Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Watch our Live Sermons every Sunday morning at 10:30am by searching "Flipside Christian Church" on Youtube or go to "flipside.church" See more of Flipside Christian Church by going to our website at "http://www.flipside.church/media/" or download our app by searching "Flipside Christian Church" in the Google Play and Apple App Store.
Flipside Christian Church
Madera Ranchos, CA
Well good morning.
Flip side.
Good to see you guys in church.
I'm glad you made the decision
to come this morning.
Last Sunday, last day, really, of June.
Glad that you're here.
Hey, if we have not met before.
My name is Jeff.
I'm on staff here at flipside.
One of the pastors
serving alongside Pastor Carl,
who is away at a church in Colorado
this weekend.
If you've heard us
talk about the Excel Leadership Network.
you maybe have heard that mentioned
in one of your Bible studies,
or maybe you hear
from a platform on Sunday.
we are heavily invested in Excel
because Excel is heavily invested in
identifying high level leaders,
sending them out to plant churches,
equipping them to do ministry
all over the world.
Really, that map in the back of the church
gets overlooked a lot.
That has these little pins.
There you are.
That map has these little pins in it.
Those are all church plants
that we've either,
done the planning ourselves
or we've helped facilitate that.
There's even because that's
just a map of the United States.
There's even some that aren't in the US
that we've helped plant.
and we've identified leaders to send out
to help, do ministry at those churches.
So Pastor Carl
is with one of those churches
that is also a part of Excel Leadership
Network in Colorado,
helping them facilitate
some of their ministry that they're doing.
There.
But in the meantime, that means that,
we get to hang out.
I'm really stoked about the time
we get to spend here this morning.
It's been a long time.
I'm trying to talk to my wife.
Last night,
I was trying to remember the last time,
I got to share the word with you
on a Sunday, and we couldn't remember, so
I'm excited.
I'm hoping you'll be encouraged by what
we're going to talk about here today.
we've been in this series over the last.
Oh, gosh. It's been a lot of weeks.
Seven, eight, nine weeks.
where we're going through
the book of James and the series is called
Faith works.
We're talking about
the fact that faith does work.
It's not just an idea or something
that's just sort of out there that maybe
you try to understand every now and then
and who knows how far you'll get.
Faith actually does work.
It makes a difference.
James talks in his book
all about how that happens,
but how our faith works,
that sort of the gear works behind it.
That was the
that was the premise behind that.
That graphic there is it's constituted
of certain things
that makes it all work together.
And that how the faith we claim
to have
will actually be shown by our works.
James says it's a big deal.
It was interesting when,
if you've ever looked into the Bible
theologians, if you've ever looked
into the canonization of Scripture,
why the 66 books that are in the Bible
are there
that James almost didn't make the cut
because it was so,
what the church leaders felt was far away
from, salvation by faith alone.
Because James talks, James talks
so much about works and how, the things
we do, the action we take is going
to be it's going to prove our faith.
It's a book.
We talked about this.
It's a book full of teaching
that's really easy to understand.
But it's really difficult to live out.
It's really difficult to understand,
but it's really or it's really,
easy to understand,
but it's really difficult to live out.
I always tell people, most of them,
high school students, it's.
You probably heard
Carl talk over the last semester.
what started out as sort of a stopgap
ended up being the entire semester.
Pastor Carl and I co-leading our junior
high and high school program.
We have both done youth ministry before,
but, we had to kind of kick the tires.
We were a little rusty.
And to see and to do, you know,
kind of co-lead that was so awesome.
And it's so
interesting to see,
when students start to
when things start to click,
when, when faith based things or the Bible
things of the Bible start to click,
they get that little glimmer in their eye
and they start asking questions.
And one of the first questions
they ask is the or.
They make a statement saying,
I hate to read,
but I'm no,
I'm supposed to read the Bible.
So where do I start?
And a lot of times, especially with kids,
I'll say start in the book of James.
It's short, but it's really,
really easy to understand.
And it's kind of a bait and switch
because they soon figure out, yeah,
it's really easy to understand,
but it's really difficult to live out.
It's really big
on what I call Bible fundamentals,
really big on fundamental things.
You talk to Carl,
he'll talk about sports, fundamentals
of sports, fundamentals of football.
it's easy to discount fundamentals
or say I've got it or I've got it
good enough.
Let's get on to something more fun
or something more complex or something
more, lively.
I don't want to.
I don't want to camp out
in the fundamentals.
I've got enough of it.
I always know
when I come across a musician
who who's who's short
circuited their fundamentals.
Maybe they haven't practiced
with a metronome,
or they'll practice their scales
at some point, you get to a song or.
And Carl talks about this on the football
field,
like with field awareness, at some point
you get to a spot where you realize
we need to go back
and we need to work on the fundamentals,
because either it's been a long time
or we just skipped over that part when we
went over to, to begin with.
So that's the temptation with James
is to read some of these things and think,
I've got it, or I've got a good enough.
I've got a lot of it.
Maybe I don't have that,
but I've got I've got enough of it.
As we read through James,
he gives really good concrete
examples of stuff that we can relate to.
That's a lot of times
why I tell people to start with you.
It's very relatable.
You'll be able to relate to it.
Stuff that happens at work,
stuff that happens in our relationships
at home, stuff that happens
in our relationships,
with with different groups of people.
There have been times
where I've read through passages of James
and people's faces pop into my mind.
Conversations
I've had where people have said things,
or maybe they haven't said things
that I hope they would say.
And I think back,
you know, as I'm reading,
these passages out of the book of James,
I'm those those conversations
and those scenarios just come right to the
forefront of my memory or my or my mind.
It's almost as though James or God
says, really,
through the pen of James,
I'm going to make it so relatable.
When you walk away from this,
it's really up to you.
It's really up to you
as to what you're going to do with it
and what you're going to do about it.
There's a verse of Scripture that talks
about how some of the things of God
are so obvious that it leaves men
without excuse.
Some of the things when you see,
when you experience them
or you see them, it's
so applicable and relatable to your life
that it leaves you without excuse.
Really, the ball's in your court
as to whether or not
you're going to do something
with it or about it.
A lot
of times the Bible's been around, people,
you know, think the Bible
has been around for so long.
they can say things like,
I didn't grow up in church,
nobody uses words like that anymore.
It's not even my parents can say
they understand what that means.
James is not like that.
There's no real loopholes we can get.
No, you know, cop outs
we can take in the book of James.
He doesn't give us that luxury
or convenience.
So we've been talking about some things,
well, we have an anchor verse, really.
There's this anchor verse that we have
for the whole series, and it comes in
the first chapter of James.
He says, do not merely listen to the word,
the Word of God,
and so deceive yourselves.
But we're going to read these four words
in italics out loud on the count of three.
Ready, go!
One, two, three.
Do what it says.
Do what it says, James says.
Don't merely listen to it.
Because what happens
when you just merely listen to it?
You lie to yourself.
Would you guys agree?
We can sell ourselves on
some pretty crazy stuff.
I have sold myself on some things
where I'm like, what was I thinking?
He says.
When you merely listen to the word,
you lie to yourself.
You deceive yourself instead.
Or in addition to do what it says.
We've talked about what to do
when we face trials and troubles.
We've talked about what to do
when we actually get
to a point where we can acknowledge
that we lack wisdom.
For some of us, just getting to
that point is a challenge.
But what James says, great,
you're there now.
What do you do?
What do you do?
Do you just sit and stew and go,
yeah, I blew it.
I need wisdom
on onward, onto the next thing.
Now, James says there's something
you're supposed to do about that.
He talks about
what do we do when we're tempted
to think more of ourselves
than we ought to, or than we should?
What do we do with things like
favoritism that all of us fall into the
into the trap of having sometimes.
And Carl talked about those two laws,
the royal law and the freedom, the law.
If you were here that he dove
deep, that we on those two laws.
James talks about
how do we approach things like
what I'm doing right
now, teaching the word, what to expect
when when you do that,
and how we need to think twice
about that.
We talked about
what do we are, how do we approach or
what do we do with this
idea of taming the tongue?
A lot of so
interesting hearing a lot of your stories.
When that Sunday was over
and you tried to put that into practice
during your week,
oh my gosh, I can't take my tongue.
It's got a mind of its own.
I say stuff that I don't want to say,
and I don't say stuff that I should say.
Trying to put that into practice.
Really easy to understand, but
really difficult to put it into practice.
And then as recently as last week,
we talked about how do we decipher
between the two kinds of wisdom,
the earthly or worldly wisdom,
and then the wisdom
that comes from heaven?
So today,
if you brought your Bibles with you,
if you're old school like me
and you have a Bible or,
maybe you have it on your phone
if you don't have our app.
Our app has been completely revamped.
All the slides I'm going
to talk about here today are on that app.
They have places where you can actually
write notes to yourself.
You can shuffle it around and order it
the way you want to.
And then at the end of it all,
you can download it and take it with you.
so whether
you're old school like me and have a Bible
or you have it on your phone,
we're going to be in James chapter four,
fourth chapter of the book of James.
I'm going to read verses one through ten,
and then we're going to go back
and we're going to pick it apart
because it.
Carl I'm not going to say he teases me,
but he talks about how I
because you just loved it.
You just love to camp out the details.
Like, I don't love it.
I just hate the alternative.
But I look for patterns
and I look for frameworks.
And the most interesting pattern
or framework in these first ten verses
in the fourth chapter of James
came to my mind, and I want to share that
with you this morning,
but I want to read it all first.
So, Tom, I'm going to ask a follow
along with me right there
at the first verse he says, what causes
fights and quarrels among you?
It's a question. And then he moves on.
If you're a parent,
you've asked your kids stuff like this.
Like, you know what?
This is just for you,
that I already know the answer to this.
he says, what causes fights and quarrels
among you?
Don't they come from your desires
that battle within you?
You desire, but you do not have.
So you kill, you covet,
but you cannot get what you want.
So you quarrel and you fight.
You do not have because you do not ask.
And when you ask, you do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives
that you may spend
what you get on your pleasures.
You adulterous people.
Don't you know that friendship
with the world means empty against God?
Therefore, anyone who chooses to be
a friend of the world
becomes an enemy of God.
Or do you think Scripture
says without reason,
that he jealously longs for the spirit?
He has cause to dwell in us,
but he gives us more grace.
That is why Scripture says God opposes
the proud but shows favor to the humble.
Submit yourselves, then to God.
Resist the devil,
and he will flee from you.
Come near to God
and he will come near to you.
Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify
your hearts, you double minded.
Grieve, mourn and wail.
Change your laughter to mourning
and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves
before the Lord and he will lift you up.
So this passage comes in two halves.
And those two halves
like kind of like a book.
You got the left side
and you got the right side,
and in the middle the spine
or or the hinge
between these two halves is is one word.
It's a very interesting, very interesting
way these verses are structured.
But I want to talk about this, this left
side, verses one through six,
verses one through six, or what
I call a scathing rebuke.
That's just a fancy way
of saying a bad scolding.
If you were following along.
When I was reading those,
especially from the beginning,
you might have been like feeling
like a teenager who's being sat down
and given a talking to.
Where you just comes right out of the gun,
but right out of the chute says this.
What what
what causes fights and quarrels among you?
Don't they come from your desires
that battle within you?
You feel like you're being sat down
and given a talk, like you've done
something wrong,
like you're being scolded.
Here's the deal.
If we're being honest and we're in church,
let's be honest.
Yeah.
Most people then
would you agree that you're most people
and that I'm most people, most people,
when they're asked that question
right there.
And this is why James moves on so fast.
Because he's like a prayer.
I want to hear the challenge here.
It what causes
fights and quarrels among you?
Most people would say
them, him or her.
They back those people back there.
They're the reason we're fighting.
You're not going to believe
what they said.
You're not going to believe what they did.
You're not going to believe that
they didn't say what they didn't do them.
They're the problem.
If they would just recognize
how right I am and how wrong they are,
we would not have a problem
if they if the whole world
would just straighten up and fly right.
We wouldn't.
We wouldn't have a problem.
Most people,
if we're being honest, would say that.
So interesting.
We have our, high school
group on Wednesday night
and, you know, there's there's
the first ten minutes where everybody's
just kind of meandering around
and filtering in and, and some,
some high school students,
will filter in and I can tell
when they're having a bad day.
They're just wearing it.
They either don't care or
they don't have the tools to mask it yet.
And they're just wearing it.
And I'm like,
I don't know that I even want to ask them,
because there's going to be a fire hose
that comes back at me.
But every now and then I go, what's wrong?
And I just brace myself, you're
not going to believe what my teacher said.
I can't believe this.
Some of the principal again, my mom, my
dad, they won't let me have my phone back.
I've.
They've had my phone for five months
and it's all out there
that the the world is the problem.
I'm not the problem. They're the problem.
Would you guys agree?
We can act like teenagers sometimes.
But James says, hold on a second
before you start shooting from the hip,
blaming everybody else.
I would like you to, for just one moment
entertain the idea that these
these quarrels
and these fights come from right here.
They come from within you.
James says. Let's just start there.
Let's just maybe entertain
that idea that these fights and quarrels,
they come from things
that for whatever reason, you've decided
you can't live without,
or maybe that you're entitled to.
James says.
That stuff, it battles within you.
He says, forget about everybody else.
You can't even get this stuff
squared away in yourself.
And you think bringing somebody else
into the equation is going to help
sort it out.
These desires, they battle within you,
they change minute to minute.
You wake up one morning
and all of a sudden, oh, like,
I can't live without that.
When? Yesterday.
What was that? I couldn't live without
James.
As they battle within you.
And then he really starts
to pick this apart.
Verse two,
he says you desire, but you do not have.
So you kill rights, you covet,
but you cannot get what you want.
So you quarrel and you fight.
He says these unfulfilled desires,
they lead us to kill.
No pretty severe word.
And I think we can all think of times
where maybe we've heard of this,
this happening.
Somebody wants something so bad
they commit murder.
But more often than not, this killing
is what I call relational death.
Relational death,
the death of a relationship,
the death of a dream,
or the death of an opportunity,
the death of a potential to mature
or develop character.
James says.
These desires that battle within you,
they kill the short circuit.
These things,
the short circuit,
the work God is trying to do in your life.
And and there's a death that suffered.
Second half of verse
two, you do not have
because you do not ask.
And when you ask, you do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives
that you may spin on
what you, that you may spend, what you get
on your pleasures.
It's tempting to think,
oh, all I need to do is ask.
I mean, by the way, Scripture does say ask
and you will receive.
Knock and the door will be open for you.
It's not what James is talking about here.
It's very tempting.
Think, oh, all I need to do
is ask. I'm going to do that.
Kind of like a genie.
I mean, he's going to grant me
three wishes.
I want a hot girl,
a hot car, and three more wishes.
James says.
That's not what I'm talking about.
And it's almost like he says,
and I knew you were going to go there.
So let's talk about what that means.
When you do ask, you don't receive
because you have the wrong motives.
Your heart's not in the right,
your heart's not in the right place,
and it's all about you.
Therefore, you still don't receive
because you've got this battle
going on inside of you.
My first semester,
sorry, my first, youth
ministry semester was just junior high.
That's all I did.
I hung out with junior highers.
It was the craziest,
smelliest time of my life.
And I dug up this idea at this point,
and I want to share it with you.
It had been a long time ago.
When I was preparing for today.
I thought, I haven't seen that
a long time, so I dug this up.
We went through a series like this back
then, and I and I asked them this
when you're really praying
about something, you really,
really want to ask two questions.
Who is this going to help
and who is this going to hurt?
Who is this going to
help, and who is this going to hurt?
This can be a game changer right here
with those desires that battle within you.
Who is this going to help
and who is this going to hurt?
One of the things
we talk about in leadership
all the time is there's no way to please
everybody all the time.
That is true.
But just asking this question right here
helps you sort through saying,
you know what? That's all me.
That's just me.
And that's serving me and my desires
and my idea of what I think
or how I think things should be.
This decision I'm praying about,
who's it going to help
and who's it going to hurt.
He goes on in verse four
back, you adulterous people, don't
you know what friendship
with the world, that friendship
with the world means enmity against God.
And it's like father's last name,
where the letters are reversed.
What does it mean?
Therefore, anyone who chooses to be
a friend of the world becomes
an enemy of God.
That's what he's talking about.
He says, when we do these things talked
about in the first three verses,
when we're ruled by our desires,
when we have this battle
that goes on within us, he's
saying we become unfaithful people,
or what the old Testament calls
covenant breakers or idolaters.
The desires come from a place
that longs to be like the world.
And when we when we have those desires,
we put these desires in the place
that was only meant to be filled by God.
And therefore he uses the word adulterous.
The love of the world,
friendship with the world
was interesting.
We talked about this in youth ministry
one time, and somebody,
one of the kids said, hold on a minute,
I know enough Bible
to know the most famous verse
in all of Scripture, John 316.
It says, For God so loved the world.
God so loved the world.
But this is telling me
the almost what I think
the exact opposite, the student said.
I said, that is a great point.
Let's talk about that.
There are two different ways
or two different angles
to approach
this idea that we need to talk about.
When God says he loves the world,
he's talking about his people,
his creation,
that have always really been
rightfully his.
And he wants to redeem that creation.
He wants to redeem those people.
That's what it means when it says God.
So for God, so loved the world,
but we as his people, as that creation,
we are not going to love the world
like that.
If left to our own desires,
we will not love the world like that.
We will love the world
for what we can get out of it,
if left to our own desires,
will love the world for what we can.
Just just milk it dry
that sinful part of the
earth, or what's called the flesh
that keeps us running in circles,
chasing things after, chasing
after things that will never fulfill us.
That's why he uses that strong language
of adulterous people.
And then finishing out
this first section, verse six,
verse six says, he gives us more grace.
God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.
So things are starting
to look up a little bit.
I love this scripture,
never gives us a scolding
and then says, now go to your room
and good luck figuring that out.
Scripture always gives us hope.
It never hangs us out to dry.
It always gives us hope.
And verse six starts
to hint at the solution.
Talking about how even after all the stuff
that we've just
the first five verses, even after all that
breaking down the problem like we have.
Second, James says,
I'm going to need to just really break
this problem down so you know exactly
what I'm talking about here.
After all of that,
we have God's grace.
You hear us talk about it all the time.
His undeserved favor and blessing.
James says it's still present
and it's still available.
But the real description of the solution
is one word.
It's that hinge.
We talk about that these two halves
swing on the antidote to falling victim
to all the stuff we've talked about verses
one through five
comes
in the very first word of verse seven.
You may have
I flick to it, prematurely up there.
I got to warn you,
it's a word that everybody,
if you're a human, you hate this word.
Do not try to tell me you like this word.
You do not like this word.
None of us do.
Some of us hate, hate, hate this word.
It's got negative connotation.
So much
so that some of us don't like to say it.
But we've just gotten the scolding.
So we've.
We've got a thick skin by now. Right?
Somebody say it first word in verse seven.
Submit.
throw up in my mouth.
We hate this word, you guys.
It's a horrible word.
We human beings hate it.
We Americans
really hate this word from America.
And this country was founded on people
who would not submit.
We wouldn't even have our country
if people submitted.
Many of us
would rather break
before bend by submitting.
Just don't do it.
A lot of us would say, no way.
I'm not submitting.
Or maybe you catch us on a good day
and we go.
I'll submit
they're there, but never there.
Saw what happened
when my mom submitted a saw.
What happened
when my sister submitted to her
coach saw what happened
when my brother submitted to his teacher.
No way. nope. Not going to do it.
I'm going to use
the platform as a confessional right now,
one of my guilty pleasures
is, mixed martial arts fight, UFC.
UFC fight.
My. I'll be watching them on my phone,
and my wife will come.
By God, are you watching a garbage again?
I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy's
getting the crap beat out of him.
How much blood can come from
one guy's nose?
And the thing, the one of the things
I love about mixed martial arts fight
is that one of the things
that differentiates it
from a boxing match is you can win
one of those fights by submission.
You can cause a guy
chokehold, armbar, whatever, tap out.
I'm going to cause you so much pain.
You're not going to get knocked out.
You don't have a say over it.
Then you don't.
Conscious or a technicality? No.
The judges decided that I'm
going to cause you to lose the tap out.
You're going to admit right
here, now that you've lost
and you tap out
one more way.
Our culture attaches negative attributes
to this idea of submission.
When you submit, it means you lost
contest over.
He goes home with the belt.
I go home with a bruised ego, a bruised
jaw, and maybe a consolation prize.
But it says submit yourselves then to God.
Submit yourselves to God.
One more biblical thing
that's countercultural.
You know,
this is so interesting.
It says, submit what
yourselves.
There are some
if you're a theologian or you like to
you like to do Bible study
type of stuff, that kind of weeds.
There's a theme
that weaves through the Bible, and
there are some things
that God calls us to do to ourselves
when we talk about finances.
One of the things when it talks
about debt is God says, free yourself.
It's not like God leaves.
He abandons us and says, this is all you.
He says, you're going to need to do
what James talks about,
though, and get some skin in the game.
So it's free yourself like a bird
from the hand of the Fowler,
or a gazelle from the hand of the hunter.
Humble yourself
so that God can lift you up.
And right here it says, submit yourselves
to God.
One more biblical thing
that's countercultural,
because what happens here
is when we submit to God,
that's
where the winning starts, James says.
That's where the winning begins.
That's how we start to have victory
over these things, like fights
and quarrels
and these desires that battle within us.
James says,
you want victory over that. Submit.
Submit to God.
Amen.
That one word when use right here.
It means if you if you ever do word
studies, it means subordinate.
Become a subordinate.
Another word that doesn't
really have positive connotations either,
but it has this idea of I don't get to do
whatever it is I want to do.
I don't get to strike out on my own.
I don't get to call the shots
and make my own rules.
I'm subordinate to someone bigger than me.
I'm subordinate
to something bigger than me.
And it has this idea of a continual day
after day process.
I didn't just submit that plan
when I was in college to God,
and now I'm free to do whatever
I want to do.
Or now that I'm married,
I don't have to do that submitting
that I did back then.
I'm continually working on this process
of being subordinate to something
that's bigger than me, and doing this,
I start to win.
It's crazy.
It's counterintuitive, countercultural.
He goes on to say, resist the devil
and he will flee from you.
Come near to God
and he will come near to you.
Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify
your hearts.
You double minded. Humble yourselves.
There it is.
Humble yourselves before the Lord,
and he will lift you up.
Grieve.
Morning wail.
I skip. Verse nine. Grieve. Morning wail.
Change your laughter to mourning
and your joy to gloom.
The problem with all of this,
or the problem
many times
with all of what we just read, is this.
We do the things it talks
about after the submit part.
Without the submit part.
I talk to people all the time
who will say things like,
I'm just trying to resist the devil. He's
coming at me.
I read about his schemes and his plots
and his ideas to destroy my life,
and I'm just trying to resist
trying to dig my heels in,
pull myself
up, up by the bootstraps and resist.
Or they'll say,
I'm trying to walk with God.
I'm trying to stay close to God.
But when I talk to to young people, I'm
trying to stay pure.
I'm trying to just not screw up,
trying to have a pure heart.
James would say to all that stuff,
fantastic, great.
But have you submitted?
It all hinges on this one word submission.
Talk to people
all the time
who have every reason in the world
as to why they should not submit, submit
in their finances,
submit in their employment,
submit in their relations.
And here's the thing many of those reasons
are really, really valid.
Your boss may very well be a jerk.
Your spouse may very well be
being irrational and unreasonable.
Talk to teenagers all the time.
Your parents may very well
be being overbearing and overprotective.
Those reasons that you have for
not submitting
may be valid reasons.
When I talk to kids, they'll say,
you know, my parents are such jerks.
They won't let me do this.
They won't let me do that.
The most interesting conversations
I've had, especially with older teenagers
that are just trying so hard
that they still live at home,
but they're trying to not live at home.
And the most interesting times
in those conversations
are when I look at them
and I go, you're right,
I no, I'm not used to being told that.
What do you mean? I said, you're right.
Your dad was wrong.
Shouldn't said that.
I shouldn't have done that.
And they just kind of look at me.
Puzzled, I said,
but but consider this for a second.
What if you're submitting?
What if your choice
to come under the authority of
when they know you don't want to,
when they know you don't want to?
Was the thing
that made this whole relationship
turn around.
What if your refusal to submit is actually
achieving the exact opposite of what
you really, really want just by that one
choice to 2 or 2 not submit?
You could cause this whole thing
to turn around.
The key thing to keep in mind
here is we're not.
We're submitting to God
now, but the way that fleshes out
we hate it
because a lot of times it seems like
we're submitting to a person.
People are flawed and they're sinners,
and they have these
these faults that we know
a past that we know about things that we
and we have all these reasons
that we shouldn't submit.
But when we submit to God.
Those people just become the tool
by which he starts working.
We see it all around here all the time.
You'll never submit to a God you can't see
until you first submit to a person.
You can see,
say this all the time with kids
who are really struggling with parents.
You'll never submit. I just,
I just want to be with God.
I said, okay,
but you'll never submit to that God
because you're refusing
to submit to this parent.
Now, I'm not saying
stay in a truly abusive situation.
That's not what I'm talking about here.
But after prayerful consideration, if the
if the answer keeps coming back to you,
I'm not submitting.
That's omitting.
I'm not submitting the answer.
It's pretty obvious.
So the application this week, again,
like we talked about,
a lot of this stuff
is real easy to understand.
But when the rubber meets the road,
it's difficult,
difficult to put into practice
comes in a two part question,
actually, two questions that form a whole.
Where in my life do I need to submit?
And really answer honestly.
For me, back in the winter
of 2004, the place I really needed to
submit was in my finances.
And I knew it.
And I'd known it for months
and I was like, oh no.
That thought would come into my head
about getting my finances squared away.
Start tithing. Nope. Can't do it
because I was married
and it wasn't just me.
I was gonna have to make a phone call.
Jen, I think we need to start tithing.
What is it for you?
Maybe it's your marriage.
Maybe it's your relationship
with your coworkers.
Maybe it's your relationship
with your coach, your team, your teachers.
Where in your life?
Where in my life do I need to submit?
But I can't let us off that easy
because it's one thing
to identify the problem we talk about.
we've got these younger
youth leaders coming up,
and we've kind of had to pass the torch
to them in this regard.
You're not allowed in youth ministry
to gripe unless you have a solution,
because you're a problem identifier.
You're not a problem solver.
We want problem solvers.
We've identified the problem
when you ask where
and you answer, where in my life
do I need to submit?
You've identified the problem.
But the second part is this what is
the action that accompanies my submission?
This is where it gets tough,
because then you've
got to make phone calls,
and then you've got to sit down
with pieces of paper,
and then you've got to make really
tough decisions
and talk to people
who are involved in those areas.
One more
way the book of James is so relatable.
It's so good and easy to understand,
but it's really difficult
to put into practice.
So that's my prayer for us.
This week, is that we can take one more
step as we go through the book of James,
and getting closer and closer
to putting our faith into works.
I'd like to close right now
by praying for us,
and then we're going to continue on
with the rest of our service.
I'm really glad you came this morning.
I hope you were encouraged. Let's pray.
God, thank you so much for today.
Thank you for your word that it does
what you say it will do,
and that is not return to
you void that it goes out and it,
cuts to the heart of the issues
that we're dealing with.
sometimes that cutting metaphor
is not so much of a metaphor,
because that's what it feels like
sometimes.
So if this, this,
if this cut us this morning, God,
I pray that you will help us to heal
in the way you want us to heal.
Give us strength,
give us guidance, give us wisdom,
help us to
continue to walk out this life with you.
We love you
and we ask all these things in your name.
Jesus. Everybody said Amen.