Brother Gyme Sunday School 6/15/14

Brother Gyme Sunday School 6/15/14

Jas 1:1  James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

What is important to us is that James is a servant.  Bible scholars may argue of who he is but what is important is that this is the Word of God designed for us and he was a servant of God.

Jas 1:2  My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

Jas 1:3  Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

We will go through some things that will not be easy.  They are never designed to destroy us but to perfect us.

‘Perfect’ means to let it have its complete work.  That work is for our growth: mental and moral character.  It means to become completed and of full age, to become perfect.

Jas 1:4  But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

Don’t think it is strange to have trials.  He has already told us that we are going through some things.  We will go through hard things whether we are saved or not.  Look around.  This year my eyes have been opened more to the condition that people are in because of sin and gross darkness.  Gross darkness is not kind at all. 

We can choose to go through hard things with God and have it perfect us or the alternative, we go through it without God and it destroys us.  When we go through something with God on our side, He has designed and allowed it.  He will not give us anything that we cannot handle or designed to destroy us but only what is designed to perfect us.

Rom 8:28  And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

We know that all things work together for good.  There will not come anything that will be designed to destroy us.

Php 3:12  Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

Php 3:13  Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

Php 3:14  I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The only time we have attained is when we get to heaven.  Until then we are striving to go forward; to learn and to grow. 

There are some things that we need to leave behind.  They can really be a weight to us.  We need to learn and remember the lesson and then leave it behind us and not let it weigh us down.

Forgetting those things that are behind:  The enemy loves to bring back our past.  God doesn’t do that.  He forgives and forgets.  The enemy likes to get us focused on things. 

Press toward the prize.  If you be perfect, be thus minded.  We can trust God that He will help us to keep things in focus, stay balanced, and put behind us what we need to so that we can go forward.

To forget means to lose out of mind, to neglect, no longer caring for, and to give over to oblivion.  Forgetting the past: it can haunt us and we can mull it over instead we need to forget the past.  The other part is to not go back to it but hold the ground that we have gained and not retreat to what we were in a habit of, or comfortable with, in dealing with things a certain way. 

We can choose our Ferris wheel.  Sometimes and some things we must be violent against.  If we have ever given into something then we really have to be violent.  We must replace thoughts we don’t want with a good thought, not just get rid of them.  We come to a place, “I have to get rid of this, I cannot think this way anymore.”

Php 3:15  Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.

Jas 1:5  If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

God doesn’t take the attitude, “Boy, you really messed that up.”  He comes and says, “Let me teach you.”  The most important thing is that we learn the lesson.  Don’t beat yourself down, “Why did it take me so long to learn that?”

We are always looking to the end of the thing when really it is the process that God is interested in.  We get focused way down the road; that is a part of it but the process and the everyday living is where it happens.

He doesn’t give just a little bit but He gives liberally.

1Ch 22:12  Only the LORD give thee wisdom and understanding, and give thee charge concerning Israel, that thou mayest keep the law of the LORD thy God.

Only the Lord gives wisdom and understanding.