James 4:11-17 “Do not speak evil of one another,
brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil
of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of
the law but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow
we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and
sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a
little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live
and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All
such boasting is evil. Therefore,
to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.”
Pastor Kyle continued his
Sermon series on the Book of James, asking: What is your life? Where did you
come from? What are the place that you have been? The things that you have accomplished?
What do you hope to leave behind after you are long gone? We rarely, if at all,
think about the day that our life will come to an end., yet it is the direction
that everyone of us is headed. We do not like to think about the day that we
will die or the legacy that we will leave. Our legacy is determined by the
things that we do today. Our life is the sum of our choices today. Significance
from a human perspective is highly subjective. Significance from God’s
perspective is not subjective; it is objective, tangible, very clear, and
measurable. How do you go about choosing who is important and significant? We
all have a very different perspective of whom and what is important.
Matthew 15:16-18 So Jesus said, “Are you also still
without understanding? Do
you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and
is eliminated? But
those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they
defile a man.”
Five ways to make your mist
count, not as an accomplishment, but as a way of life: (1) Be mindful of our
words towards others. To speak kindly, encouraging and positively towards one
another is difficult and one of the first things to go. Yet, when we are gone,
all we leave for others to remember us ate our words. We don’t have to say much
to influence others. What do want to be known by? (2) Be mindful of your
thoughts towards others because it’s not just what we say, but contemplation,
deliberation and consideration that counts and matters from God’s perspective. We
might fool others into thinking that we care about them, but we do not fool
God. Right words with wrong thoughts … we are judging. (3) Keep short accounts
of wrongs against us. Who are we to judge our neighbor? Because to judge is to
hold something against them. Training
our behavior and learning to control our thoughts, words and deeds allows us to
speak to our heart. Guide your thought process to train your heart to let
things go. Hanging onto everything is defining everything about you. There are
things in our life that are difficult to move past, but we need to learn to
keep short accounts and let things go quickly.
We will read the conclusion
of Pastor Kyle’s message on our lives tomorrow.
In Christ, Brian
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