What God Wants of You

• Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

with Romans 12:9-21

www.FirstChurchBville.com  FirstChurchBville@gmail.com  @FirstUMCBville  @kerrfunk

This sermon can be viewed on youtube at https://youtu.be/YhX1uJE5cQU

• “think of the various tests you encounter as occasions for joy.” – James 1:2

The trials we face right now are numerous.
Harvey, Irma, maybe Jose on the way.
Dozens of lives lost, thousands devastated,
billions of dollars of damage. Trials.
Not back to “normal” for millions for a decade.
Some will give up. Some will rise above.

I won’t say God plans hurricanes,
rather they are part of a habitable planet
AND God can work anything for good (Romans 8:28).

In the aftermath of disaster, communities come together,
lives become shared.

• Trials in James: actual religious persecution,
threat to life and limb.
The result: the spread of gospel.
What will you stand for? Know your why.

James offers encouragement to persevere, endure, not give up,
because through perseverance God gives maturity, wisdom.

James even says if one is lacking wisdom, perhaps they stopped short.

• God wants you to fail. (don’t stop the quote there! That’s not the end goal. The end goal is maturity, wisdom, and one does not achieve wisdom and maturity without failure along the way).

CS Lewis wrote that God wants his children to learn to walk, and so he takes his hand away from them and is pleased with their stumbles.

The Rev. Samuel Wesley chided his wife Susanna one time, telling her You’ve told the same thing to that child twenty times! Replied his wife “Had I satisfied myself by saying the matter only 19 times I would have lost all my labor, for it was the 20th time that took.”

• God delights to give maturity and wisdom. As any parent desires for their child to grow and delights in the watching.

And consider Jesus’ words in Matthew 7: Is there a man among you who would offer his child a stone when he asks for bread? Or a snake when he asks for fish? If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.

• God delights in you and desires that you achieve maturity and wisdom.

• (story of man who received the command from God: push on this rock. Man pushes, grows strong, but does not move the rock. Man cries out to God, dejected. God says I asked you to push, and you did. I didn’t ask you to move the rock; I’ll do that.)

• Hymn  539  O Spirit of the Living God

James 1:1-12 (CEB)

1 From James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To the twelve tribes who are scattered outside the land of Israel.

Greetings!

² My brothers and sisters, think of the various tests you encounter as occasions for joy. ³ After all, you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. ⁴ Let this endurance complete its work so that you may be fully mature, complete, and lacking in nothing. ⁵ But anyone who needs wisdom should ask God, whose very nature is to give to everyone without a second thought, without keeping score. Wisdom will certainly be given to those who ask. ⁶ Whoever asks shouldn’t hesitate. They should ask in faith, without doubting. Whoever doubts is like the surf of the sea, tossed and turned by the wind. ⁷ People like that should never imagine that they will receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ They are double-minded, unstable in all their ways.

⁹ Brothers and sisters who are poor should find satisfaction in their high status. ¹⁰ Those who are wealthy should find satisfaction in their low status, because they will die off like wildflowers. ¹¹ The sun rises with its scorching heat and dries up the grass so that its flowers fall and its beauty is lost. Just like that, in the midst of their daily lives, the wealthy will waste away. ¹² Those who stand firm during testing are blessed. They are tried and true. They will receive the life God has promised to those who love him as their reward. ò