincere? When we are giving others advice, trying to warn our children, suggesting a change to our co-workers, making decisions, bringing a character flaw to our husbands, do our words meet the criteria specified in this list? I’ll be the first to admit when I have an opinion, I don’t always go to this list before speaking. But as I meditate on it, my desire is to change the way I share wisdom.  Pure is listed first because in this passage, pure means holy or set apart. God is the only thing we know that is holy or set apart, so this characteristic means the wisdom is from God. Some will say that God told them to do or say something - perhaps God led them to a j