Ouch

   I started our study with a quote from the editor of our study guide. Basically it said this: The problem with James isn't that it's hard to understand, it's that it is all too easy to understand.
    So this week we continued to confront "self" as it controls our lives, causing fighting and arguing and going our own way. Ultimately operating out of the "self" makes us a friend of the world, and according to James, an enemy of God. For how can we submit to God and operate out of our self at the same time.
    I did a little project when I got home. I studied two of the ideas that we had talked about during our study; double-minded and submit to God.  I would encourage you to do the same thing. The idea of being double-minded, often couched in opposing ideas [worldly wisdom/earthly wisdom, out of the same mouth come blessing and cursing, humble/proud] or even in the idea of simple, unpolluted purity occurs over 20 times in this book!
   And of course the main application of this double-minded  state is in our relationship with God. Are we all in? as someone said Tuesday.
    The concept of submission to God is not mentioned as often, but it is there from the very beginning of the book. "Let endurance have it's perfect work..." Doesn't that mean to submit to what God is doing?  The idea of humbly accepting the word, acting as those who will be judged by the law of liberty, even waiting until the Lord's coming, which we will talk about next week, are all ways of submitting to God.
    And I have been convicted again how easily we [not unbelievers.....us...] can go blithely on our way claiming to follow God but living out of self. I certainly know I have and continue to see in my own life rank commitment to self, even disguised as serving God.
    This is not that hard to understand. The thing that is hard is in every moment being aware of both the will of God and the state of our own hearts. If we haven't thought about it lately, I'm pretty sure we're serving self. Maybe serving God instead can become habitual with a lot of practice. I know I'm not there yet.
    What is the will of God in this moment? Have we been practicing our connection with the Spirit so that we know what He's saying? And where are our hearts? This is a great place to apply James' illustration of looking into the mirror of the word intently, and remembering what we saw there even after we shut the book.