Sermons Christ Community Church: Daytona Beach, FL

One commentator said what this passage in James is telling us is that our whole life should be angled toward God so that whatever strikes us, whether sorrow or joy, should be deflected upwards at once into his presence. Calvin said, “There is no time in which God does not invite us to himself.”

In bringing up this topic of honesty, James is quoting, or at least alluding to, what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus told His followers their simple "yes" was to be as strong as a solemn promise. James echoes the teaching of Jesus when He says, in James 5, verse 12, Above all, my brothers, do not swear--not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned.

John, in his gospel, is not just claiming to be giving us a collection of inspirational thoughts. He is claiming to be giving us a carefully written record of things Jesus actually did that were witnessed, in which we can believe and through which we can find life. Historians point out that this is not common in religious and philosophical writing. The Bible is unique in claiming to be based on real events that took place in history concerning which there were eyewitnesses!

What the story of Jesus in the Bible does is face us with a set of claims about Christ that are so important for our lives and so credible that we can't just ignore them.

If we do live in a world where truth exists and creates realities, then it would do us well to take seriously the idea that God exists. Not doing so is gambling with our lives, as God himself says, He is the only way to have eternal life.

What if the best thing ever, a truth that has implications for all of our lives and all of history, is true but is often dismissed because it sounds too good to be true? In John 20, it seems that when the Disciple named Thomas heard of the resurrection, his first response was that it seemed too good to be true.

Think about a vision for life in which your life is very important, but it is important in part because of a mission you've been given. And yet the interesting thing is that when you live for that mission you experience greater happiness than you find any other way.

James, as God's servant, is calling us to truly and deeply live a faith that makes us very different people and a very different community. James 5:7-11, which says so much about patience, concludes by saying something very important about God. It says: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” What God wants us to understand is that there is a relationship between living your life with patience and having faith in God' compassion.

Patience is an issue many people struggle with. It's the reason some people don't come to faith or, having come to faith, fall away. It's one of the biggest things that tests our faith.

The Bible often compares life itself as a race in which you want to run well and finish strong. Most of us are called to run that race with another person, linked up in partnership together. How we run together matters. That's one reason we've been looking at this issue for several weeks now. This series, Soul Mates, is not about finding some idealistic romantic notion of the perfect person but it is about looking at marriage from a spiritual perspective and finding the heart and soul of a strong relationship according to the Bible.