A first glance at James 5...

     A good Monday is a day that I can start to look at the next Sunday.  I used to marvel at preachers who could just take one phrase and create a sermon around it.  It seems I started out needing whole chapters and books to get enough material for a sermon.  Lately, the phrases have started jumping out at me.  This morning the phrase was in verse 3, "...and their corrosion will be evidence against you..."  In chapter 5 the corrosion is our unhealthy place of trust on our money.  Going backwards, in chapter 4 the corrosion is speaking evil of the brotherhood and planning without God.  Back further, in chapter 3 the corrosion is an uncontrollable tongue.  Chapter 2, the corrosion is showing partially.  And back to chapter 1, the corrosion is solving our trials our way through falling to temptation and just hearing the Word and not doing it.  James has been building on this theme of the things that get in our way of worshiping God as we should.


     The second half of this chapter deals with healing.  I think it will be an important part of the message especially with what I am going through.  It says to call on the elders of the church to pray over you (that's the individual's responsibility to ask) and they are to anoint the person.  That word anoint is an actual medical term of the day.  So the church was to get the physical attention the person needed under the direction of the Lord.  It never says that God would automatically heal but it does say that the Lord would raise that person up.  I guess if I had a choice of being healed "my way" or the Lord raising me up (sustaining me through it all), I would want the Lord.  I don't want to be without Him.


     I am looking forward to my personal study of this passage to unfold some more phrases like "...and someone brings him back,..."  So I pray that you have a great week in the Lord.


Adam
A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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