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Created Equal Part 3

Happy Saturday! 

Hope you all had a wonderful week and are getting a good start to a wonderful weekend. It is a working day for us. I have things that need done around here, some things to help my mom with and some things at the office today and of course, all those Saturday things like cleaning house and groceries. Hopefully, the guys are going to get a new mailbox put up at Robert's as apparently, the mail lady refuses to deliver mail to the old one. 

We are heading into a really busy month of August. I have important meetings on Monday and Tuesday, we are trying to do job interviews, I have a trip to Carlinville Wednesday and an outreach event Saturday. I leave, with Andrew in tow, next Sunday for a week of tech learning, home for a few days then go to the Lincoln Balloon festival, then home for a few days and head to Detroit for the National Community Action Partnership conference and by the time I get home, it will be Labor Day weekend and the month of August is gone. And smack dab in the middle of all of that, I will turn 58. 

I am good with the birthday coming. I know I feel I am healthier now than I have been for years, so the number is just that. If it weren't for the bags under my eyes and my turkey neck, I wouldn't even think I was getting older, lol. Anyway, I hope August brings good things for you. I always think of it as a new beginning time because the kids are going back to school, time goes fast. As it is said now, the days are long, but the years are short. Amen

We are continuing our study in James today with chapter 2 verses 8-11 and are getting to the heart of this passage. 

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,”[a] you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,”[b] also said, “You shall not murder.”[c] If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

So, lets dive in. Using the HEAR method, let's look at verse 8.

Highlight = Love your neighbor as yourself. Explain = I feel we are in a time in history where more people dislike themselves than ever before so this verse gets harder to explain because there are people out there who treat everyone around them better than they treat themselves but there are those who treat others around them badly because they are miserable themselves. One of the things I see most, and I am not judging, please understand, it is just an observation. People claim to have a belief in God but no faith in Him. I think that makes it hard to live life in general. If there is a roadblock put in our lives, instead of praying to God, knowing He will guide you where He wants them, they immediately start telling everyone how terrible life is. But the bottom line is, God wants us to love who He is molding us into and who we are when the Holy Spirit is living in us and then spread that love to everyone around us. This means showing lots of grace when we want to show malice. Apply = the next time someone says something to you that isn't nice, or cuts you off in traffic, or just truly does something selfish, let's practice showing love and mercy. You can never match the amount of mercy that God showed us by sacrificing Jesus on the cross but let our actions show His love and mercy through us to everyone we see. Respond = Dear Lord, please help us be merciful first. Let us put unkind words and actions in our past life and treat others as we want to be treated. Help us not judge people on something that happened in a matter of seconds as we wouldn't want to be judged on something that happened in our worst moments. You know our hearts, help us show others our hearts too and let them be a true reflection of You.

Verse 9

Highlight = but if you show favoritism. Explain = Digging deeper into verse 8 here. Let's say you have one friend who can be brutally honest with you about your actions, and you take it at face value and use it to better yourself. If someone says to you, "Just wanting you to know, people are thinking you are being harsh", and you say, okay, I will watch that;  but someone else that you don't have the same feelings about tells you the same thing and it makes you mad and you build even more resentment towards that person. This is from personal experience, and it may not have been the exact conversation, but I have been in this position myself this week and this verse really stands out in this way. I know everyone was expecting me to go back to the, "you sit here but you stand here" but honestly, isn't it the same thing? And yes, this is a big thing I need to work on. Apply = I have a few people in my life that quite honestly, anytime they say something to me, I am in defense mode before they even open their mouths. Now, I will also say, it is because I have been bit more than once but the thing is, I need to learn to let those feelings go and let the past be in the past and remember, the way they treat me is on them, the way I treat them is not only on me, but a reflection of Christ in me. I think about how gently Jesus always talked to the Pharisees, even though they truly wanted him dead. If He could be that calm to someone with so much animosity towards Him, I can handle being kinder to those who haven't always been kind to me. Respond = Dear Lord, help me ask You to lead me every time I encounter someone who I might not have always had the greatest relationship with. Help me have Your eyes in these situations and let me show Your light shining through me instead of letting my bad thoughts take control.

Verses 10-11

Highlight = Whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles at just one point. Explain = And here we get to the heart of the matter. If we don't follow the example of Jesus and the way He treated others, we are sinning. I know, that is harsh but let's think about the reasons we would treat someone badly. Let's think about some of the ten commandments. A couple are mentioned in verse 11 and reminds us that just because we don't break 9 of the ten commandments, if we break 1, we are guilty of breaking them all.   Are we jealous? are we putting something ahead of God? Are we not respecting people the way we should? According to the Bible, jealousy is every bit as bad as murder. That is such a hard concept to face, but sin is sin is sin is sin, it doesn't change.  What about 1 John 2:16, that reminds us that all sin can be under one of three things, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. When you really break it down, if you are treating someone badly, it is over one of these things. Think about that. If someone accuses you of not doing something you should have, isn't that really hurting your pride? If you don't like someone because they act like they are better than you, isn't that really lust because you wouldn't be thinking they think they were better than you if you didn't see something they have that you don't. Apply = This is deep, but yes, that person that I have issues with above, that is my space. I think they think they are better than me, or maybe deep down inside, I feel they are better than me so I displace my own jealousy as not liking them. Still a sin. and still very hard to hear, but true. So, how is getting mad about someone cutting you off in traffic fall into one of those you might ask? Well, they got ahead of you, again, they are "better" than you because they are going to get someplace 3 seconds before you, yes, it was rude, but if you have the heart of Christ, can you tell yourself, "maybe they NEEDED to be there 3 seconds before you"? Respond = Lord, this is a struggle. I have always said, "I don't have doormat written on my forehead" and I will continue to feel that way, but I will try harder to not treat people badly in my journey even when I need to stand my ground. I remember Jesus standing His ground but doing it with love and compassion even when people were out to truly kill him. Let me do it that way.

This was a hard lesson for me to write, and I always get the shivers a little when I realize I am writing to myself more than anyone else and that God put things in my life this week that made this very real and pointed out how far from perfect I am in this life. Thankfully, we know we aren't perfect, but we must always try our best to be our best for His glory and we know that we are sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ, even when we fail. Thank you Jesus for the Blood. I haven't been doing songs every week but this just lends itself to that song, so I am adding it. 


Have a great next week and I hope you practice mercy and grace!



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