James 1:1-8
“1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings.
Trials and Temptations
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”
Let’s face it. Life gets hard, things happen, and unexpected disasters occur. But what are we to do when the hardest times in life occur? Are we to worry, or should we panic, or maybe we should rejoice?
You see, so many times when bad things happen in our lives, one of the first things we do is worry and panic; but we never think to rejoice. We never think that God really knows what’s going on, and maybe this never occurred to us, but everything that happens to us; God has already allowed it to trickle through his fingers into our lives. You see, there’s nothing that happens in our lives that God did not already approve.
And why might he have done this, why might God approve for these things to happen in our lives? Simply, to make us “mature and complete, not lacking anything.” You have heard it said, “There was never a wise young man, but only a wise old man.” The wise old man has lived through plenty of hard times in his life, and because of this, he knows exactly how to handle and teach on these very same events in the lives of younger people, in hopes that he can help and teach others for their own futures.
God also makes it very clear that if we are not sure how to handle these hard times that we are going through, we should ask God for advice. God wants to help us; God wants to give us advice. But when we ask for this advice, we must believe that we are going to receive it. We must not worry that we will not receive the answers to our questions. Because when we doubt, we doubt God, and then we should not expect to receive anything.
“1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings.
Trials and Temptations
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”
Let’s face it. Life gets hard, things happen, and unexpected disasters occur. But what are we to do when the hardest times in life occur? Are we to worry, or should we panic, or maybe we should rejoice?
You see, so many times when bad things happen in our lives, one of the first things we do is worry and panic; but we never think to rejoice. We never think that God really knows what’s going on, and maybe this never occurred to us, but everything that happens to us; God has already allowed it to trickle through his fingers into our lives. You see, there’s nothing that happens in our lives that God did not already approve.
And why might he have done this, why might God approve for these things to happen in our lives? Simply, to make us “mature and complete, not lacking anything.” You have heard it said, “There was never a wise young man, but only a wise old man.” The wise old man has lived through plenty of hard times in his life, and because of this, he knows exactly how to handle and teach on these very same events in the lives of younger people, in hopes that he can help and teach others for their own futures.
God also makes it very clear that if we are not sure how to handle these hard times that we are going through, we should ask God for advice. God wants to help us; God wants to give us advice. But when we ask for this advice, we must believe that we are going to receive it. We must not worry that we will not receive the answers to our questions. Because when we doubt, we doubt God, and then we should not expect to receive anything.
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