James Chapter 1 verse 6-8

What did James know that will help us?

Self identifying, it's a way of saying what you are that is systematically accepted by those institutions which have chosen to honor such a declaration.  It is usually about gender, although it can be about other things; these days it is mostly about gender choice, and it is showing up on insurance forms, college admission sheets, used car rentals (hard to see that one, isn't it?) and many other forms of data

where what you identify yourself as makes, apparently, a difference?  Is there a problem with this?  In the social media age, is that problem even more rarefied?  One of my associates calls himself a homosexual Christian, that's a form of self identification; one almost has to shudder at what that form of self identification would have gained a person standing at the base of Mt. Horeb?

We're going to take a few discussion points into this narrative as a commentary, and try to make relevant a document written a couple thousand years ago to a tortured and dying few; for those of us who live in this time.  It's not an easy task, the dissimilarities for outweigh the common elements of our lives, and yet, the wisdom still seems appropriate, something that is generally and genuinely no small bone of contention to the detractors from the truth you read today. 

 "6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, 8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."

What James discusses in the verse 6 about asking in faith is no small matter.  Faith is a nearly impossible subject in this scientific reasoning time.  The tendency is to preclude faith as a genuine element to life, and yet we who believe we have faith, choose to believe we live by it.  We also choose to believe that such lives matter and are relevant in a landscape which constantly strives to prove that no individual is distinctly more important than their particular momentary power.  Such outlooks are seen in the lens of history as being very one sided and extremely myopic, almost microscopic to an argument needing macroscopic paradigms (did that for my science buddies).

What is even harder to imagine is having no doubt in an age where doubt and lack of trust are the clarion call.  We live in a culture where trust and believing are abnormal, and where doubting and checking to verify if it is so, is the norm.  Now only a foolish person would never verify what it important, but to constantly believe that nothing is true, that's a different matter.

NOW let's get to the clincher- why do you or why does a person have to ask in faith without doubting?  If you've never doubted, one has to wonder, how can that be?  In my case God has never let me down, He does show me that He is real in ways that can't be anything but Him, and yet, if a person is honest, there is going to come a moment or moments even, when the enemy will lie into your heart, so is that what James is saying?  Don't think so...but...we're deep enough...please leave any comments or concerns, that's why we do what we do, about James knowing how to help us...