Welcome to the Islands Christian Church podcast.
Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.
Thanks for joining us. All right, guys, as Jason just
said, we're going to start a series of the book of James
today. This is going to be 10 weeks.
We're going to be in the book of James for 10 weeks.
Are we excited? I am, I'm excited for 10 weeks.
The reason I decided to do this is I was just praying about
where to go next to the church and just seeking God on this
like as the preacher, you know, so it's a lot of content and so
and just asking God like where to go and what I sense was I
preach a lot from the apostle Paul.
I just I find myself in Romans a lot.
I find myself in all of Pauline's Paul's letters because
I just relate so well to Paul and I just love the fact that
he's teaching such theology and doctrine, helping us understand
how the gospel works. And so I thought, hey, you know,
what if I camp out in the book of James for 10 weeks and
that'll force us to look at someone different.
And James is completely different from Paul.
James grew up, if you don't know this, he is the half brother of
Jesus. And actually Jesus would have
known him as Jacob. Jacob would have been his.
That would have been his name, James.
Jesus would have called him, and James grew up in the family with
Jesus. And what's interesting about
James is James was not a follower of Jesus when Jesus was
doing his ministry. James was actually resistant to
Jesus. He thought Jesus was crazy.
He's like, hey, we need to get Jesus home and get him back to
where he belongs. And James was didn't believe
this stuff. It was after the resurrection
that James decides that, oh, wait a minute, this is all real.
And so I want you to think for a second, if you have a sibling,
if you have a sibling, think about this.
What would it take for you to call your sibling God?
It'd be tough, right? For you.
So this is James, the brother of Jesus, and he calls his sibling
God. Like what would it take?
I'm telling you what it would. I have two brothers and I have
two sisters. I will tell you what it would
take for me to call either of my brothers God.
It would take me watching them down across, take their last
breath. It would take me watching them
being put in the grave with the stone roll in front of them.
And it would take me having breakfast with them a few days
later, right? It would it would take me
talking to them and going, oh, let me check your pulse.
So you're alive now. I might consider that you're
God, right. And so this so the fact that
James is a follower of Jesus, the fact that he's now a
believer and the fact that he's writing this, this letter to
other believers, it suggests that James, the brother of
Jesus, had an experience that pushed him over the line of
faith. All right, you follow me.
Now the letter of James is being written primarily to Messianic
Jews, people who were Jewish and who believed also that Jesus was
the Son of God, that he was the Messiah.
And so he's, he's addressing Jews who believed in Jesus.
Now in this letter, what you're going to realize as we walk
through this over the next few weeks is that these Jewish
Christians are facing persecution and challenging
circumstances primarily from Jews who didn't believe in
Jesus, right? They're being persecuted by Jews
who didn't believe in Jesus. And so and so this letter is a a
letter of encouragement. Now, whereas Paul is, when you
read Paul, he is bringing out theology and doctrine and
explaining things from the Hebrew Scriptures and helping us
see how it all fits together. And he's basically screaming
that the gospel is the good news, that we can be right with
God, no effort of our own, but through faith.
James, on the other hand, is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's we believe that that's good stuff.
But now once you believe, here's some practical ways to live once
you claim to be a Jesus follower.
And that's what we're going to be unpacking.
And so today we're going to start with James chapter 1,
verses 2 through 8. So if you have your Bibles,
that's where we're going to jump in and read.
And today we're talking about the idea of wisdom in trials,
wisdom in trials. So we all live through trials.
We all go through tough times. We all go through hard times,
but we don't always have wisdom. We have a belief in our culture
that just because you get older, you're automatically going to
get smarter. But is that necessarily true?
It's not necessarily true. Just because you get older
doesn't mean you will get smarter.
Getting older, growing older you the only way you grow wiser when
you grow older is based on how you respond to the circumstances
you live through, how you react to the circumstances you live
through. All righty.
So we're going to jump into this text.
So James chapter 1 going to read verses 2 through 8.
If you want to read the whole letter today and encourage you
to do that as we jump into the series.
But today we're going to look at verses 2 through 8.
Here we go. Consider it pure joy, my
brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
because you know that the testing of your faith produces
perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work
so that you may be mature and complete comma not lacking
anything. 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.
But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because
the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blonde and
tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to
receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is a double minded
is double minded and unstable and all they do all righty.
So here we are. We're talking about wisdom, all
right. Wisdom in the midst of trials.
The fact of the matter is, and Mallory alluded to this in her
communion thought, is that all of us tend to go through
difficult seasons of life. And I think as I've gotten
older, I feel like the the seasons of difficulty are longer
and more regular and the seasons of not difficulty are shorter
and fewer between. Does anybody else kind of feel
that way sometimes? Like there just seems to be like
lots of as you get older, there's lots of difficulty.
We all go through seasons of difficulty and seasons of
trials, seasons of struggles, and the tendency is to think,
well, if I'm going through something hard, then God must be
absent. Our hearts are programmed to
think like religious people. If I do good, good things will
happen to me. If I do bad, bad things will
happen to me. If something bad is happening to
me, then I must have done something bad.
And this this is kind of how our hearts are programmed to think.
And I will say that that that the enemy, the the Satan uses
that lie to manipulate us and to turn our hearts away from God
and to mistrust God. But this is not what the
Scripture teaches. The Scripture actually teach
that trials and difficult circumstances are a part of
life. I like to tell people that in
this world, Jesus said in this world you have trouble.
And so in the world, people struggle and they have difficult
time and they have difficult circumstances.
And you live in this world. Therefore in this world you will
have trouble and difficult times and difficult circumstances.
It's just the way it is. Well, the good news is, is that
what James says is that when we face trials, when we face
difficult seasons, James tells us to consider it pure joy to
count it as joyful. Now is he mean like whenever you
face something hard to go, man, I'm so happy this is exciting.
I'm going through something hard.
No, it's joy is not happiness. Joy is a deep seated sense that
things have a purpose, that things have meaning, that that
life is not just random, that God is in the middle of every
single thing I'm going through. And this brings us joy.
So I can walk through something very difficult and I can have a
deep seated sense of joy because I know that God is present in
the middle of that with me. And what James goes on to
explain is that you can have joy because God is using your
difficult circumstance. He's using your trial.
He's using your challenge to mature you, to grow you, to
shape you, to change you. Recently, I was talking to a
friend about me helping someone else with their challenge,
helping someone else with their difficulty, and I was in the
middle of this, you know, counseling this person and
helping them. I said, you know what's ironic?
Because I can see how God is forming them and shaping them
through this challenge, but also just being in proximity to their
challenge, just being close to them and helping them.
God is also forming me and shaping me.
So it's not just our difficult circumstances.
It's when we're in the middle of difficult circumstances with
people we love. What James says is that the
testing of our faith and do not get it sideways.
When you go through, when you go through difficult circumstances,
it will often feel like a test. I mean, have you ever found
yourself in difficult circumstances where things are
going hard and you wondered, is God even real?
You command is this, is this, is this stuff even true?
Is God even real? Does this, is this really true?
That is how we know that these things are a test of our faith.
And what James says is that these these trials, these
difficult circumstances, they're testing our faith so that they
produce perseverance. In other words, they produce
sticking power. And James says, if you have
sticking power, then what's going to happen is you're going
to be mature and you're going to become complete, not lacking
anything. And this idea of complete, you
know, this is an interesting term in the original language.
It means to be sound or whole or integrated.
Many of us as believers of Jesus, if you're a follower of
Jesus, maybe this is you've noticed this about your life as
well. Many of us as followers of
Jesus, our lives can be disintegrated.
They can be, they can be fragmented, right?
In other words, we can kind of like love Jesus and love to come
to church and then on Thursday wonder if it's all true, you
know, or we can struggle with some terrible sins, some
terrible temptation that keeps coming up over and over again.
And yet on Sunday we can say, I'm going to overcome this.
The Lord, you're going to get me through this.
Is any, does anybody else relate with this or is this just me?
Right. So we can be fractured people
and, and, and this is part of the human condition.
The natural condition of the of the human being is we tend to be
fractured people. And what this word complete
means is, is James says that the the testing of your faith, the
going through difficult circumstances.
It has the potential potential being the keyword.
It has the potential to make you complete, to integrate you.
This is why if you've ever met older people who have been
following Jesus a long time and who have been leaning into Jesus
and trusting him for a very long time, they're well and up in
years. You will when you're around
them, you sense that they are genuinely integrated, meaning
they are the same person no matter who they're around.
They are comfortable in their own skin.
They they, they are honest about who they are and they're
comfortable with being honest about who they are.
Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
The reason that those older people have gotten there is
because they've gone through some trials.
It isn't because life's been easy.
It isn't because life's been a walk in the park.
It's actually the opposite. It's because life's been hard
and difficult and challenging. And in the middle of that, God
has been using those challenges to make them an integrated
person. So James says you can count your
trials as pure joy because of what they are producing in you.
Their your trials lead you to victory over fragmentation and
some of what listen some of what fragmentation is is sin acts the
action of sin. So when the Bible talks about
sin, it talks about sin, meaning our guilt, our sin guilt and the
cross has removed that guilt from us through the blood of
Christ. Praise be to God.
But the Bible also talks about the fact that we still have sin
acts. We still do things ACTS.
We still do things that are outside of the will of God.
Am I the only one? Is it just me?
No. And some of you are like, should
I confess to that? Yeah.
It's good for the soul. The Bible teaches that it's good
for the soul. Yes.
I still, I still have sin acts in my life.
What James is saying is that the the process of becoming complete
and being integrated through your trials and through your
difficult circumstances actually leads us to overcome acts of sin
in our lives. So that as we grow older in the
faith, we do indeed have less sin acts in our lives.
Not because we're trying hard, not because we're determined,
not because we feel guilty or tons of shame, but because God
is working that out in our lives through our difficult
circumstances, through our challenging seasons.
Now, all this good news about your trials and all this good
news about your difficult circumstances that they will
lead you to more integration. They will lead you to maturity
and completeness versus 4 and 5 going out of versus four and
five. They tell us that it's not
automatic. In other words, it's not
guaranteed. It's not an automatic thing that
just because you go through something difficult that you're
going to come out the other side more integrated and more mature
and more complete. It's not guaranteed.
It's not an automatic thing. This is this is what versus four
and five seem to suggest. In other words, the productivity
of your trials, whether they are productive or not, depends on
your response to the confusion and the pain they bring in your
life. See what I'm saying?
It's how you respond that determines whether those trials
will produce completeness and integration.
In other words, your trials don't automatically grow your
faith. How you respond to your trials
determines the growth of your faith.
So let's look at verses four and five again.
It says, let perseverance finish its course so that you may be
mature and complete, lacking anything.
And then it says, 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. Now, the request for wisdom in
verse 5 is a request based on the trial you're walking
through. Here's the assumption that James
is making. The James is making assumption
that life, which can be difficult at times and
challenging at times, will leave us feeling confused.
Anybody say, yeah, that's true. That's true.
It leaves us feeling confused, Confused about ourselves,
confused about God, confused about the person that we're in
conflict with, just confused. Why can't life just be easier?
Why can't things just slow down and trials and difficulties
leave us be Feeling confused. And what James is saying is that
in the midst of that confusion, the solution is found in the
wisdom that God offers you. So in the context of trials, we
feel confused. We need God's wisdom.
But also James is assuming this, that you don't know at all that
you don't have complete and total exhaustive knowledge when
he says if any of you lacks wisdom, that's a tongue in
cheek. That's that's sarcasm.
That's like saying if you don't have full and total knowledge
about a thing. So James is using sarcasm to
say, if any of you lacks wisdom, This is a question.
Hey, do you lack wisdom? So if you're going through
something tough, you're going through something challenging.
And and I said to you, are you confused?
And you said, yeah. And I said, well, do you
understand everything about the situation?
You would say, obviously not. This is the context in which
James is now saying, hey, if you lack wisdom, ask God.
So we all lack wisdom in general in life.
We all lack complete and exhaustive knowledge about
everything, but especially when we're going through a
challenging circumstance, we lack wisdom.
Now I need to pause and just kind of say, well, what is
wisdom? Because I'm just going to tell
you what I think. And there was a whole part of
the sermon I cut out just for time's sake, going into Proverbs
to talk about wisdom. So I'm just going to tell you
what I think. In Proverbs chapter 1, wisdom is
personified as a woman calling in the streets.
And she says, hey, if you would listen to me, I would tell you
my ways. I would tell you my
instructions. And when I tell people
biblically what wisdom is, biblically wisdom is God's
perspective. So if you take notes, write,
take that, write that down. Wisdom is God's perspective.
It's the way God sees things. It's what God would do, how God
would act, how God would, what God would say.
It's in other words, wisdom is the the view that God has on the
situation. That's what wisdom is.
And so that's the working definition of wisdom, God's
perspective. So whenever we read James 15, if
any of you likes wisdom, you could say it this way.
If any of you lacks God's perspective, if any of you don't
have a God's viewpoint of a thing, let him ask God.
All right now. So wisdom is God's perspective.
God offers us his wisdom in the midst of our confusion, and we
all need it. We're following this argument so
far. Now here's the next idea of this
text. The next idea of this text is
this, that God is not stingy with his perspective or his
wisdom. God is not stingy with his
perspective or his wisdom. God is generous with his
perspective. Now notice verse 5.
It says, and he is, He gives it generously.
He gives it generously. Now I love this that that, that
this is a descriptor of how God is giving us something, that he
just pours it out to us. And this is beautiful.
He gives it to all without finding fault.
I love that part of the path, that verse 5 as well.
He gives it to all, to all. What does to all mean to all?
Everybody means everybody, right?
I tell my atheist friends, I'll, I have friends who don't believe
in God, who don't believe in this whole Jesus stuff.
I'll read this passage of Scripture to them and I'll say,
hey, verse 5 says that you do not even have to believe in God
to pray this prayer, that you can stare at the wall and sit on
your bed and say, God, if you're real, if this is genuine, I
would like to have your perspective.
I would like to have you your viewpoint of this.
And what the Scripture says is that God gives it generously to
all without finding fault. Now, without, what does that
mean without finding fault? Well, have you ever had anybody
ask you for help with something and you gave them as some advice
and they didn't take it and they made a mess of things and then
later they came back and asked you for advice again, anyone
talking about and you thought to yourself, I just don't think I'm
going to waste my breath. Anybody.
Has anybody ever felt this way? I'm going to tell you as a
pastor, I have felt this way most of the time, little
confession moment. I can count on one hand the
amount of people that I've said, Hey, this is what I think God is
telling you you should do. This is what I think you should
do. Like this is the advice I would
give you. And I can count on one hand the
amount of people that said, yeah, I'm going to do that.
And they went and did it. And the stores have been amazing
because I don't, I just don't randomly give it.
But I'm just not like, I think you should do this.
And you know, like this would. I mean, anyway, I don't want to
go down that road because it was just the whole turns of the
whole thing of me complaining and everybody doesn't need that.
But there is a sense sometimes where you got you kind of go,
man, we've, we've had so many conversations, we've had so many
meetings. I just don't think I can drink
coffee with you anymore because you don't do anything I say and
you stay in this mess. You're just, it's not worth it.
And I have been known to like, say I'm done, like I love you,
but I'm done. You know what this text says is
that God never does that with us.
He gives to all without finding fault that without finding fault
part. That's the part where he goes,
listen, Steven, you've never listened to me before, but I'll
tell you again for the 7th thousandth time, OK?
He he continues to give is is there a reason for him to find
fault? Certainly there is, but he does.
He doesn't say, well, you're not good enough, you're not holy
enough. You don't go to church enough.
He says no, I don't find fault. You see, here's the deal.
God knows that his perspective is the universally correct
perspective of the universe. In other words, he knows he has
objective knowledge of how life works on this planet, that he
knows more than you do. He knows that and he offers this
to you because he is the designer and originator of this
whole thing. And he knows that you have
limited scope that you can only see so far.
And so basically God realizes that you and I need his help.
God realizes that you and me need his help with this thing
called life. I think about this, I have had
two Chevrolet Suburbans, two 2003 models, and I still have a
2003 model. I know a 2003 that's 23 year old
vehicle and it's got 280,000 miles on it.
That's nothing people. We're we're going to a half
million in that truck. We're going to make it.
That's 280 baby. She broke and she just get she
just get going and I have had to do some work.
I've got to do some work on it. Now I've had to work on that
truck through the years and then the one before I had to work on
it a few times. My son will be 16 in November
and what I would like to buy him if I could is a similar year
model Chevrolet truck with a 5 three in it.
Do you know why? Because I know that truck and
that engine back and forward. I will know if it makes the
slightest. No, I know what that is because
I have been around them now for a decade and a half.
But let's imagine he does get a 2002, 2003 model Chevrolet 1500
with A53 in it and it has a problem, let's say not to get in
two of the weeds too much, but let's say it's in limp mode.
It won't go over 30 mph. I know exactly what that is.
I've cleaned a throttle body many a times on the side of the
road with paper towels and rubbing alcohol.
All right, I know exactly what that is.
But let's say that he calls me and he says, Dad, my truck is in
lint mode. It won't go over 30 mph.
What do you think it is? And in my head, I know exactly
what it is. Been there a million times.
Those things are those those throttle bodies are known to
carbon up and not run. The computer limits it to 30
mph. But I say to him instead, I
don't know, buddy, I'm not telling you, but Dad, I'm over
here on, you know, wherever in town, it's not, as you know,
it's late. I'm it's dangerous.
So good luck. You know what I mean?
You shouldn't drive all junk. You know, I wouldn't do that,
would I? I would say, here's the
information. Here's the, here's the knowledge
that I have. I want to share this with you
because I love you and because you're in a situation that you
need my perspective, you need my wisdom.
And so this is who our God is. He loves us.
He has the perspective we need and he offers it to you all,
even if you're not a good Christian, whatever that is,
even if you don't go to church that much, even if you're not
sure what you believe about all this, He offers it to you all
without finding fall. Now, we could end this sermon
here and I could say now go put this in practice.
But I need to say to you very quickly, we do not tend to trust
God's perspective. So even though he is very
generous with it and he's not stingy with it, we do not tend
to trust God's perspective. Look at verse 6.
It says, but when you ask, you see that.
But when you ask, why is James even continuing to write?
Because he knows that we tend to not trust God's perspective.
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. So first of all, we need to talk
about this at first reading. What most people think this
verse means is that I'll leave this verse up.
It says what most people think this verse means.
Is that OK? When I ask God for his
perspective, I better not doubt he's going to give it to me.
I better not doubt it because OK God, I really believe you're
going to give it to me. I really, I don't doubt you're
going to give it to me. OK?
This is how we tend to read this verse.
That is an incorrect reading of this verse.
Do you know why? Because verse five said he gives
to all without finding fault. Does does that include people
who are doubting he'll give it to them?
Yes. So verse 5 is saying that even
if you doubt, you're going to receive it, OK.
Even if you doubt, even if you're like, I don't even think
I'm going to get anything, but I'll pray and ask you for it.
He gives it to you. So verse 6 cannot mean you got
to really believe he's going to give it to you.
This is kind of how this was taught to me.
And you can you can understand how that puts a lot of pressure
and honest on you as the person who's praying like, am I
believing enough? Do I have enough faith?
I mean, what a terrible burden that is, right?
This is not what I hope this sets you free.
If you think this way. This is not what this passage is
saying here in verse 6. What this what James is saying
in verse 6 is. But when you ask and you're
going to receive, don't doubt what you receive.
Don't doubt the wisdom you get. Don't doubt the perspective that
God gives you. Don't file 13 it.
Don't don't don't take what God gives you and says and say,
well, you know, that seems like a one of the ideas.
This is what James is saying. You're going to receive God's
perspective. Don't doubt it when you receive
it. Don't doubt his way of doing
things. You see, what James knows is our
tendency is to want to do things our own way.
This is why we can ask 20 people for advice and not take any of
their advice and still do it the way we were always intending to
do it in the in the 1st place. I see some grimaces across the
room. People like this right here.
It has been me like, why were we asking for advice in the 1st
place? We don't even know to see if
anybody maybe was smarter than us.
And what we find out is by the 12th or 13th person, it's like
nobody's smarter than me. I know what I'm doing.
We tend to treat God as one of our friends.
We go, let me get, give me, give me some advice God.
And just like we kind of pass on our friends advice, we pass on
God's advice. And this is what James knows
that we're prone to do. The reason you are prone to
mistrust God's perspective is because it never, ever will
sound natural or normal. Jesus said love your enemies and
do good to those who persecute you.
In what world would that make sense?
God's perspective, His viewpoint, will always go
against the natural inclinations of our flesh.
Always will always go against the wisdom of this world.
It will always be like something.
It will all hearing God's perspective and hearing his
viewpoint will always feel like I'm going to look like a fool if
I do that. People will think I'm crazy if I
do that, which is why we discount it is why we take it
off the table and we say, do you have anything else?
God? Listen to what Isaiah says,
Isaiah 55 verses 8:00 and 9:00. It says for my thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are my your ways.
My ways declares the Lord as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts
than your thoughts. Now think about this for a
second. Those ways that are so much
higher than ours. Those thoughts that are so much
higher than ours. James One says he offers them to
us. Do you think they're going to be
not exactly aligned with how the world thinks and how you would
tend to think in your flesh? Of course.
You see, it makes sense that we are prone to mistrust God's
advice because it often times doesn't make sense.
Everything about our world's value system will pull you away
from the direction that God would have you move and God
would have you proceed. Sometimes, sometimes very few
people, only the most godly, biblically grounded and devoted
believers will affirm what you think is God's perspective.
You're nominal Christians, people who are kind of on the
fence around Christianity. You're non believing friends.
They will think you're crazy. Even your believing friends who
treat Jesus as one of the boxes of their lives will think you're
crazy. If you go all in on following
God's advice, you will find yourself alone with very few
allies, only the most grounded, only the most deeply trusting.
Christ's followers around you will say yes, I know this feels
crazy, but I affirm with you as well that this is what God is
leading you to do. So we all, myself included, make
the choice often to doubt God's perspective.
Because in those moments, my pride takes over and I decide to
live my life as if God does not exist.
Now, if you ask me, Stephen, do you believe God exists?
Oh, yeah, yeah, I believe God's real.
But I'm choosing to live these choices as if he's not real.
Now, James is going to say in verse 6 that when you and I
trust, I mean you and I doubt God's perspective, bad things
happen. Look at verse 6 again.
He says, But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt.
And remember, that's not doubting the perspective that
you're going to get. Don't doubt his advice because
the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed
by the wind. Friend, when you go to God and
you say God, I need some advice. I need your perspective and he
offers it to you and you file 13 it.
What James is simply saying is when you don't do things God's
ways, your life becomes a mess. Do you need a whole sermon on
that or can just like looking around prove that to you?
Maybe your own past experience will be like, yeah, let me tell
some stories. So #1 when you when, when you
doubt God's perspective, bad things happen.
But when you align your life with God's perspective, this is
the language when you align your life with God's perspective,
When you align your life with God's viewpoint, when you say,
OK, I don't really understand how this is going to work.
This feels confusing and it doesn't match up with world's
values, but I'm going to align my life with God's perspective.
When you align your life, God's perspective, the opposite
happens. Listen to verse 8.
It says such a person, a person who doubts is double minded and
unstable in all they do. All right, So what James is
saying is if I doubt God's perspective, I am double minded
and unstable in all that I do. I love to do this when I'm
reading the Bible, I like to flip a verse over.
I like to look at it in the inverse.
So what I mean is this, if a if a person who doubts God's
perspective is double minded and unstable in all they do, then a
person who trusts God's perspective and aligns their
life with God's perspective is what single minded and what
stable in all they do. You see how we just flip that.
And so if you trust God's perspective, if you trust God's
ways of doing thing, then you have direction, you have
purpose. Listen, listen.
You also are easier to be around.
I like the I like the giggles and the throat clearing in the
room. Like, yeah, that's true, bro.
It's true about you, OK? It's true about me.
I'm the I'm the hardest person to live with when I'm misaligned
with God's perspective, in God's viewpoint I am and the easiest
person to live with when I am aligning my life with God's
viewpoint gospel. When I'm seeking it, I'm
aligning it to it. Now I know it's easy to hear a
sermon like this and say, OK, he's right.
I need to ask God for his perspective.
I need to get in the habit of doing this.
And you won't do that until you find yourself in some big
crisis. Some big thing happens,
Financial crisis, health crisis. Oh God, give me your viewpoint.
Give me your perspective. The problem is, is you haven't
trained your heart and your head to align with his viewpoint and
perspective in that moment. So you most likely won't.
You'll just stay in the confusion.
It'll just be bad. You'll be unstable and double
minded. You'll be tossed by the sea.
I've lived this, so I can just tell you this is true.
But if you'll take my advice and you'll begin to pray daily for
God's perspective on some small things that you're walking
through, like how to love and lead your teenagers, how to love
and care for your spouse. So like this, we give you a way
how it can sound. Dear God, let me see Ava the way
you see her. It's one of my children.
Let me love her the way you love her.
Let me speak to her the way you would speak to her.
Let me challenge her the way you would challenge her.
Let me serve her the way you would serve.
Give me your divine perspective of Ava today.
Amen. Or dear God, Bill at the office.
I want to choke him. Be honest in your prayers.
The Lord knows thy heart. Forgive me from wanting to choke
him first of all, but give me your divine perspective of Bill.
Let me see him the way you see him.
Let me love him the way you love him.
Let me speak to him the way you would speak to him if you were
in my shoes. In this office.
You see, in the daily habit of doing it, you will begin to
train your heart and your mind to listen for God's perspective.
And slowly over time, you will train your heart and mind to
align with God's perspective. And so that when the crisis
comes, and certainly my friend, it will come, you will have the
habit of a heart that trusts God's perspective.
So here's my challenge for you. Choose someone, pray daily for
God's perspective of them for two weeks to get in the habit.
It could be your spouse, it could be one of your children,
it could be all of your children.
It could be yourself. Some of the greatest answers to
this prayer in my life have been dear God, let me see me the way
you see me. Let me understand me the way you
understand me. Let me speak to myself the way
you speak to me. I lack wisdom, friend about me.
I'm not nearly as self aware as I think I am.
Neither are you, but choose somebody.
Choose someone. And for two weeks, dear God, let
me see, let me have your perspective, this person from
your perspective. And then after two weeks, and
some of you will do this and some of you won't, I hope you
all will. After two weeks, I want you to
just come up and grab me on a Sunday in the lobby or send me
an e-mail. Tell me what's been happening.
I just recently gave this advice to my brother Brian.
If you're watching, I love you. My younger brother called me
some challenges with some stuff he's facing.
I don't want to put his stuff in the street.
And I said, hey, man, try this. Pray for God's perspective of
this person. And about about a week ago, I
gave him that advice. He called me yesterday, the day
before yesterday, Friday to tell me, man, I just he goes, I think
we should start a podcast. I said, what do you mean?
Because I think we should start a podcast where you just give me
biblical advice to the problems I have and we just video it and
record it and we just put it out there for people to listen
because this is like radically changed.
This has radically changed the circumstance for me.
So I'd love to hear your story. Try it for two weeks and come
and tell me. I'd love to hear that.
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