James Session 12
Tom Shrader wraps up his exposition of James by emphasizing the book's central theme: faith must be tested to become real and produce endurance. He calls listeners to live with eternal perspective, understanding that this life is but a vapor, and to find their identity and hope in Christ alone rather than in temporal things. Shrader encourages believers to embrace patience through suffering, knowing that God is full of compassion and mercy, and that failure is never fatal for those who trust in Jesus.
“Failure is never fatal - failure never has to be your epitaph, it never has to be the final word.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: James (2009)
Recorded: 2009 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 39 min
Themes: faith, endurance, suffering, patience, hope, perseverance, testing, identity, experiencing hardship, struggling believer, going through trials, facing uncertainty, mature christian, discouraged believer, seeking purpose, dealing with failure
Scripture: James 5:1-5, James 5:7-11, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, John 14:1-6, John 17
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, trials, providence, eternal perspective, biblical hope, compassion, mercy
Full Transcript
They're going to Seattle and they're taking off on a cruise, which sounds really great to me, and I wish I was going, except that to get there, they're leaving here at 4:45. So, I'm going to let that ship sail without me. But I wish I was going on that cruise. We've done it a couple times. Thanks for allowing us to be with you as well.
This is obviously the home stretch in my experience, whether it's a summer camp with kids or like a week up here, this is really a session that, as I said this morning, for many of us, we already start to mentally just kind of pack. No flash photography, please. No, I'm just kidding. You should have seen the poor lady's face. Oh, I'm so sorry. No, I'm teasing you. That's funny. Makes me laugh.
I want to, again, everybody's been thanked, so I'm not going to just go down that list, but I do want to thank Jeff and Janet and Lisa for hosting us and having this wonderful place. I would just encourage you, we were talking at lunch today about camps in Phoenix and the Arizona area. There's nothing like this down our way. We can kind of head to Forest Home, which is really pretty cool, and we go over there, but it's not this. I mean, this is a very special place.
So, I really encourage you to share with your friends, and this is the kind of thing that could be a really bonding time. You get a small group who decides to come and spend a short week here, a full week here. They're either going to love each other or hate each other even more by the end of that week, and this would be a great opportunity to come here. This is just a wonderful place, so we're grateful for the opportunity to be here, to be here next year over Labor Day next year, so that'll be fun for us, too. Fun to see some of you for the third or fourth time, and again, thank you for allowing us to be here.
Background and Context of James
We're looking at the book of James, and I kind of want to just try to tie it all together, if I could do that. We took a really quick flyover, especially once we got to kind of chapter 4 and 5, but we left off this morning talking about the call that we have to come and to depend upon Him, the finiteness of life. We said that James reminds us that we are just a vapor.
Can I remind you just a couple of background things? James is the first book chronologically written that we have here in the New Testament. It is James, the half-brother of Jesus, writing to a Jewish audience who have become Christians, who are scattered outside of Palestine, and as a result, they are experiencing all sorts of physical hardship and difficulties, and James is writing to encourage them, challenge them as well. We said that word brother or brethren appears 13 times in the book. James is calling them and saying, listen, because your followers of Christ live this way.
The Challenge of Interpreting James
There's been a lot of difficulty and challenge in terms of interpretation of James, and it can just drift into your life, especially if we forget the context, and that is that James is not explaining to us a means of salvation, but James is giving to us the result of salvation. James is telling us from the very beginning that faith is really important, and that faith to really become real to you has to be tested. It has to be tried.
I think James is pointing out to us that there is such a thing as a faith that's a dead faith, and what He means is that it's a stillborn faith that was never real to begin with. So I think we understand that there will be people who have made a profession of faith, but the faith wasn't real. But if indeed Jesus is my Lord and Savior, I'm going to be able to see it.
And so there are all sorts of questions about, well, what is that behavior? What does that look like? And I don't want to drift into some sort of legalism at all. I'm not into that. I just want to say that you're going to be able to see it, and you're going to be the judge of it, and you're going to see a heart that's motivated and a heart that's different.
The Central Message: Christ and Him Crucified
And that as we work our way through life and as we work our way through Scripture, exactly what Brandon and Christus sang about at the very end is we have one message. It's the cross. I mean, Paul understood that, didn't He? He said, I preach one thing to you, Christ and Christ crucified. Now I talk about all these other things in line. I'll talk to you about kids. I'll talk to you about family. I'll talk to you about business. I'll talk to you about how you deal with sin in the church, how you deal with one another. I'll talk about all those different things in your life. But overriding all of that and driving the understanding of that is Christ and Christ crucified.
So there should be, hopefully, I don't know that I've ever been in a setting where I've seen more people coming in with notebooks, which is really encouraging to me. There's a little presumptuous that I would have something to say. I don't think I do. But I do think the Spirit does use His word and the time for that.
Faith Will Be Tested
And one of the giant things that I begin to understand is that my faith will be tested. And the result of that is not to bring discomfort into my life or hardship into my life, but to show me what my faith is really all about. And to give me endurance, to make me ready to run the race, to say I ran the race. I fought the good fight, kept the faith, finished that race.
You know what's interesting to that, for me, is that's Paul's assessment of His life. I'll hear all the time, I want to hear at the end of my life, well done, good and faithful service. Yeah, me too. It is amazing to me that Paul at the end of His life could say that. I fought the good fight, I kept the faith, you know, I finished that race, I broke the tape, I'm the one, I hung in there. That's His assessment, not anyone else's.
Can you say that? I don't know. If we're driving back to Portland tomorrow and Lisa's driving us and something happens and my life is over tomorrow, am I going to be able to say that? Rather than me, how about you, could you say that?
And if you go, well, I don't know if I could or not, that's certainly what I want, that's what I want to be able to say. In all likelihood it's not going to happen to me tomorrow, but I do want to be in a position where at the end of my life, if I were to have that moment where I could actually meditate, contemplate and render some sort of verdict on my life, I'd love to be able to say that.
Well, here's what I'm saying to you. If that's what you want to be able to say, then let's draw a line in the sand right now. Let's pull out today's date. It's July 31st, 2009. Let's draw that line in the sand right now and say, from this moment, this place right here, right now, I'm going to take my energy, my effort, my talent, and I'm going to drive toward that goal of being able to say at the end of my life, I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith.
You can do that as a follower of Christ. Not naturally, it's supernaturally. It involves all sorts of little mundane decisions along the way.
Living in the Ordinary
I have a talk somewhere that I've done, and I don't have a clue where it is, called Mastering the Mundane - living the ordinariness of life. We love those mountaintops, but I don't live in the mountaintops. I live down in just the slugging it out, driving to work. I talked to one of the maintenance guys today, I said, how's work? He said, it's picking up. He thought it was funny. I said, that isn't funny.
It's the ordinariness of life. The simple things that reveal for you your real heart condition. Susan and I live roughly three and a half minutes from the church. I back out, I go just down about five houses, make a left, go a few blocks, make a right, go down, make a left, I'm onto a street, and then I come to a stoplight at the corner of McQueen and Elliott, and then I go left a quarter of a mile and I'm at the church. I mean, there's just nothing to it.
That stoplight at McQueen and Elliott has ruined more days for me. I get to church on Sunday morning at 4:45 approximately. There's no one in the street. But if you don't hit that light right, because I need an arrow, if you don't hit that light right with the arrow, you'll have to sit. And I can sit there for as long as, I don't know, 35 or 40 seconds. And I'll get so frustrated.
What's that tell you? Because I blame the city planners. I blame traffic control. What it tells me is I've got a very impatient heart. It just reveals what's in there. That's what James said about the tongue. So all this stuff that comes spewing out of you, in those moments of real honesty, what that's doing is really revealing what's there in your heart.
James on Wealth and Worldliness
And then He begins to talk to us, as we ramped it up this morning, He talks to us about our own wealth and our own view of life. He talks about us living in a relationship with the world. He talks about us not saving up for a rainy day, but hoarding things.
Let me read you again, because we read them in sections. Let me read them all together. It's James chapter 5, verses 1 through 5. And I'm going to read to you from Eugene Peterson's The Message: "And a final word to you, arrogant rich. Take some lessons in lament. You'll need buckets for the tears when your crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt. Your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. You're piling up judgment. All the workers you've exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groan of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the master avenger. You looted the earth and lived it up, but all you have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse."
The Eternal Perspective
James says that change lives change lives. James says life is but a vapor and you need to have this eternal perspective. 2 Corinthians 4, verses 16, 17, and 18: "Don't lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Why? Because we look at the things that aren't seen, not the things that are seen. The things that are seen are temporal, the things that aren't seen are eternal, and that's what we look at."
That's our perspective. James says that's what we look at. That's the grid. That's how we make our decision. That's what drives us. And what happens is that all of those little things along the way that become such huge deals begin to just fall into place in perspective.
The Call to Patience
As James closes this book, He uses the word patient three times in verse seven and eight. "Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Here's an illustration. Behold, the farmer, He waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it until it gets the early and late rain. You, too, be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand."
"Don't complain, brethren. Don't complain against one another that you yourself may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door." That refers back to what we were talking about this morning. We don't need to be beating up each other. God will do the judging.
"As an example, my brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke the name of the Lord. Behold, we count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you've seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful."
He says, be patient. It requires long term thinking. It's not living for today. It's not consumed with this moment. He says, look at the farmer.
The Farmer's Example
Susan and Haley are trying to teach all sorts of things to the boys. And one of the things they decided to show them is flowers growing. So they decided to plant sunflowers. Well, the boys have no concept of any of this. Braden is, you know, he'll be four in November. Yale's one and
A half. And so they don't have any concept of time. So they go out and they get the dirt and they move the dirt around and they prepare the soil. They put the seeds in and they show them the packet. And this is going to have flowers, flowers like this. And so they move it around and they get it all right and they water it. The day comes to an end.
The boys go to sleep and they wake up the next morning. And the first thing they want to see where the flowers, mom. Let's go see the flowers. Well, they're dirt. Well, where are they? How do we get the flowers? Well, we just keep that soil real loose and we keep watering it. And then they'll begin to pop up and we'll get these little sprouts and then it'll grow a little higher.
We have to nurture. We have to protect it from the elements. That you get enough sun, but not too much sun and enough water, but not too much water. And we have to really guard against it. We have to really protect it. And that's how we'll get it. Well, I want that flower now, mom. Can I have a flower now, mom? No, no, it's patience.
Just a perfect picture of us, isn't it? I want that now, God. I love all those rich promises that you gave me. I want to just sit and I want to bask in them and enjoy them. And God said, that's fine, but you're going to have to be patient. But I don't want to be patient. God, I'm impatient. Give me patience. I want patience now. It's how I begin to think and all of a sudden, that's what I want. I'm impatient for this patient thing.
The Prophets and Suffering
And then he says, well, in verse 10, I want to add something to it. Think about Job for a second and think about the prophets. The prophets come into the nation and they declare the way of the Lord. And most of them were just agonizingly, lonely, desperate people, hated by and large. I mean, the most reluctant of all would be a guy like Jonah, right? He didn't want to go to Nineveh. I don't even want to go there. You know why? They're going to believe. And God saves the city and Jonah's hacked off. See, I knew that. That's the kind of God you are, that you'd save those people like that. That really burns me up, God. And that's the end of the book.
The Example of Job
Think of Job. Job's moving along and scripture tells us he's a holy man, a righteous man. And Satan comes to God and says, look at Job. And God said, yeah, he's really something, isn't he? He said, well, sure he is. You've given him everything. You've given him everything. Why would Job not be happy? Let me take some of that stuff away from him. Let's see how he responds. So God says, all right, I'm going to put these parameters around him, but you go ahead and take this.
And the cattle are gone, and servants are gone, and pretty soon kids are gone, and everything's gone. It just goes worse, worse, worse. And just as Job's saying, well, at least I have my health, he gets hit with boils. And at the end of the day, when all of that's done, the only thing Job has left is the one thing he'd love to lose, and that's his wife. That's the only thing he's got left. Take my wife, please. It's there.
And Job goes through all of this, and God gives us a little peek into suffering. Because if you were like Job's friends, and some of you are, you'd be dealing with somebody in a situation like that and say, what the heck's wrong with you? What have you done? Well, not that he was wholly blameless. He's doing fine. And God put Job through that for Job's sake and for our sake. So at the end of his life, Job could say, hey, before I had heard a whole bunch about you, now I've seen you. See, that's when it becomes real.
Learning Through Suffering
Like in our life, when suffering comes so often, the very first thing we want to do is find some sort of relief for it. You know, 12 steps to this, seven ways to this. Rather than say, hey, God, what are you trying to teach me in the midst of this suffering? We missed the lesson. That's what James is saying. He started with trials, and he ends with patience and suffering. And he says, hang in there. Endure.
Prayer for the Sick
Now, the balance of this book talks about prayer. I'm not going to go into it. It certainly seems to say, if you're sick, not seems to say, it does say, if you're sick, call the elders and they'll pray for you. There's a whole bunch of discussion about whether that sick there is a physical sickness or a spiritual sickness. John MacArthur does an interesting job of unpacking that and pointing out how that word that's translated sick is translated physically sick, like 18 times in the New Testament. But 14 times, it's described as being weary or spiritually sick. So you take that either way you want.
In our church, if somebody's sick and they call the elders, we'll pray with them. We'll anoint them with oil. Here's my strategy. Here's what I believe. If I'm sick, I'm going to pray fervently on the way to the doctor. I'm going to see, how's God going to heal me? Even the word anoint there is used not only as a ceremonial anointing, but also medicinally. So is he talking about a physical sickness, a spiritual sickness? I'm just going to say yes.
Community and Confession
He says in verse 16, confess your sins one to another. Well, it seems to me now he's talking about community that can take place, pray for one another, care for one another. And that seems to me to be the perfect bow on this book. It's a book that we see from the very beginning is about wisdom.
The Great Goal of Christian Maturity
One of the authors writes this, the great goal of all of life is Christian maturity. Toward this, we are to bend all our efforts. Life's pleasant paths are made all the sweeter as we keep in mind that they lead to this great spiritual end. Life's grim moments are to be endured patiently, remembering that patience and persistence turns sorrows into stepping stones. Against this entire backdrop is this idea of eternity. You don't need to turn there, and it's probably just a very familiar passage to so many of you. I'll tell you, sometimes people are looking for something to study.
Finding True Fulfillment
I'll give you a great study. If you want a great thing to study, study John, the Gospel of John, chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17. That is Jesus in His last communication with His homeboys before He leaves. This is what He's saying to them. The last chapter, John 17, is truly the Lord's prayer. Not the Lord's prayer as we know it, but it's Jesus praying that night for them, for you, for us.
He begins this whole discussion with these words in John 14:1: "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me." So don't be worried here, guys. You trusted God, you trust me. "In my father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. But I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again. And I will receive you to myself, that where I am there you may be also. And you know where I'm going."
Thomas said, "Lord, we don't have a clue where you're going." And He said, "I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." There's the Gospel message again. There's the cross again. But He precedes it with this discussion about, "I go and prepare a place for you. Don't you be anxious here. I'm going to go there and prepare a place for you."
A Customized Place in Heaven
I may be taking a little bit of liberty here, and if so, I'm willing to confess it. But He says, "I go and prepare a place for you." It seems to me it's a customized place. It's a place where I fit. It's a place that as I drive toward my 60th birthday—young to some of you, older to others—as I drive to that 60th birthday, I yearn more and more for my real home.
Peggy Noonan, and I enjoy reading Peggy Noonan, wrote a wonderful book called What I Saw at the Revolution about Ronald Reagan. Peggy Noonan offered this observation: we're the first generation in mankind to actually think we can find happiness and fulfillment on Earth. We actually think we're going to find it.
Now, here's what I'm discovering. More and more, earlier and earlier, people are saying, no, I'm not going to be happy there. When we deal with 15, 16-year-old high school students, they've experienced as much life as I did by age 30. They've already tried all sorts of stuff, and I'm not just talking about the sex and the drugs. I'm saying they've got everything.
The Problem with Having Everything
When you say to a kid today, "You shape up, or I'm going to send you to your room," oh wow, that's a killer. "I got all these games. I got a plasma TV. I got my iPhone. Yeah, that's tough. Thanks." They have everything.
When I was a little boy, we would start, sometimes in summer, answering this question: What do you want for Christmas? I remember two in particular. I wanted a bike, and my brother Dan wanted a bike. We both got bikes. I got a green one, he got a blue one. Blue's my favorite color. But I got a bike. Waited all year for it.
One year, and I was in eighth grade, so it would have been 1964, I wanted a stereo. Wanted some way to play records. I remember Christmas morning, sitting there in front of that stereo, putting on Meet the Beatles. We waited all year for that. My dad told me the next day or two that he hadn't planned on getting that, but I wanted it so much, and he was so determined to try to please me on that day. But we waited all year for it.
We used to have something called Christmas clubs. Remember that? Where you'd put away $2 a month, so that when Christmas came, you'd have $25 to spend on Christmas. Now when Christmas comes, and you're trying to buy a gift for somebody, you're really hard pressed to try to figure out what am I going to get them. So we get hot air balloon rides and all sorts of stuff, because we've got to make stuff up. Because everybody's got everything. There's nobody waiting for anything.
Our True Need
Well, if I've got everything the world has to offer, I'm going to come up empty. Because I need more than what the world has to offer. I need Jesus. C.S. Lewis writes, "If you aim for heaven, you get earth thrown in. If you aim for earth, you get neither."
We are in that land of the dying, going to the land of the living. We carry a passport that, for most of us, says USA. But a passport in our heart that's stamped citizen of the kingdom of God. And then He says, now live like it.
The Godliness of Salvation
I make a pitch in here that lines up with a lot of what we've been talking about all week. This is going to be kind of an odd, perhaps, for you, an odd statement. There's a sense in which the godliest I will ever feel is at the moment of my salvation. Let that just kind of sink in for a moment, would you? The reason is, the rest of my life, God is exposing to me my own sin.
J. Vernon McGee tells this wonderful story of being at church on a Monday. He was rarely there. The phone rang, and he answered it. He got a call from a lady, little old lady in the church. Every church has one. Little old lady, she's 92, 93, 94. She said, "Pastor McGee, I need to come and see you right now." He said, "Well, I'm really—" She said, "I need to see you right now. I need to see you right now. I've sinned. I've sinned so badly before God, and I need to see you."
Well, out of curiosity, if nothing else, he said, "Why don't you come over?" In she came, and she was distraught. You could clearly look at her and see that she had been up all night in angst over her sin. So McGee said to her, "What did you do?" She said, "Do you remember seeing me at church yesterday?" "Yes, I do." "Do you remember talking to me?" "Yes, I do." "Do you remember what I said?" He said, "No, I don't." She said, "I told you that the sermon was good. It wasn't." She had been up all night, her heart wrenching over something that you all do all the time. She was so in tune with God and His spirit and who He
is that a casual comment that you might make, just to even make small talk or make him feel good, she did not have a clear conscience about that and couldn't sleep that night over that thing. Do you see how in tune with the Holy Spirit she was?
The godliest I should have ever felt is that moment of conversion. From that moment on, the Holy Spirit is doing His work to take my heart and open it up, to peel away my sin layer by layer by layer, to show me just how desperate and wicked I am, how despicable and unworthy I am. Not so I'll be filled with despair. That would be Judas. He saw his sin and couldn't handle it and ended his life in despair. Peter saw his sin, understood his helplessness, but realized he wasn't hopeless and placed his faith and trust in Christ.
Peter's Transformation
I love the story of Peter. Because if we do word association and I say Peter to you, your association typically back is er, er, er. We rarely let him get out of the Gospels. We want to go right to his biggest failure. And you tend to do that with other people. Let me tell you something else. And you tend to do it with yourself.
Sometimes those failures are so big in your life that you're wondering, is there any hope for me? It's not just that Peter was forgiven. It's that Peter was used in a mighty way. This man who could not name the name of Christ before a little servant girl now boldly proclaims the Gospel. God saves 3,000 people. The magistrates call him in and say, you need to stop it. And he said, you know what? I want to obey you the best I can. But I can't stop talking about Jesus. Why? Well, his heart has been changed. His life has been changed.
Failure Is Never Fatal
Here you go. Failure is never fatal. Failure never has to be your epithet. It never has to be the final word. You may be sitting there right now, feeling like the biggest failure loser in the whole world. You may be feeling like this whole Christian thing has just been a giant game for you. That's fine. Confess it. He can handle that. You're not telling God something He doesn't know.
Maybe you've just been through the whole thing and it's been all an act. I'm not saying you're not even saved. I'm just saying you're just going through the motions, checking the boxes, working in the Sunday school, going to church, going to a conference center, because it's a thing to do. But your heart just got dry. That's okay. Nothing wrong with that. Just confess it. God is there. He's patient.
James tucks that in there. He talks about patience, and he talks about suffering. He says in verse 11, "Behold, we count those blessed who have endured. You've heard of the endurance of Job, and you've seen the outcomes of the Lord dealing. Here's the Lord. This is the Lord that you serve. He is full of compassion, and He is full of mercy." He forgives. He'll use you.
The Testing Grounds Ahead
As you journey back from this place, I guarantee you that tomorrow, somewhere along the way, you're going to hit a wall. It happens every camp, whether it's a Cannon Beach or junior high camp, whether it's a men's conference, a women's conference, marriage, it doesn't matter. This is a moment that is unique and special. This is the classroom, but you are about to go into the laboratory. This is where you declare how God has changed your life, and now you are going to go into the proving grounds, the testing ground.
You're going to live that equation. Faith plus trials equals endurance. You're going to find out. You're going to live that life now. And for most of us, in the next week, we're going to screw it up. That's not the end. Failure is never fatal. All that does is show us how weak we are, but how big God is, that He is full of compassion and mercy.
Living a Transformed Life
When you walk away from this, you get that faith plus trials equals endurance. You get that. I want you to get and understand that you serve a great God, that it matters how you live. It matters what you say. It matters what you do. You are His mouthpiece, living a life that's transformed, a transformed heart with an informed mind, living a radical life that screams a gospel to people.
You don't need to be tagging them down and shoving the four spiritual laws in their face to be witnessing to them. They just see you live life. They just see that's how you are. And somewhere along the way, they're going to provide a prompting of the Spirit in you with a working of the Spirit in those people's hearts. And you're going to have the opportunity to say, you know what? Jesus is the one who makes the difference. That's how evangelism happens. That's how discipleship happens.
Simple Discipleship
What is discipleship? I had a discussion with somebody this morning. We were talking about that. And just to wonder, how do we get guys doing this? How do we live this way? How do we get women living this way? How do we disciple? It's really, really, really, really easy. Just do it. It doesn't take any talent. It doesn't take a whole bunch of knowledge. You don't have to be the Bible answer man or woman.
Just live it. Have a cup of coffee with them. Hang out. Talk. Because you've got a story to tell. And if you know enough to believe the gospel, you know enough to share the gospel. Are they going to ask you questions you don't have the answer to? It happens to me every day. Every day I'm saying, I don't know. I don't know. And sometimes I'll say, I'll get you an answer. And sometimes I'll say, we just don't know that.
Our Hope in the Cross
But in those moments when you blow it, in those moments of amazing weakness, when you seem so fragile, when maybe it even feels, now I'm talking about feeling now, what you know now trumps what you feel, right? In those moments, whenever it feels like I'm hopeless, you're never hopeless. Helpless, yes. Hopeless, no. Why? Well, Brandon and Christa sang about it. If I had one song to sing, I would sing about what? The cross. That's my hope. That's where I find my security. That's where I find my identity. That's where I find my worth and my value because everything else, everything else will let you down.
I guarantee you that if you are here as a couple, that spouse is going to let you down and disappoint you. They cannot make you happy. They are not here to meet your needs. They don't exist to make you happy. They exist to glorify God. And in glorifying God, they become more like the spouse you need.
Those kids are going to disappoint you. Those parents are going to disappoint you. I'm going to disappoint you. Your church is going to disappoint you. It's just going to happen because your hope's not founded in that. It's not founded in this government or this system. It's found in one thing, Christ. We find our identity, our purpose, our hope, all that we are in Christ and Christ alone. Nowhere else.
Let's pray. Father, thank You for this place and time. Thank You for this amazing message. Not mine, Yours. It's the Gospel. It's the power and hope of salvation to the world. I find it in Jesus and Him alone.
Our hope is not resting on anyone or anything else, but simply on Jesus Christ. God, we trust You. We trust Him. We thank You for the spirit that You give us. It's not a spirit of confusion or timidity. It's not a spirit that wanders around aimlessly.
As James says, we're not double-minded. We're not unstable. We stand on the solid rock, the rock of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who You sent into the world, not to be served, but to serve, to give His life a ransom for many, and many of those that He died for are in this room right now.
And Father, we want to end this time together by declaring to You that we find our meaning and our purpose, we find our hope, our understanding, our worth and our value in Jesus Christ and Him alone.