Prayer has the profound ability to impact every aspect of our lives. We will see how prayer is built for community and by cultivating prayer in our lives we recognize the goodness of Jesus that protects and pursues us.

James “The Just” exhorts the family of God to not boast in their station or circumstances. James desires for both the rich and the poor to behold their true treasure, Christ. James addresses God’s sovereignty and how to deal with injustice.

James implore genuine faith from God doesn’t think like the world does. Genuine faith avoids worldliness to pursue godliness.

In the previous chapter, James demonstrated that genuine faith is always accompanied by obedience to Christ. He now turns his attention to one of the greatest works: our speech. The tongue is one of the smallest members of the body, but it wields tremendous power in our lives. He presses his readers to consider their words carefully because what we say is a reflection of the heart—for good or for bad.

In this text, James continues to address one of the primary issues of the early church: the mistreatment of the poor. More specifically, he prohibits followers of Christ from showing partiality or favoritism to anyone. Building on James' example from the first century, we then explore the dangers of partiality in our own culture. As citizens of another Kingdom, we are called to live in such a way that reflects the union we now share in Christ Jesus.

James gives us a description of a transformed life. Christ did not come to just give us a better life, but to give us new life. In this chapter, we will look at how God’s word truly changes us & how we can know that we are truly being changed.

James makes the distinction between trials and temptations. James gives us the source of our temptations and the source to our strength to resist them. We discuss in this chapter how temptations work and how we can overcome them.

Today, James shows us in Chapter 1 that the trials we face can actually fill us with joy. Trials are for our testing, and that testing brings us to maturity. This is such an important principle for Christian living. We pray this passage brings great encouragement for those who have experienced trials and are currently walking through them. James reminds us that all of us will face trials of various kinds, the question is are we prepared?

In this section, James warns his readers against an understanding of faith apart from works. Drawing upon examples from the issues facing the first century church and the Old Testament, he shows that a faith disconnected from obedience to God is not true faith at all. In this message, we also explore the doctrine of justification from the writings of Paul and James, showing a continuity throughout all of Scripture.

We will see today in week one how our faith in Christ Jesus will flow to good works. Real faith leads to to gospel action. The gospel is this, Jesus came into world to rescue sinners and to redeem his creation. As Christ followers, James will remind us how our faith should be lived out in everyday life.