If we are going to ditch discount religion in favor of genuine Christianity, we must rediscover the 3 things James mentions in James 2:8-13.

If we are going to ditch discount religion in favor of genuine Christianity, we must rediscover the 3 things James mentions in James 2:8-13.

To those who love God’s law, nothing will cause them to stumble, nothing will defeat them, everything fits, they will not stumble around in the dark, they are completely secure & therefore they are not upended. It is a promise of a personal security in a topsy-turvy, dangerous, uncertain & sometimes very hostile world.

Hosea 10:12 offers us a wonderful promise: “Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come & shower righteousness upon you” (NLT) Plowing is hard work because it means digging up rocks & pulling the weeds that keep the good fruit from growing. But if we by God’s grace do the hard thing, the Lord promises to send the rain that produces a new life with new joy & fresh fruit from heaven.

The beautiful thing about the sabbath is that God instituted it as a weekly reminder of 2 things. One is that all true blessing comes from his grace, not our labor. The other is that we hallow him & honor him & keep the day holy if we seek the fullness of his blessing by giving our special attention to him on that day.

Total forgiveness may be beyond us, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. It just means we have fallen short of God’s goal for us.

Here is the stunning fact: There are absolutely no directions given in the NT about how Christians are to observe Sunday. Therein lies the difference between the Sabbath & Sunday.

One writer remarked that Daniel’s bedroom was the real lion’s den. That’s where the battle was fought & won. By committing himself to continuing in prayer, he won the only battle that mattered. When he won there, real lions were no problem. We think the miracle was that Daniel survived a night with the lions. That’s a miracle—but the greater miracle was that he continued to pray when his life was on the line.

Athens knew everything that was knowable except she did not know God or what to do about her sins or where to find peace or the hope of heaven.

How will we survive the continual onslaught of the world in our day? The same way they did. By putting our hearts in the right place. For us that means that even though our bodies are on earth, our hearts must continually be in heaven. And if our hearts are in heaven, then it doesn’t matter where we happen to be on earth because the world can’t touch us.