Be Still And Know

James 5:16 Some years ago I contracted whooping cough. To be honest I thought that it was something only children got so was amazed when my GP told me that I had caught it. From time to time over a number of weeks I struggled to breathe. The worst episodes were in the middle of the night; I will never forget those desperate attempts to breathe, which ended in the “whoop” as air finally, slowly and painfully returned to my lungs. Breathing is essential to life, and I now have a new respect for the process – and a deep gratitude that I can breathe without a struggle. The Bible makes it clear that prayer is the way in which we ‘breathe’ as Christians. Everything depends on prayer. It has been wisely said that we are as strong as our prayer lives and no stronger. It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of prayer – just as it would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of breathing for ongoing life. James encourages his readers to pray because it can have incredible results. In the nex

James 5:16 How are you? I wonder how you normally respond to that question. Probably, like most of us, you smile sweetly and summarise your life with the one word “Fine”. It’s a good word and if it’s true that’s wonderful. But, if we’re honest, it is sometimes the word we use to push people away. What we’re actually saying is, “It’s none of your business. Leave me alone. Hopefully if you think I’m fine you won’t bother me again.” The reality is that we are not always fine. Sometimes we feel awful, and there are times when we know that we have failed miserably. James is encouraging his readers to be honest. We need to be real with one another and actually confess our sins and pray for each other so that we can find God’s healing. I don’t believe that God is calling us to share absolutely every inner secret and sin with one another. But I do believe that churches need to be places of love and encouragement where we feel able to reveal the people that we really are. Often that will best be done with

James 5:14–15 Jesus was both a healer and a teacher. He ministered to the whole range of people’s needs – body, mind and spirit. When Jesus left this earth he commissioned the Church to carry on with that ministry. Here in James we see what that meant in practice. The Church is called to minister to those who are sick and to pray for them knowing that God loves to make people better and also to forgive their sins. In recent years the word ‘holistic’ has become very popular to describe the way in which God works. In the power of his Spirit he wants us to be whole people, enjoying him and his world to the full. Many parts of the Church have focused on words and preaching and marginalised the healing ministry. But that makes no sense if we are truly following in the footsteps of Jesus. Premier Lifeline (0300 111 0101) offers an amazing ministry to tens of thousands of people every year. When people ring up, they speak with Christians about their needs, which may be physical, mental or spiritual. In t

James 5:13 I remember as a teenager hearing a well-known preacher telling the story of a young woman who had told him that she often didn’t feel like praying. His response was that prayer is not a glandular condition! Prayer is something that we need to do whatever our feelings. That’s precisely the point that James is making here. In short, it’s always the right time to pray – whether you are going through a good or a bad time. God doesn’t want us simply to be people who say their prayers, and then forget about him until the next time. He wants a relationship with us, within which we share fully the ups and downs of life. I love the fact that the Bible doesn’t present us with a line of holy people, who always got it right and who loved sharing their lives with God. The Bible is almost the opposite of that. It tells us the story of women and men who struggled and often failed. And amid it all we see how those frail and failed human beings discovered that God loved them and had a purpose for their

James 5:12 James isn’t talking here about bad language but about the very common practice at the time of trying to strengthen a statement by taking an oath. Jews made a distinction between oaths made in the name of God, which could never be broken, and other oaths that didn’t mention God, which could be broken. James encourages his readers to make life much easier by simply telling the truth. The Greeks held that the best guarantee of any statement was not an oath, but the character of the person who made it. Our words are the natural overflow of the lives that we live and so if we live with integrity, people will know that they can trust our words. If we always keep promises, then people will know that the next promise that we make can be relied upon. Speaking the truth is the fundamental building block for every relationship. When relationships break down it is almost always accompanied by lies and deception. The only way to bring a relationship back on course is by learning to speak the truth.

James 5:11 We don’t know exactly what James’ readers were facing, but clearly it was tough for them to live as Christians. They needed to persevere. Amid all the temptations, distractions and persecution, they needed to hang in there for God. Job is a classic illustration of this. Everything went catastrophically wrong for him. He lost his children, his possessions and his health. He had the indignity of being struck with boils and his wife, seeing him sitting in the dust, scratching at his sores, exclaimed, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). But he wouldn’t. He put up not only with his suffering but also with his hopeless companions, whose misguided thinking added another crushing layer to his agonies. However, he didn’t give up. He was confident in God and, in the end, God rewarded him generously. We would love God to fix our difficult situations, and remove all our problems. But there are many times in life when God calls us simply to endure, promisi

James 5:9 The Bible introduces us to lots of grumbling people. Most famously, the people of Israel, who whinged after
God had miraculously led them out of slavery in Egypt. They had been there for 400 years and, at last, were set free by the mighty hand of God. The yoke of oppression had been broken and they were now able to enjoy the sweet taste of freedom. But almost immediately their response was to grumble because things weren’t working out in the way that they had hoped. Nothing much has changed. Grumbling continues to consume huge amounts of time and energy in every part of society. You would hope that churches would be a glorious exception to this rule but, sadly, that isn’t true. James is concerned about this and is severe in his words. Grumbling shouldn’t be taken lightly. It seriously damages the spiritual health of a church and God will judge it. You have been warned! How should we respond to all of this? Billy Graham once observed, “Grumbling and gratitude are, for the child of God, in

James 5:7–8 Waiting sounds easy – until you have to do it! Waiting can be incredibly difficult and demanding, especially if you don’t know how long you are going to have to wait for. Waiting for medical test results, for a member of the family to make contact or for someone to repay a debt, for example, can sap your energy and leave you feeling exhausted, disappointed and confused. The challenge we have to face is that Christians are called to be a waiting people. We are all waiting for the Lord’s return, and no one can be sure when it is going to happen. He is going to return, because that is what he promised to do. In Acts 1:11, after Jesus’ ascension, his disciples were assured, “Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!” I had relatives who were so sure of the Lord’s imminent return that they believed that it was inappropriate to store any food. They felt the Lord might return in the next day or two and so it was irrespo

James 5:1–2 You can almost see the steam coming out of James’ ears can’t you?! He was furious at the way in which rich people were abusing their position. His very specific gripe with them was that they had failed to pay their workmen for mowing their fields. For James this wasn’t a little economic problem. This was an evil that had reached the ears of God himself and the rich people were heading for certain judgement. Let’s be clear that the Bible isn’t against rich people. However, God certainly is against anyone who abuses others. The Bible on many occasions reveals times when rich people have abused their position and exploited others. This was a major theme in the prophecy of Amos. He had particularly severe words for the women of Bashan in chapter 4:1: “You women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and who are always calling to your husbands, ‘Bring us another drink!’” These rich women lived in their charmed and privileged world, totally cut off from the suffering of the poor people on who

James 4:13–14 We are constantly encouraged to plan for the future. Whether we are looking at our family, our housing, our holidays or our pensions we are under continual pressure to make good plans. I don’t think that James was telling his readers not to do any planning, but he did want to prick the bubble of their arrogance. They thought that their life was their possession and that they could do what they liked with it. Not so, says James. The first consideration should be to discover God’s will. This means that, when we do our planning, we should do it on our knees in prayer. Our lives are a gift from God and our families, education, talents and possessions are all part of his gracious generosity to us. In prayer we need to seek his will for the future, holding our plans in humility before him. Seeking to know God’s will is our prime task in life. God loves us perfectly and knows us much better than we know ourselves so discovering his will is as good as life can get. In my late teens I remembe

James 4:7–8 Life can often feel like a battleground. There is great evil in the world – any newspaper will illustrate that in agonising detail. But there is also immense kindness and goodness all around, if we have the eyes to see it. Daily life can often feel like a pitched battle between good and evil. James is concerned that his readers should make good decisions as they live on this battleground and that they should give undivided loyalty to God. It is true that the devil is active and that his entire mission is to destroy. He prowls around like a roaring lion looking for people to devour (1 Peter 5:8). But the good news is that God is stronger and so we don’t need to live in fear of the devil. If we resist him then he will flee from us. When Jesus died on the cross he won the ultimate victory over the power of evil, and so our task is simply to claim that victory. Clearly evil didn’t come to an end on the cross. The world is still full of evil. What happened on the cross was like D Day. Once that

James 4:6–7 Did you know that God is capable of hatred? Perhaps you think that God is so nice that he couldn’t bring himself to hate anything. The fact is that the Bible is quite clear that God seethes with hatred at times. In Proverbs 6:16–19 we learn that God hates seven things and top of the list is pride. God’s problem with pride is that it is a complete rejection of him. The proud person doesn’t have any need for him, but lives a life in defiance of God’s will. And so we read that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. We therefore need to unpack carefully what this word ‘humble’ means because it is clearly the gateway to true blessing. Humility doesn’t sound too attractive. We have awful images of people putting on an act, claiming to be but a mere worm and totally unworthy. That’s false humility. True humility is the reverse of pride. The proud person has hands that are so full of their own excellence that they are unable to receive anything from God. The humble person comes t

James 4:2–3 If you could have anything in the world, what would you choose? A beautiful large home? A yacht? A luxurious holiday; perfect health; world peace? Verse two seem to suggest that we just need to ask God and we will get whatever we want. But verse three makes it clear that we need to ask with the right motive. This means that God loves us so much that he doesn’t necessarily give us what we say we want. Imagine for a moment that we did get whatever our selfish desires demanded. We would be in control because everything would happen in exactly the way we wanted, and at precisely the time that we demanded it. That sounds like the perfect world. However, the Bible has a technical word to describe such a place –hell. It’s the place where God is not. Our selfish desires would have pushed him out. What James is telling us is that our gracious, loving Father has a better plan. God delights in giving good gifts to his children. Jesus observed that it was unthinkable that a father would give his s

James 3:17–18 Many churches these days observe that they have very few people in their 20s and 30s. Whenever I’ve asked people in that age group what they are looking for one theme dominates – authenticity. They are looking for Christians and churches that ring true because they practise what they preach. James was on exactly the same page and was ruthless in addressing those who say the right words but live a phoney life. What he longed for was truly wise people. Living wisely is attractive in every way. The wisdom comes directly from God but it has very down-to-earth implications. James draws particular attention to the fact that wise people love peace and go out of their way to cultivate it. You will never find a wise person trumpeting their wisdom. They just get on with doing God’s work, and God is always in the business of drawing people into the fullest experience of his peace. The word for peace that James uses here is built on the Hebrew word ‘shalom’. Shalom means peace, but much more tha

James 3:3-5 The tongue is incredibly powerful, for good or ill. I recall the story of a young man who shared some gossip about the local clergyman. Having heard about the rumours, the clergyman, with great gentleness and wisdom, took the young man to the top of the church tower. Once there, he handed him a feather pillow and asked him to rip it open. The feathers floated all over the village. Some of them, lifted by the air currents, headed off into the far distance. The clergyman then invited the young man to put the feathers back into the pillow. The young man protested: it was impossible! The clergyman pointed out that it was exactly the same with the rumours he had been spreading. Once our words have been spoken, they take on a life of their own. They cannot be taken back. This places an enormous responsibility on all of us, and particularly on those of us who are teachers and preachers. This chapter begins by James asserting that not many should presume to be teachers, because we will

James 2:15-17 You’ve probably noticed that Christians use a lot of words! Preaching, singing, praying and fellowship all involve oceans of words. And that’s fine, as long as our words also translate into action. Otherwise, we should just be quiet! You can preach the finest sermon, sing the most beautiful song of worship, pray the most articulate prayer and enjoy the warmest fellowship but if godly actions don’t result, it is all a dangerous waste of time. James doesn’t know how to beat around the bush. He goes straight for the jugular every time! He wants to see every Christian busily involved in turning their fine words into action. He is appalled at the thought that someone who claims to love God could see a Christian brother or sister in need and do nothing about it. It should never happen. I wonder how that translates into our situation today. Many of the early Christians were poor. Many were probably slaves, and without a welfare state it was easy for them to fall on hard times. Life to

James 2:1 Do you have favourites? Or do you look at all other people in exactly the same way whatever their age, education, wealth, beauty, race or religion, and irrespective of whether you know them or not? We would all like to claim that we don’t have favourites, but James points out to his readers that favouritism very easily creeps into our thinking. James describes a situation that could happen in any local church. A wealthy person comes into a service and is welcomed generously and given a good seat. He is followed by a scruffy man, whose poverty is plain for all to see, who is rudely told to sit down or find a place on the floor. James proclaims boldly that this should not happen. Favouritism should not happen in us or our churches because God doesn’t do it. God welcomes everyone, whoever they are, and we are called to do the same. On the face of it, this sounds very reasonable and straightforward. But it is far harder to put into practice. We all have preferences and we all get on with

James 1:23-24 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. I love the way James writes, but I’m not too sure he would make easy company! He is so incredibly blunt. Here he makes the obvious but powerful point that there would be no use in looking in a mirror if it didn’t cause you to do something as a result. If you learn that your hair looks a complete mess, then action is required! If the Christian faith doesn’t get translated into daily action, James wants nothing to do with it. Reading the Bible is not like reading any other book. Other books might be entertaining, interesting or informative but they rarely change our lives. But the Bible is one of the principal ways in which God has chosen to speak to us. So whenever we read it, we need to ask: “Lord what are you saying to me?” If we merely read the Bible as a beautiful work of literature, we are missing the point. In Psalm 1, the writer s

James 1:5 If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. Life constantly throws challenges at us. How should I be spending my time and money? Should I move to a different job? How can I resolve the dispute with my next door neighbour? Should I let my colleague know that he’s annoying me? How should I tell my daughter that I think she’s seeing the wrong people? So many questions! The Bible focuses a lot of attention on the subject of wisdom, in both the Old and the New Testaments. Wisdom is very different from knowledge. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but it will do you no good at all if you are not wise. James points to God as the source of wisdom and encourages his readers to understand that God loves sharing his wisdom with us. In the Old Testament, we learn a lot about wisdom in the book of Proverbs. There we find down-to-earth, straightforward advice and guidance for life. It speaks so directly into our lives that, at times, i

James 1:2-3 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. Having problems, trials and difficulties hardly sounds like the best way to create joy. So what is James talking about in these verses? It may sound ridiculous, but he is taking his readers to the heart of the Christian faith, which turns everything upside down. James is not saying that when we face difficulties it will be a bundle of fun. He is speaking to people who knew what it was to suffer for their faith. He wants them to know that, when we place our difficulties in God’s hands, he produces something in us that lasts. Something that takes us closer to the heart of God, and that always produces joy. I have had a bad back for many years. At times, I’ve lived with pain night and day. It’s certainly not fun. But I thank God for the way in which he has used it to lead me closer to him. It has, unquest