The Perfect Gift from Above

Beyond the Present Time
Resurrection Hope
Hope through Stewardship

James 1:12-18

The Message

¹² Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.
^13-15 Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.
^16-18 So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures. 

For Reflection

If you define sin as separation from God then you realize that the distance between you and God is filled with seductive self-interest and the ethics and morality of the common culture.  Christ calls us to be separate from the common place ethics and morality of this world and respond, rather, to compassion and justice cloaked in love for God and each other. 

Pray

for the strength to respond to God's call.  Pray for the wisdom to follow God's counter-culture path toward a just and compassionate society.