Speaker 1: And that's why a lot of our prayer requests go unanswered because we're asking in an unwise manner. We're praying Lord do this, but we didn't even seek his will first. What is your wisdom on the situation, Lord? What do you want to happen in this?
Speaker 2: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Life Tabernacle Church podcast. It's an honor to be with you today. This podcast serves as our church's weekly sermon archive. Tune in each week to hear what God is speaking in our community.
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Speaker 3: We are currently in a series over the book of James. James is summed up into a simple question. Are you walking the walk or just talking the talk? Because in our culture, it's incredibly easy to say you're a Christian without actually living like one. James was written to close that gap.
Last week, we looked over, verse two through four learning how to consider it pure joy when we face trials and sufferings. Today, we dig into five through eight. James one five one five through eight from the NIV. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt Because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.
That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double minded and unstable in all they do. Amen. I will I wanna say one thing. I I don't normally do this, but you said sometimes the mountain's in front of us, but sometimes we're the mountain.
And so as we walk through James, he's this is gonna pull out those things that are your mountain that you need to get through and pass and over. So anyway, that's my story.
Speaker 1: Amen. Amen. Thank you, sister. Hey, thank you, sister. Love you, mama.
That's a word. That's not a that's not an easy word either. Wow. Praise God. Praise God.
I'm gonna tell you a story. I'm gonna open up with a story this morning. When I was in high school, I remember being in my ninth grade English class when my teachers, Kathleen Carper, showed us this song, and this song is a ballad. It's a story of what is known as the Edmund Fitzgerald. Does anybody remember the Edmund Fitzgerald?
Right? And when I first heard that song, it had a major impact on me, and I don't even know what it was. I I didn't grow up in the seventies obviously, but like it had a profound impact on me. Gordon Lightfoot did an excellent job writing that song, but if you don't remember what happened, let me tell you what happened. So on 11/09/1975, it was one of the worst disasters in US history.
While making a routine trip from Wisconsin to Detroit on the Great Lakes, which if you've never been to the Great Lakes, you should go because it feels that like like the Atlantic Ocean. The to to describe the size and and thickness of the lake is just incredible. So while the Edmund Fitzgerald was making its way across the Great Lakes, there was a potential for a small storm. The National Weather Service put out a thing. Hey, there's gonna be a storm.
It's gonna be south of you, probably not a big deal. So they said, hey, we're just gonna try to hightail it from Wisconsin over to the Detroit area, which is a long trip through there. So as they were making it through, everything was okay until the storm came upon them more quickly than anybody anticipated. And before they knew it, they were caught in a full on blown disaster in the ocean or in the Great Lakes. And so while they're trying to deliver their iron ore, the sudden storm come upon them and they didn't have much knowledge.
Again, the National Weather Service had put out just a warning, hey, this might be bad. They didn't have any updated information as to what was going on. So the only thing they knew to do was try to press on and try to find a port where they could quickly get off. In the area of the Edmund Fitzgerald, not far ahead of them was was another boat called the Anderson. And the Anderson was trying to keep in communication with the Fitzgerald.
And there was other boats in the area. And the last communication that the Anderson had with the Edmund Fitzgerald was simply this, we're holding our own. That was the last communication anybody heard from the 29 people on the Edmund Fitzgerald. The next day after the storm, the coast guard told the Anderson, hey, if you're willing turn around and go back out to see if you can find them. We need to see if these people are still out there.
So the Anderson reluctantly because they're scared going back out into the Great Lakes was a great danger. So they said, we'll do it anyways. Unfortunately, their search efforts were in vain. It was discovered just a few days later that the Edmund Fitzgerald had sunk with its 29 passengers in the waters and the icy waters of Lake Superior and twenty nine Americans perished that day. After an investigation, thinking it would bring closure.
Right? And you get an investigation, realize how did this happen? It makes the families feel a little better. There was no closure because there was no consensus as to what happened. They assumed either that the boat just capsized and there was just a couple rogue waves that just swamped the boat and it sunk the boat, but this was a very very large boat.
And that was kind of unlikely. There was another theory that it broke in half similar to the Titanic, but that was unlikely. But then there was a other theory. There was a third theory that the new captain had been intentionally pushing off maintenance issues because he was a stickler for being at the port on time and didn't want to take extra time to repair things. Regardless though, however it went down, one thing is clear and that is this.
The boat was caught within the wind and the waves of a terrible storm and it was tossed to and fro to the point of its own destruction. They did not have the wisdom to know what to do and because of that twenty nine people perished that day. According to the book of James, when we doubt, when we ask God for something, we're honestly a lot like that boat being tossed to and fro by the waves. When we ask God without wisdom for certain things in our lives, and we continue to pursue him in an unstable manner, we find ourselves being thrown to and fro, just find ourselves completely enslaved to the conditions of our lives. And kind of like the Edmund Fitzgerald, if we don't seek the Lord wholeheartedly, if we ask him and we doubt, we become what he says is double minded and unstable in all that we do.
And I don't know about you. That doesn't sound like a good description that I wanna be known by. Dallas, who was double minded and unstable in all that he did. That's not something I want. So the word double minded actually means double sold, which is kind of a weird word.
And this is one of the first times that this word in this text in the Greek pops up, this word double minded. And James is probably coined the term to share his concern that believers display a wholehearted, consistent, integral faith in Jesus. What James is saying is that when we don't seek the Lord wholeheartedly, we become double minded. And one day on a Sunday afternoon when the faith is strong in this room, we trust in God. We believe God, we wait on God and we believe he'll move the mountain.
But then on Monday, we're seeking five other avenues of how something's gonna get done in our life. We become double minded and we're serving really two masters. And when you serve two masters, you are unstable, double minded in all that you do. And you see there is a blessing from the old Testament that when we pursue the Lord with all of our heart, Psalms 100 nineteen:two says, You pursue the Lord with all your hearts. Look at your neighbor and say, all your heart.
Not half your heart, not a little bit of your heart, not a quarter until your heart, right? This is your whole heart. And then the scriptures also condemn the person who has deception in their hearts and they cause that their heart is deceitful. And James says, double minded people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Those of us who serve two masters, it makes it difficult.
We want to serve the Lord with all of our hearts. And that's what James wants. He was encountering believers who were serving two things. They were double minded and he said, no, no, no. This is why your prayers aren't getting answered because you're double minded in all that you do.
And I think we've all been here personally though before. It's not just them people out there, right? We've been here before. We've gone through something. We got a lot of questions and there's nothing wrong with getting questions asked.
For example, if you get a diagnosis of something going on in your body, you're probably gonna look up. You're probably gonna try to get some knowledge and how to deal with it. But the difference is ultimately, it's one thing to ask for knowledge. It's one thing to try to follow through with the knowledge you received. This is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
And this is what James wants us to know about it. James doesn't want us to be inconsistent in our Christian lives. And but if we are inconsistent, at least the James saying something like this as his main statement in the book of James, that he doesn't want us just to be hearers of the word, but he wants us to be doers of the word. We don't want to just say that we love God, we actually want to love God. We don't want to just say that, oh, I serve God.
No, we want to actually serve God. We want to do what the word says. So if we wanna be If we don't wanna be double minded, if we don't wanna be unstable and we don't wanna be tossed to and fro by the wind and waves of life, because the wind and the waves are gonna come, right? We're all like boats and we're gonna be on lakes and oceans and the wind and waves will come. Jesus says in Matthew six, or at the end of the sermon on the Mount, He compares two things.
There was a man who built his house on the rock. And then there was a man who did not build his house on the rock. He said, the winds came, there's always gonna be winds and waves in our lives. The question is, how are we gonna deal with them when they come? And that's what he's interested in helping us with.
So that said, I want us to look back at verse five and work through this text together. James one five, it'd be on the screen behind me. Gene James one five says, if any of you lacks wisdom, look at your neighbor and say wisdom, You should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to you. Remember last week by someone blurted out, what did we talk about last week? What was the main topic of verses two through four last week?
You can look in your Bible to cheat and it don't matter to me. We talked about trials, right? Look at your neighbor and say trials. And so as you're reading this scripture, James is trying to make an argument. Last week, he said, count it all joy when you go through trials of many kinds.
Then he follows it up with immediately verse five and says, if any of you lacks wisdom. At the end of verse four, he said he wants us to be mature and complete, not lacking anything. And then he says, if any of you lacks wisdom. So he's making a connection to the trials that we go through to our maturity and lacking something. And if we're going through a trial and we're lacking something, we're probably lacking wisdom.
That's what he's actually trying to tell us. And that's why last week was so important that we dug through that clearly. He's telling us that when we're going through trials in our life, that the main thing we need to be asking the Lord for is wisdom. This is the main thing we should be asking the Lord for every day of our lives if we're honest. Desiring wisdom is one of the greatest thing the scriptures call us to.
Proverbs four:seven says this, the beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom. Duh. Right? Thanks. Thanks, Proverbs.
Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Let's look at Proverbs nine ten. Proverbs nine ten says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. The Bible is very clear that we must get wisdom. And one part in the Bible says, above all, get wisdom because this is what's gonna be able to guard your souls for your whole life.
I love how to a couple of commentaries that I study put it. Wisdom isn't intellectual knowledge, but it is ultimately a posture of submission and recognizing God's authority and character. It's one thing to say, I believe in God, I trust in God. It's another thing to trust him in here fully submitted even when it doesn't make sense. That's the beginning of wisdom.
One of my favorite stories in the whole Bible though, about the topic of wisdom is found in first Kings three sixteen through eight sixteen twenty Oh my goodness. First Kings three sixteen through 28. Let me read it to you this morning. So you get an idea of why wisdom is so important. This is a story of King Solomon.
And this is a really uncomfortable wild story too. So enjoy listening to this for a minute. It should be on the screen behind me. It says, now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. One of them said, pardon me, my Lord, this woman and I live in the same house and I've had a baby while she was here with me.
On the third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone and there was no one in the house, but the two of us. During the night, this woman's son died because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and she took my son from my side while I, your servant was asleep. But put him she put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast.
The next morning, I got up to nurse my son and he was dead. When I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw it wasn't the son I had born. The other woman said, no, the living one's my son. The dead one is yours. But the first one insisted, no, the dead one's yours.
The living one is mine. So they argued before the king. The king said, this is Solomon. This one says, my son is alive and your son is dead while that one says, no, your son is dead and mine is alive. Then the king said, bring me a sword.
Let's pause there for a minute. You're like, We're talking about, this is way out of left field. Bring me a sword. And you're like, okay. So then it says, so they brought a sword for the king.
He then gave an order cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other. Now you're getting nervous, right? The woman whose son was alive was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the King, please my Lord, give her the living baby, don't kill him. But the other said, neither I nor you shall have him cut him in two. Then the king gave his ruling, give the living baby to the first woman, do not kill him, she is his mother.
When all the Israel heard the verdict that the king had given, they held the king in awe because they saw he had wisdom from God to administer justice. What a crazy old testament story, but the principal lays right before you. He has an incredibly difficult situation to figure out, but because he has wisdom, he's able to determine whose baby it was and he's able to preserve life. And that's what wisdom needs. And when we we need wisdom like this in our lives because we're gonna go We have all go through.
We've been through very complicated things and I can guarantee we're going to be through more complicated things in our lives. And during the trials of our lives, we need wisdom more than just pure knowledge. You see knowledge gives us information about a situation, but wisdom tells us what to do with that information. Knowledge is buying the ingredients to make something at home, but wisdom is being able to put it together in the right way in the right time. Everybody and their mama thinks they can make sourdough bread now.
Tell you that, okay? My wife has wisdom on the sourdough area. And so does sister Dreama. But there's other people who try to do the sourdough thing. They have some knowledge, wisdom.
And their loaves are as flat as a pancake and it's terrible, right? You need wisdom. And in our day and age, because of these things right here, we have more access to more knowledge than any time in human history. If there is a topic, there is a question, you can ask your phone anything, it's probably going to tell you the answer. But just having answers from a phone does not give you wisdom.
It's not the same thing. Because I can think of a lot of foolish people that have phones and podcasts and TV shows, and they spit out all this knowledge, but they're really just fools. They have no wisdom. And I don't want to be a fool. If you've ever read the scriptures for a little bit, especially the Proverbs, there is so many bad words about fools and people being foolish.
And we have a lot of fools in our world. A lot of us make foolish decisions and my friends, I don't want to live that way. I want to be wise. Not so that I can people can lift me up, but because that's what the scriptures call me to. I want to be wise in how I live my life.
We got plenty of smart people, but what we need is some people who are wise. And the best starting place for obtaining wisdom in our lives is this right here. The word of God. So people say, oh, I wanna I wanna get wisdom. Just crack your Bible open and start reading that thing.
Start there. You start eating this thing, you start eating the word of God, you start fearing the Lord and believing the word of the Lord, you're automatically on the right track to become wise. Making wise decisions. When you go through a scenario in life, all of a sudden, boom, in your mind you think of a verse from Proverbs or you think of something of Jesus's teachings and how to deal with the situation. This is our primary source for wisdom.
It starts here, it stands on here. As it says in second Timothy three sixteen, all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. The word of God is our main source of wisdom. So if you want to start on the fast track to get wise, everybody, just read your word and believe your word. Start there.
But as we go through life, we're gonna face scenarios that are We're gonna require a supernatural wisdom. For example, I love the Bible, but the Bible doesn't talk about technology. The Bible doesn't talk about cell phones. Right? But it takes wisdom to know whether this can be a blessing or it can be a curse.
You can either bless God with this phone or you cannot bless God with this phone. You can either do things that'll jack up your life or you can win people to Christ with your phone. And so you're able to take principles of wisdom from the scriptures as house to use this or any piece of technology. Another another topic that comes up in the scripture is stewardship. How to deal with money.
And if you read the Bible through and through, there is plenty of principles and wisdom ideas. If you were to apply them to your life, you would be very well stewards of your money. But the Bible doesn't talk about digital bank accounts. Doesn't talk about using a credit card, right? But there's certain principles in the scripture that help us.
Like it says in the proverbs, the borrower is slave to the lender. So if you apply that principle to your credit card, realize if I use my credit card too much and I don't pay my bill each month, I'm going to become a slave. And I don't want to be a slave to a bank that I don't know. I want to be free. I belong to God.
Right? And we're able to derive these wisdom principles from this and we're able to implement this wisdom into our lives. Another topic would be career choice. Our world way back then a couple thousand years ago was very different than ours. There was different careers, but for the most part, were just trying to survive.
They were just trying to eat. Most people were planting some plants and hunting some food. Dreamer would be doing the carrots. Kenny would be killing animals like he does already. Right?
But now we live in a more, I guess advanced society in some ways. And we're able to have different specialized things like my friend, Louis, he's an engineer. And that's amazing. But nowhere in the Bible do I see be an engineer, but what he's able to do, he's able to take these wisdom principles from the scriptures. He's able to ascertain the strengths and talents and giftings God has given him, and that led him to the route to becoming an engineer and he is a good one as that.
And so there's tons of scenarios in our lives and we could go on and on and on that we need wisdom to understand what we're going to do. Life's complicated and we definitely need wisdom to navigate life in a faithful manner. We need to become wise. We need to become wise people. And this is also what I mean because all of us have prayed some crazy prayer requests.
Right? You ever just asked the Lord for something way off the wall? Just out of left field. Lord, if you wanna, you know, throw a million dollars into my bank account today, that wouldn't hurt my feelings. Did he do it?
Probably not. Why? Because we didn't ask with wisdom. More than likely, he's not gonna give you the million dollars because you don't have the wisdom to steward the million dollars. And that's why a lot of our prayer requests go unanswered.
Cause we're asking in an unwise manner. We're praying Lord do this, but we didn't even seek his will first. What is your wisdom on the situation Lord? What do you want to happen in this? You get a certain diagnosis.
You need to have wisdom to know how to pray about it. We're gonna pray that the Lord would bring healing. Yes. But sometimes the Lord wants you to go through something. You have someone in your life who's hard to deal with.
The Lord might not remove them, but the Lord might want you to walk through it. And you need some wisdom to navigate that tough situation. Right? And so that's why he's telling us that we need to get wisdom. Why?
Wisdom is the means by which the godly can both discern and carry out the will of God in their lives. So the first thing we need to do, if we don't want to be double minded, if we don't want to be unstable, if we don't want to be tossed to and fro by the winds and the waves, we need to ask God for wisdom. Now here's a note that I wanna point out. Look back at James one five, very important here. Right here it says, this is important note for you to to pay attention to.
It says, if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives sparingly to all. Did I read that wrong? Who who gives just a little bit to all? No, I serve a God who gives generously to all. I don't know how you grew up, but some of us grew up with better means than others and some of us grew up pretty poor.
Lewis and I were having a very funny conversation this week and I'll just really just be honest. We were trying to watch the NBA finals the other night and I said, don't feel like buying ESPN is expensive. He said, why don't you just get a satellite? I said, what? Like the bunny ears?
Like like, I don't what do you mean? Those still work? He's like, yes, they work. I got one at my house. It works really good.
It's free. And I'm like, I thought that was for poor people. What are you talking about? We never had satellite. My dad, my mom had cable.
And he said that growing up, his mom and dad only had cable when it was on special. And after nine months and the special ended, they canceled the cable. Right? And so I don't know how you grew up. I grew up obviously better means than I realized, but whether you grew up rich or grew up poor, most of us don't realize that we actually serve a generous God who has way more to give than you think you deserve.
That's mostly the issue. He has way more to bless you with and give you. Right? But most of us don't think we deserve it for some reason or another. And so I want to point that out to you.
He says, who gives generously to all without finding fault. Let me read you God's word. Jesus has words to you in Matthew seven seven. Jesus says, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, to the one who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread will give him a stone or if he asks for a fish, you'll give him a snake. If you though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you. This sums up the law and the prophets.
He is a good father who likes to give good gifts to his children, but what it requires of you is to ask your generous God for it. Again, he didn't say ask for something worldly. He says who gives wisdom generously to all who ask him. He wants to give you so much wisdom in your life. Most of the time that's not what we even want.
We want God just to fix our problems, but what if he gave wisdom and we partner with him to walk through our problems, to help others through their issues that he's partnering with us. So that's the first thing that you gotta realize if you wanna be on this track that he is very, very capable of giving you plenty of wisdom. He's not He doesn't wanna give you just a smidgen, not a little glue dabble do you. He wants to bless you with an abundance of wisdom. He is more than able to supply.
The second thing you gotta realize. So we serve a generous God who wants to give you more wisdom than you would ever imagine. But the second thing is this, we must ask without doubting. Now look at your neighbor and say, doubting. This is the hard one, is it not?
How many of you doubted God before if you were honest? We've all been there. There's a guy in the Bible, his name's Thomas, but you don't even know him as Thomas. We call him doubting Thomas because he doubted the Lord. Even though by the end of it, he said it believed and said my Lord and my God.
But we call him doubting Thomas. Why? Because he doubted once. All of us have doubts. All of us can be doubters occasionally, and doubt is something that is normal to the human experience.
Right? We're not angels. Even though Glenn looks like an angel, we're not angels. Right? Bless you brother Glenn.
Angels have seen God face to face. They don't have to have faith. They have been with God. They're in God's presence, but we are humans and we operate with God in a different manner which requires faith. And sometimes because we're humans we doubt.
We doubt God's word. We doubt that he believed he can do it. But what James is saying is that if you ask God for something and you doubt, you're double minded. And so let's break this down to see what he really means. Let me read Matthew twenty one twenty one to you and Mark eleven twenty four.
Matthew 21, Jesus replied, surely I tell you if you have faith and do not doubt not only can you do what was done to the fig tree but you can also say to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea and it will be done. Mark eleven twenty four. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. Jesus tells us to not doubt and if we don't doubt, we can even throw big old Blue Ridge Mountain into the Atlantic Ocean. And he says, whatever you pray for if you believe it, you have received it in Jesus name.
Now, this has been twisted over the years into a super word of faith, name it, claim it type of thing. This is why if you say, dear God, give me a Mercedes Benz in Jesus name, And it doesn't happen and you're like, oh, I asked God and I believed it. Right? Well, doesn't work that way because you're asking with the wrong motives. You're not asking with wisdom and there's been lots and lots of charlatans and false prophets who have made a lot of money off people because they do this thing.
You got the Kenneth Copeland's in the world who will look at you and say, if you just believe enough and if you give me a thousand dollars right here, it will be done in Jesus name. If I ever do that to you, you run out of this church or anybody does that to you say, if you give me money right now, you run the other way. That's not the way God works. We don't twist God's arm. We don't twist his hand.
It's not Nate. There's no name it claim it stuff. It really upsets me because people take advantage of people. You got ministers of the gospel who take advantage of others because they're weak in faith and well, if I just do this, this is not what that is. And what that is, if you have enough faith, God will say yes.
If you don't have enough faith, God will say no. That's not at all what James means. This is actually what James means. James wants us to understand that God responds to us only when our lives reflect a basic consistency of purpose and intent, a type of spiritual integrity. When there's something wrong in your lives here at this church, let's use a very good example.
When there's someone sick and someone in need a prayer, who do y'all text in the church most of the time? Dreamer. Why do y'all text Dreamer? Prayer She's a prayer warrior because she has exhibited a type of spiritual integrity for ten, twenty, thirty years where she knows how to get ahold of God, that she believes God in prayer and you have seen prayers answered through her. And that's not because dream is cooler than all of us, which are cool.
Don't get me wrong, right? But it's because you have been consistent in your walk with Jesus over a long period of time, which displays to all of us. You truly have a deep faith in Christ. Because having faith in Christ doesn't mean just mustering up a bunch of faith in the moment to pray for somebody. Having faith is serving the Lord for one year, five year, ten year, two decades, three decades, forty years, fifty years, sixty years, seventy years.
That's what real faith looks like. Walking with the Lord over a long period of time. This is why our older saints in the room, why you're so respected. Not all of our prayers in our mind have been answered, but you have faithfully walked with the Lord consistently for decades. That's what it means to have some spiritual integrity.
That's what it means to not be unstable. Right? So it's not, you know, if you believe and don't doubt. No. You believe with your life.
You consistently walk the walk for a long time and here's the truth. You walk the walk for a long time, the Lord will answer prayers over a long time. That's why we go to dream up and thank you for letting me use your example. I don't mean to embarrass you, put you on the spot, but that's the point. You've exhibited type of life where we know, we know what your faith is.
So the one who doubts, let me read this to you. So the one who doubts, the one who doesn't possess an anchor for the soul as Hebrews six nineteen says, does not pray to God with consistency or sincerity of purpose. Most people pray to the shifting winds of motive and desire. The doubter wants wisdom from God one day and the wisdom of the world the next. It is more about consistency of the one that we are praying to.
So we need wisdom. Look at your neighbor and say wisdom. James says, count it all joy my brothers and sisters when you go through trials of many kinds. No one is going to produce something great in you. It's gonna produce maturity.
It's gonna give you perseverance. It's going to make you complete. And if you lack wisdom as you're going through your trial, ask God generously. As we close today, Keaton, as you come up and we have a time of prayer, I wanna tell you this story that will probably break your heart, but this is how I wanna end this story. I was listening to a podcast couple weeks ago.
It's about church history. It's about people in our faith who lived two thousand years ago and how they walk faithfully with the Lord. I'm gonna read this story to you, so follow along. Vibia Perpetua was born in January in North Africa. And her life was cut short tragically at just 22 years of age.
Perpetua was born into an upper class of Roman society and she grew up with wealth and privilege. And then one day she became a Christian. Early in the third century, persecution broke out in her home of Carthage in North Africa under the Roman Emperor Septimus Severus who made conversion to Jesus illegal. So early in the Christian story, it's outlawed by the Roman Empire and she has become a Christian and this is what happened next. The government will usually target high profile Christians like bishops or leading affluent families to make an example of them and Perpetua who is newly married and had given birth to her first child, a little girl was arrested and thrown into prison with her servant.
She was given two options. Either just deny Jesus or burn incense to Caesar. You can worship Christ but you have to worship Julius Caesar too. Or you could be killed in the arena with the gladiators and the animals for blood sport to the thirsty mob. Her own father who was not a Christian, he was a pagan Roman official visit her in prison and begged her to compromise for the sake of her baby.
She said, daughter, please just give up this whole Jesus thing so your daughter can live. He was pleading with her as a grandfather. And you can imagine grandparents here, what that might feel like. But she just kept saying to everybody, I am a Christian. While in prison, Perpetua had a dream where she saw a ladder reaching up to heaven with a dragon guarding the base of it.
She climbed the ladder and at the top of the ladder was a beautiful garden and a tall gray haired man dressed like a shepherd surrounded by thousands of people wearing right white robes. He said to her, welcome my child and gave her a piece of sweet cheese. Then she woke up again in her prison cell and she realized in that moment, God was calling her to martyrdom. To die for her faith in Christ. So as the story goes, she was brought into the arena singing a song, totally peaceful and calm and poised.
When the gladiator stabs her to the bone in the story, she takes his hand and guides the sword up to her throat. The account says it was though so great a woman feared as she was by the unclean spirit could not be dispatched unless herself was willing. Perpetua was one of the thousands of early Christians who died for their faith and left behind what we call martyrs. Perpetua needed wisdom to navigate what God was doing in her life. Because if we found ourselves in that situation, our first thought might be, I'm gonna run.
I'll just deny Jesus so I can live and my daughter can live and everything will be okay. But she received wisdom from God. It doesn't say, but I guarantee as she was in that prison cell, she was asking the Lord, what do you want me to do? And God gave her wisdom and said, your job in this life is to lay your life down for me. And she had the wisdom to endure that trial faithfully.
I hope it could be said at the same of us. That if we were to go through something that intense that we would be able to seek God for wisdom and whatever he says we would do. Now you're probably not gonna go through something like that and we pray for peace in the land. Amen. Pray for our nation.
We pray for our leaders and we want peace. But there's gonna be different things like that we're going to encounter in our lives brother Matt. Where we need wisdom to navigate, how do I continue to faithfully follow Christ and walk the walk as I go through this trial?