Lesson 5 -Summary James 1

For the first time in a while, it not ever in this series, I felt like I needed to have a summary lesson of what we had been doing. We are well into 1 Timothy now, so this may be a one off. I constantly feel the call to listen to God, and often feel I am waiting.  One of my needs is to learn to look out rather than in while waiting.

• What does ‘broken for you’ mean to you?

I totally forgot we had this lesson. I wanted to do it because we saw so much material in James 1 and took it in in small bite size chunks. Broken for you is the phrase from communion about Christ’s body. I struggle to even contemplate the phrase outside this meaning and how Jesus the man gave up everything to be my Messiah.

• What does it mean to serve to you?

Serve on a grand scale means to put the glorification of God above all else. Bringing it down a notch it means putting your own good aside to help someone else. It goes beyond being humble to being willing to be humiliated.

• What does ‘slow’ mean to you?

Slow in this context means to act out of thought and not human reaction. I dreamed of a situation with a snake and in it, the natural reaction was to jerk away, but the thoughtful action was to move slowly and then respond quickly only when sure you could overcome the challenge.

• What does ‘trials’ mean to you?

In my mind, I feel this word to mean opportunities to recognize our need for God for the best outcome. Losing a job and having to find a new one. It is an opportunity to follow all the best practices, but it is also a chance to see where God is leading you.

• What does ‘testing’ mean to you?

Testing feels like a trial that signals you are ready for the next step. Passing the first actuarial test will signal that the big kid is ready to put that into practice and start learning the next topic. I think they have seven possible tests. As engineers, we generally only had two or three. In life, spiritually it signals that you have enough faith to serve God in a more challenging manner. I fail a lot of these tests as I wallow in my pride.

• What does ‘nations’ mean to you?

In a time when we have large godless nations leading the world, I think we forget that the general meaning was small independent people groups. Texas is too large a group for everyone to agree and its leaders pull millions of people along a path paved by the rich and greedy (some even in the name of same God I serve).

• What does Ground Hog Day mean to you?

The day on the calendar is a joke to let the kids know it will eventually warm up. The movie shows many things, but my favorite is how the main character learns to help others as a way to achieve. He eventually achieves his goal, but only because a supernatural series of events allowed him to fail enough tests to change his heart.

• What did you learn from the last non-biblical book you read? 

It has been so long I forgot why I asked this. I just yesterday as we visited the home of a famous author was thinking that I do not read books outside the Bible to learn something. I did when I was in school, but I never really read fiction to learn something. I enjoy reading fiction, but I can hardly ever read a book twice. And even when I do, I am not sure I retain anything additional. The only real fiction I can remember rereading was all the Isaac Asimov fiction around robots. Across the dozens of books, it was good to read them all in order, but never sure I learned anything. Guess that’s why I try to stick to learning from the Bible.