NCC Daily

You are his prized possession, my friend. You are here by the power of his true word! Your identity is in him. Don’t allow your pain to define you. Pain has never told you the truth about who you are, it just informed you about what life looks like when we don’t put our complete trust in him.

With the age of social media, the individual has never been more central to their own story. I grow more surprised that people make themselves the main focus of life and invite others to do the same. So when negative things happen, they begin to look outwardly to find the culprit of their misfortune. James gives a word of caution to those who might want to make God the culprit of their issues.

Welcome back to NCC Daily. We are walking through the book of James as part of a next-level look alongside our sermon series Rule of Life. Today, let’s look at James 1:5-8.

Those of us who have had our hearts captured and arrested by Jesus, we desire to grow closer to him so that we think, speak, and behave as he did. At NCC, we call that discipleship. Studiers of the words of Jesus, imitators of the ways of Jesus, and partners in the mission of Jesus. As we embark on this journey, we ought to look more and more like Jesus. The pure reflection of Jesus should be seen in our lives.

Many if not most of us place joy and happiness in the same place. Happy things produce joy and vice versa, but this is not what James is saying. The first thing James wants to do with any of his readers is reframe what our greatest desire in life is supposed to be.

As I sing this song, “You Were On The Cross” my prayer is that we will once again come face to face with the suffering that Christ endured on behalf of us. What greater love has been poured out than by Jesus on the cross.

To fast is powerful in part because we are choosing to step into suffering. It’s counterintuitive and requires a death of ego, a death of self. To fast is to choose to suffer physical pain—however small. Fasting is an opportunity to enter into solidarity with Christ’s suffering, who was in solidarity with ours.

The Stations of the Cross is a traditional Lenten devotion where believers read Scripture and ponder scenes from the day of Jesus’s death. These stations, or scenes, help guide our prayers as we meditate on Christ’s sacrifice for us.

I invite you to lean back into the arms of The Father. Abba. Love of all. Yet lean in. Posture your heart. Your ear…

Today we reflect on John 12:20-36 and Psalm 71:1-8, 19-23