James

Hello.

Good evening, everyone, and nice to have you here. My name's Tom. I'm one of the pastors, and great to have you with us. If you are one of those new students or if you're visiting for some other reason, and if you're joining online, welcome to you. It's lovely to have you.

We began a new series in the book of James last Sunday, and that sermon was something of an overview. We looked at some of the key themes in the letter. So if you didn't hear that, it will help you probably to go back and have a listen online. But this evening, we're just going to be thinking about verses one to eight of chapter one. So if you'd like to turn to James one verses one to eight, and I'm going to read this passage for us twice.

And then on your table, before we have a think about it together, I would like you just to discuss, these two questions. In what James says here about trials, what do you find most helpful, and what do you find most challenging? In what he's about to tell us on the subject of trials and how we ought to view trials, what do you think is most helpful about what he says, and what do you think is most challenging? James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations, greetings. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 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.

Let's hear it again. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations, greetings. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 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. What do you find most challenging and most helpful about that teaching on trials? Just spend a moment on your table talking about those two things.

Hopefully, that will help us in our thinking about this evening's passage. And as we come to this part of God's word, let's let's bow our heads and ask our father for wisdom and help. Father, earlier in this service, we sung together, though all I have is stripped away, I will rejoice for Christ remains. And those lines are very singable, and they are good for us to sing, but in order to actually believe that and to live as if that were true, we need heavenly wisdom, and we need help, and we need grace, because this is something not natural to us. This is a spirit given perspective and a spirit given fruit, and we we desperately need it.

And so we pray that you would help us as we think about this subject this evening. Whenever we think about subjects of difficulty and trial, we can we can have reasons not to listen in our minds, and we can make excuses as to why we don't need to hear this. But we do. We do. We need to hear the spirit inspired words of James who really knew what he was talking about.

And so help us please by your spirit to not only understand these things, but to have grace to live in the light of them. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. One of the strange things about trials, and that is the main subject here in verse one to eight. One of the strange things about trials is that we both expect them and can be very surprised by them.

We expect them because we live in a fallen world, don't we? And as we've seen in our Genesis readings, those of us who are reading through Genesis, we know that ever since Genesis three, there have been all kinds of thorns and thistles and bloodshed and sadness and disappointment and betrayal in the world. Those things are a feature of life and they have been since the fall and they will be until the new creation. And so we expect them. And as Christians, we know that following Jesus will not somehow make us immune from those trials and difficulties, but that we too, even as followers of Christ are gonna feel the pain of the thorn and the thistle in this fallen world.

And yet when the trials actually come for all our expectation of them, they can still knock us for six and surprise us. I'm sure you've heard it said when, something terrible happens on a on a on a street or when something terrible happens to someone, maybe they're being interviewed, by by the news, and they'll often say something like this. I I never thought it would happen here, or I never thought it could happen to me. And of course, if you were to sit that person down and say, do you really mean that? Do you think that through your life, you live in this protective bubble, which is actually going to shelter you and your neighborhood from anything difficult.

They would say, no. That's not really what I meant. I sort of, of course, know that those things could happen around here. But what I'm saying is that it's taken me by surprise. We know what kind of world this is.

It's a fallen one. But when it suddenly is our family who are facing the trial or when it's us who's getting disappointed in some sad way, or when it's a loss that we have to experience, it can hit us with a surprising punch. Even though we know that it can happen and we sort of expect it to happen to us, it really can still give us a hard and surprising knock sometimes. And what I love about this section of James is his realism when it comes to that. Trials are to be expected, but they are still surprising.

Look what he says in verse two, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever, not if, when, whenever you face trials of many kinds. Now older translations translate it this way, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into various trials. When you fall into them. Now that word, that form of this word is only used two other times in the New Testament. And I'm gonna show you both of them, because in both cases we see there is an element of surprise when we meet trials and fall into trials.

The first time it's used is in Luke chapter 10, where Jesus is telling the story of the Good Samaritan. And here is a man who is on a famously dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and Jesus says a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers. There's an element of surprise in his journey. It was known to be a dangerous road, and I'm sure if he'd thought sensibly, he he could have been one who experienced that. But all of a sudden, it was him who experienced it.

He fell into a trial, and there's a surprise about it. The other time it's used is in Acts 27 when Paul is on his way to Rome and they're on a boat and they're trying to bring this boat safely to shore, but something goes wrong. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and made for the beach, but the ship struck a sandbar or it fell into a sandbar and it ran aground. Now again, I don't know how many sailors there are in the room, but things like this are probably always possible when we take to the sea. And yet in this verse, it actually happened.

There was a surprise. They hit a sandbar. They fell among robbers. And so do you see how helpful that is? When it comes to trials, verse one tells us that we are to expect them to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations.

To be a scattered people is to be a people exposed to difficulty and hardship in the world. They are to expect that, and yet there is something unexpected. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into these trials of many kinds. And so James wants us to know right from the off that trials for the Christian are to be expected, but also don't be surprised if they take you by surprise. And so with that in mind, what counsel or wisdom does he have for Christians who will face trials, but will also be surprised by their trials?

And it seems to me that there are two bits of very helpful counsel that he gives us. The first is this, when trials come, consider what God has revealed. That's the first thing. When trials come, consider what God has revealed. Let's see again, verse two, consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, and here's the revelation that underpins that instruction, because you know that the testing of faith produces perseverance.

So we need to hear very carefully what James is not saying. He is not saying that the trials themselves ought to make you happy. Later in this letter, he's going to talk about Christian people who are being exploited in all kinds of different ways, and it seems as if some of the ones doing the exploiting are claiming to be Christian. He's gonna talk about the temptations that we face to sin, and those can be very fierce sometimes. And he's gonna talk about disagreements in the church.

If you've ever been in one of those or lived through those or observed those, those could hardly be called pleasurable experiences. So James is not saying here that the trial itself ought to make you glad. None of those things are gonna be pleasurable. And so just to make sure we're clear on it, if your landlord tells you that you've got two months to move because they're selling your family home, James is not saying put on some kind of artificial smile. You're gonna be homeless in a few weeks.

Yeah? Or if you discover that somebody you love has leukemia, he's not saying, what an opportunity for some kind of synthetic gladness that you can just put on. Neither is he saying, if you discover that your spouse has been unfaithful, consider it pure joy. It's exactly what we want to find out. He's not saying that because we know friends that there are just too many laments in the Bible for that kind of reasoning, and there are too many Psalms that are prayed in dark valleys for that to be true.

James knows that when you fall among robbers or when you hit sandbanks, those are not in themselves happy moments. Those are surprisingly painful moments. And so what does he have in mind here? Well, the key word is right there at the beginning of verse two, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters. Other translations have it count it pure joy, count it pure joy, consider it pure joy.

And so this word has less to do with an emotion that you need to manufacture when you go through difficult times. And it is more about a way of thinking when trials come. So that when something happens to us, I can stand back and I can take a breath and I can pause, and I can consider what is happening to me in light of what God has told me. That's the idea. It's to look upon something and to weigh it, not by how I feel about it in the first case, but to weigh it by the facts that God has given me, to consider it in light of what he has said.

And that last bit there, consider it in light of what God has said, in light of revelation, is the key difference here between Christianity and almost anything else. Because as you might know, there are many philosophers and there have been many philosophies in history, which have encouraged people to reason carefully about their suffering. So there's nothing uniquely Christian about that, so to speak, That you suffer, you pause, you look at it, and you choose to think about it in a different way. That's not necessarily Christian. So one example of that would be the famous, you know, stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

He was known as the kind of philosopher king, and he thought a lot about that. How to train your own mind to think differently about difficult things. Here's one of his most famous quotes. Choose not to be harmed, and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed, and you haven't been.

Choose not to be harmed, and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed, and you haven't been. And we might say there is something useful about that, because he's saying, I don't want to simply allow the first wave of emotion to decide how I respond to this. I am going to try to think differently about it. Something has happened to me.

I could allow it to harm me. I'm going to choose to not let it harm me. And then I won't feel harmed. And if I don't feel harmed, then I haven't been harmed. Yeah?

You can see how it goes. But what James says is infinitely more helpful because he is saying, no, no, brothers and sisters, what I am saying here is not just you need to sort your own mental perspective out. He's not saying, I want you to choose how to interpret this. He's saying, I want you to look at this in light of what God has told you about it. So it's not just you and your self discipline and your grit and your stubbornness that will change you, it's what God has revealed to you, which will help you come at it with a new perspective.

Do you see the difference? One depends on me and the other depends on what my loving father has given me. And so James is not calling us here to some kind of false emotion and he's not calling us to self determination. He's calling us to weigh what we experience by what God has told us. That's why verse three is so important.

Look at it again. Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. You just imagine if he'd stopped at verse two. Yeah. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, full stop.

And I'm gonna move on. And we're left with a Marcus Aurelius type thing. Okay. I'm gonna try and do that. I'm gonna consider it pure joy whenever I face trials of many kinds.

But he doesn't do that. He does better than that. He doesn't put a full stop at the end of verse two. He puts a comma because he's gonna buttress it with something and got under support it with something revelation. Yeah.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know something, something's been revealed to you, that's gonna make a difference, that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. He gives us more than a command. He gives us a revelation from God so that we can make the right judgment. And here's what he tells us. Here's what we know, that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

That is what we are called to think. I'm called to consider whenever I fall into trials of various kinds, and there are many kinds. Whenever I fall into, I've got to consider what I know, which is that God will use this in some way to mature me and to bring perseverance into my life. I've told you this before, but I am I well, some of you anyway. I I used to work or I worked for a while at an engineering company.

And one of the jobs that I had to do was to test blocks of concrete all day. So construction companies used to send us these blocks of concrete, and we used to have to put them in this machine, which would crush them from all sides until they failed. And if they failed above a certain threshold, they passed and could be used to build things. If they failed below a certain threshold, they were dumped in the bin and they had to go and re send us one. And really, that whole job, and I actually spent many hours one summer doing that, was about quality control.

You submit something to pressure just to find out if it's good or bad. And the purpose for pressuring it goes no deeper than that. It's just to find out, will it pass or will it fail? But do you see how different that is from verse three? Trials are not God's concrete tester to see just whether we will pass or fail, like some kind of quality control.

There is some sweeter purpose. He subjects us to trials that He may do something glorious in us. The testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. That's very different to just quality control, isn't it?

That's a revelation that tells us what God is up to in the most difficult things, perseverance. Now, even that is gonna need some definition, some defining. Because perseverance is again one of those words I think we can easily get get wrong. Perseverance is not is not simply digging your heels in, and, you know, spiritual stubbornness. It's not that.

Christian perseverance is about clinging to the Father. That's what it's about. You notice he's gonna move on to the subject of prayer. We're gonna come to that because perseverance is clinging to the Father. And that might be a very messy business in our lives.

Perseverance is not gonna be neat and tidy all the time. Have a listen to what James says, I'll put it on the screen actually. In James chapter five, verse 11, he's gonna revisit this subject of perseverance at the end. He says, as you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy. So Job is an example for us of a man in whom God grew perseverance. But if you ask the question, what was Job's perseverance like? It was pretty messy at times. It wasn't the perfect serene smiling going through the trials.

Just look at some of the things he says. Sighing has become my daily food. My groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me. What I dreaded has happened to me.

I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest, but only turmoil. And earlier in that chapter, he says, may the day of my birth perish. How would you describe that perseverance? It is pretty messy, isn't it?

And yet James says, Job persevered. Job persevered. And I do think that's quite helpful for us, because I wonder if sometimes we hear the word perseverance and we think, you know, if I was really growing in perseverance, I wouldn't find this trial difficult. Or if I was a really strong Christian, I wouldn't be wobbling with this. I'd find it easy, if I really had this perseverance thing.

But that is not Christian perseverance. Christian perseverance is not a blissful smile, and it's definitely not just coping by yourself in some Marcus Aurelius way. It is an honest trust in the father through difficulties. And that's why those phrases that we hear sometimes can be quite misleading. You know, has anyone ever said to you, or you've, you know, you've maybe read it on a calendar or something, God will never give you more than you can handle.

That is misleading, isn't it? If we mean by that, God will only give you what you can handle in your own strength. That's just wrong, isn't it? God will only give you what you can handle in your own strength. That's not what James is saying.

He's saying there will be trials which are far more than you can handle because God does not want you to handle them on your own. You can't. He wants you to cling to him because that's perseverance. That's perseverance. It's not God will give me so much that I can handle in my own strength and nothing that I can't cope with in my own strength.

It's not that. Of course, it will be more than we can handle because his purpose is not to create self handling Christians, but people who pray and seek God's help because they can't handle it. That's that's perseverance. And so you zoom out for a moment and try to take all of this together. And James is telling us something like this.

When trials come, which they will, and when they surprise us, which they will, James says consider it joy, not because the trial itself is joyful, but because of what your father has promised to do in you through it. It'll draw you to Jesus who is going to be your and my strength, and he's going to be our help, and he's going to be an ever present refuge in a time of trouble. And as I lean on him, I will grow in maturity, and that will be to his glory, and that will be to my joy, as I grow to be like him, trusting in him. And so you see, basically, at at the root of James' command is is this is this question. When trials come, how am I going to think about them?

How am I going to think? What will I bring to mind when I fall among robbers? And James wants us to bring these things to mind. But I know that you might be here and you're thinking, well, I under I understand that, what has just been said in that first point, and I even like the sound of that. But when the trial actually comes, how am I going to do it?

How am I going how how do I take that, which I broadly agree with, and actually make it live in my life? And James, anticipating that question, I think, then comes to this second point. So firstly, when trials come, consider what God has revealed. Secondly, when trials come, consider what God has promised. Look at the promise in verse five.

If any of you lacks wisdom, and I don't think he's saying wisdom about which job to take, or wisdom about who to date, or wisdom about where to live. I think he means if any of you lacks wisdom in regard to what I've just said about how to understand your trials. 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. That's a sweet promise, isn't it? And in doing that, this is this is another one of those Sermon on the Mount hyperlinks here.

James is saying something that his older brother Jesus has already said before. So you might remember this on the screen, Sermon on the Mount, which is James' kind of go to for his letter. Jesus said, 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, and to the one who knocks the door will be opened. Just ask, he says.

If you need wisdom about anything I've just said, you just ask, just ask and knock and the door will be opened and everything you need is gonna be given. And so it's as if James knows that verse two to four are quite a big call, and he knows that we're gonna need help to think of things that way. And so he says, ask, ask. Go to your father and ask him for wisdom, ask for help to understand what is happening to you and ask for grace to respond faithfully in the trial, and he will give it. One commentary I was reading used this picture of a of a jug in heaven, this big sort of jug that's absolutely full to the brim with life giving water, and it's just at the angle where the water is about to gush over the lip of the jug and go flooding all over the the floor or the people in this case.

And he says, that's what God's like with wisdom and in his generosity, he's absolutely full. And at the moment, one of his sons or daughters says, dad help, or dad give me wisdom, or dad, I need this perspective. You know, and he just pause liberally all over his children who need his help. That's how he has described full of generosity, generosity, ready to give wisdom to anyone who asks. And notice James says, he gives generously to all without finding fault.

That's really lovely, isn't it? That you can go to your father and when you ask him for wisdom, you're never gonna encounter a kind of divine irritability. He's never gonna be like, what again? Like, how many sermons do you have to sit through before you're gonna not need to ask me anymore? He's not gonna find fault with the request.

He's not gonna say, I gave you that answer six months ago, and now you're back. You see sometimes with other humans, we can weary them with our constant asking, can't we? We have to ask them for things over and over again, and we eventually get to the point and say, listen, do you to just hold your hand and do it for you? You know what? And we get irritable with constant asking, not so with God.

He gives generously to all without finding fault. We're never gonna find that our request for wisdom is met with a reproach. Why are you here? You should know by now. I'm weary of giving to you.

God is never like that. Instead, we will find a father who is ready to help. Maybe he'll supply us with the wisdom we need as we read his word. Maybe he'll give us the wisdom we've asked for as we listen to a talk. Maybe he'll give us the wisdom we need as we look at the example of another suffering brother in the church.

That's true for us, isn't it? That often God answers our prayer for help, just as we observe how another brother or sister thinks about and talks about their trials, and we find that they are the answer to the prayer that we prayed for help in our church. You just think, oh, that's, oh, that's what I, that's what I need to look at. Such a big theme in James church and what we need to learn from church. But however it comes, the point here is that the father will provide because that is in his nature to do that.

See, it'd be a terrible thing, wouldn't it? If God said to us here, I'm commanding you to see your trials differently, and I'm not going to help you to see them differently. Consider it joy, and I'm not gonna help you to do it. I'd be really bad, wouldn't it? If he doesn't do that.

He says, consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, and if you need help doing that, just come. Just ask me. I'll help you. I'll help you. I'll give you everything you need to think of things as I've just told you to do.

And so James is telling us to ask because there will never be a problem with the generosity of God. Never. If he gave you Jesus, will he not also along with Jesus give you everything that you need? If Christ, his darling son, bled and died on a cross for your sins and rose again to take you to heaven, will he not also give you the wisdom that you need for this next difficulty? Yeah.

Yeah. Of course he will. There's never gonna be a problem with him. But there might be a problem in us. And he comes to that in verse six.

It's not gonna be a problem with the God of verse five, but there might be a problem with us. 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. And maybe as you were talking on your tables, that was the bit that you thought was a bit challenging or frightening.

I mean, it certainly does sound a little bit frightening, doesn't it? Because there are definitely times when I've prayed and I haven't been totally convinced really of the likelihood of God coming to do something about it. Haven't we all prayed like that? We sort of prayed, but we've been entertaining some kind of uncertainty. Can he really?

Will he really? And even if he answers me, am I actually prepared to act on what he says? There is that, isn't there? Uncertainty in us. So is James telling us here that if there is even a drop of doubt inside of us, that God will give us nothing.

I think that would be hard to fit with many biblical prayers. Let me give you one example, chances are you know it well. This is from Mark chapter nine. Here is a desperate father who has come to Jesus on behalf of his son. His son is suffering terribly, and no one's been able to do anything about it.

And he says to Jesus, if you can, do something about this. Help us. Help me. And Jesus says, if if you can, everything is possible for one who believes, and the father cries out, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.

But that sounds a lot like doubt, doesn't it? And so presumably, according to James one, he should expect to receive nothing for his double minded approach. I believe help my unbelief. That sounds like exactly what James is warning against. Well, no, I don't think so.

Because can you see what he's doing, this man? He is bringing his whole self to Jesus. He is bringing everything that he is with all of his confusion and worry and struggle, and he's laying it before Jesus. And he's not hiding anything, and he's not pretending that there's no inner conflict in him. He is single-minded in bringing everything he is to Jesus.

This is me, Jesus. There's no other part of me. This is actually me. I believe, help my unbelief. James is talking about something different.

He's talking about someone who is fundamentally double minded, and the word literally means to be two souled. This is a two souled person. One soul that is apparently turned toward God and another soul that is turned away from God to the world. And as Jesus says, no one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money. So James and Jesus, these two brothers are talking about a double minded person. Someone who is not just bringing confusion and a bit of doubt to Jesus, but someone who is trying to have one heart with God and another heart with the world. So that when trials come, they might do the religious thing and offer up a prayer and say some religious words, but really there is no settled conviction that God can actually help them. And James says that is double mindedness.

It isn't simply that this person struggles to trust in God, it's that they are trying to draw life from two different sources. They don't really have any convictions about him at all, and that person will forever be unsettled. If you imagine one of those snow globes that you might get out at Christmas, you know, you take them out of the decoration box in the loft and you give it a shake and you can see it's all shaken and agitated for a while, but eventually those flakes are gonna settle down. There's gonna be some settling. But this is like a snow globe forever shaken.

It's just always agitated, always unsure, never settled, never sure where to go, never sure what to do, never sure who to pray to, always being shaken. One circumstance blows them this way and they go that way. One circumstances blows them another way and they go another way, because they simply cannot settle the question of whether they can trust God or not. They can't get it settled. And so they're always double minded.

You see the difference between those things? Not Lord, I believe help my unbelief, this is me, but fundamentally twin souled, always agitated, never sure where to go. And you know, do come across this from time to time in ministry. You know, sometimes there will be people who come to an elder or a home group leader or a Christian friend, and they'll say, you know, I really need advice on, on on how to deal with this relationship. And, what would God say about this next step for me?

And you you talk them through that and give them God's wisdom and try to help them. And then you discover that they'd actually made up their mind ages ago, and they've already decided what they want to do. And the relationship is already going full steam ahead. They've already handed in their notice and they're leaving. And so all of that sort of seeking of spiritual help, I'm not sure what it was really, but you get the impression coming away, I'm not sure they really wanted the wisdom that they were seeking from God.

I think they'd already decided what they were going to do. That's one expression of twin souling. We seek it, but we don't really seek it. And we can be like that with God, can't we? We pray about things and want God to make things clear to us.

But often if we're honest, we've already decided what we're going to do and what voices we wanna hear. And Jesus says, friends, you cannot serve two masters. He doesn't say it's difficult to serve two masters. He says, you cannot. Eventually, one of them is gonna win.

And so again, this is not the believer who says, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. There's the honest prayer of a struggling disciple. But really James is talking here about a non Christian divided soul that has no convictions about who God is. That's that's the problem that can be in us. And yet positively, when you take all this together, it's a wonderful definition of faith that James gives us here, isn't it?

I think it's so sad that there there are millions of Christians all over the world who get told that if only they had real faith, they wouldn't go through trials. Or they're told that if they had real faith, they would be strong and unwavering in the face of their trials. But James says, the test of real faith is not whether or not you have trials. It's where you go for help when you have trials. That is what real faith, that's where real faith is seen, where you go to for help and for wisdom.

And so to summarize it, James is saying, when trials come, let's think and let's consider. They are not joyful in themselves, no one has ever said so, but they are not pointless. Your father is gonna use them to grow perseverance in us and to draw us to Christ and to bring us to maturity. And when we cannot see that, let's pray. Because this one who calls us to view our trials in a certain way is ready to supply us with all the wisdom we need to see things as he does.

And so maybe you're here and you're right, and I'm sure some of you will be, you know, you'll be right in the middle of something, some sort of trial that others know about or maybe others don't. And you see what James gives you here is not a nice, neat roadmap for how to get it all worked out. James comes to you and he says, can I just show you the character of God? Can I just show you the character of God? Can I remind you how much he loves you and what he's promised and what he'll give you if you ask?

That's really good, isn't it? Roadmaps to follow to get ourselves out of a trial. It's not what we just need. We need God. And if you're here and you, you know, you wouldn't say you're in a trial or maybe you haven't really faced anything.

I read in one commentary, although I had to sort of look it up. It says that the it said the worst time to change the rigging is in the middle of the storm. Yeah. The worst time to change the rigging is in the middle of the storm. In other words, try to get it settled before you hit the sandbar, Before you take the Jericho Road and fall among robbers, have a think about what you'll think should that happen to you.

Worst time to change the rigging is in the middle of the storm. And for all of us, whatever our experience of these things at the moment, James says, 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. Father, as we prayed at the beginning, these these truths are so helpful and so needed, but we we do we are completely dependent upon your spirit to have these things really in our hearts and minds. And so please, would you help us, whether we're in difficult times or not, help us to have this perspective. Help us to consider things in light of of what you have told us.

And help us please, when we don't know the answers, to rest in the God who speaks and the God who loves us. A generous wisdom providing good God. Help us please. In Jesus name. Amen.