"Wisdom Wednesday"

Hey. What's going on folks?
Welcome to wednesday. Actually i'm writing this at 12:53 Thursday morning. Forgive me.
Anyway, here is my first wednesday of my daily blog. Wednesdays are going to be like a mini Bible Study. So here we go...

So basically I'm just using one verse mainly, but I might throw a couple others out there for good measure...we'll see.
Turn your Bible's to James. Ah! What a coincidence. Great name. Now. Turn to Chapter 1 (that's at the beginning). Verse 22 (comes after 21). It's pretty short and to the point so I won't be keeping you long.
AHEM. Let's read:
"But..." Let's stop right there. Now, you may not be an English major like me, but the fact that this verse starts with a "but" means that James is contrasting this verse with the previous one. So....
you guessed it! Let's read verse 21 first.
"Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. "

Okie smokey. Let's put that verse in a nut shell. James is telling these people to
1. Stop sinning
2. Read and accept the "word" aka Scripture.

So let's keep that in mind when we read verse 22 now. Your Bible better be open by the way reading right along with me. Have it? Okay. Let's continue. Verse 22:
"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."
Great verse, right? Right. Also a very over-looked verse. Here's why.
There seems to only be 2 things that pastors and speakers are teaching our generation.
1. STOP SINNING. We have purity after purity conference until purity is coming out of our ears. Is purity a good thing? The best. But keep listening.
2. BELIEVE! After the speakers have us on our knees weeping for our sins they tell, "all you have to do is believe."

Now, before you start throwing tomatoes at me, let me assure you that these speakers are right. I am saying nothing bad about them. After all. Read the verses for yourselves. John 3:16, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, and the biggy...Ephesians 2:8-9.

Now, with that said, I believe that there is a most CRITICAL area #3 that is not being spoken. Our generation is trying to sin less, they are trying to believe more, but they are DOING nothing (i speak as always for myself). What did James 1:22 say. Be DOERS...not just hearers. Why? James uses the example of the mirror. If you stand in front of a mirror right before a date and you have a pile of dandruff on your black shirt, paint on your face, and snot coming out of your nose....you can SEE that you need to do some major work before you meet your significant other. But what good is it if you look in that mirror and think "wow! I look pathetic." but then you do nothing about it! That's the same when we read the Bible, know what we are supposed to do, and do nothing."

Sermons today preach grace and mercy and faith all the time. What they fail to preach is works.
"OH MY GOODNESS!" you think. "Did he just say the W word? But James, you just quoted Ephesians  2:9 which says "not of works!"

If you couldn't catch by the slight sarcasm, I get sick of how scared we are of good works. We preach "not of works" so much that we forget the word in front of works. "GOOD". Now, is salvation of works? No. But did you forget to read the VERY NEXT VERSE? Shall we?
Ephesians 2:10:
"For we are His (God's) workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
Whoa! Wait a second. The W word was just used in a positive sense right after a verse which used it in a bad way. Which verse is right? They both are.

We were CREATED for good works! God made Adam to DO things. He didn't create Adam to believe. Adam couldn't NOT believe. He talked with God all the time. God didn't create Adam to stop sinning. Adam hadn't ever sinned. God created Adam to work. He created mankind to work. He didn't create us to be saved. We didn't need saving when we were made.

Now...here comes the part that I don't know if you'll agree with or not but here goes.
In this "Christian world" that is so obsessed with teaching others how to stop sinning, I would argue that sinning isn't our problem. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that even if a person never sinned, he still wouldn't go to Heaven apart from being made alive by Christ. Sinning isn't our problem. Our problem is that we are doing nothing, and that includes falling in love with God.

Example: You are in a relationship. Which option do you like better?
A. Your significant other loves you deeply, but has a problem with flirting with others.
B. Your significant other NEVER flirts with anyone, but also never wants to be with you.

Does God want you to stop sinning? Yes. But that's not the most important thing. Let's get away from my own opinion, and get to some of Jesus' words. At one point, Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was. Now, in case you don't know, the laws back then were all about rules rules rules. Here is what Jesus said (Matthew 22:37-40)
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
So basically, when Jesus was asked what rule was the most importance, He answered, "Love."

When we think of rules, we tend to think of "Do nots". Not Jesus. Why? Because ITS NOT ABOUT RULES ANYMORE. It's not about the 10 Commandments. It's not about don't do this and that. It's about love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.
And you wanna know what happens when you fall utterly and completely in love with Jesus?

I don't know. I'm not there yet. But how about I speculate.

I would say once someone falls madly in love with Jesus, sinning is the last thing on their minds. They don't need conferences on purity. Becoming impure is simply an idiotic idea. They don't need to be told to believe. When you are engaged, you don't need to be reminded that your future spouse is real. When you fall in love with Jesus, you are so overflowed with love that it naturally spills onto others. It pours on them. A ginormous flood of love comes crashing down like an avalanche, crushing despair and pain and loss until they are no more.

Let me end with this. The last verse of James 1.
"Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world."