The new medication worked.  Ken is on dialysis now.  Thank you for praying.

In the middle of all this, my daughter Pat came to help me and brought her dog.  (Incidentally, Squig came through the surgery just fine).  I had to go to Tulsa for an appointment, and Pat came to stay with Ken.  When I got home, Pat ran out to the car to meet me and said, "Oh mother, something really horrible happened."

Of course I had visions of Ken falling again, (he broke a rib a few days ago)  or something worse.

"My dog ate daddy's teeth.  They are broken into  pieces."

God has a sense of humor.  In the middle of difficult times,  funny things happen.  Pat was so upset.  I told her that in the grand scheme of things that broken teeth were minor.  Our dentist had them fixed in two days.

1 Peter 2: 20  "For what glory is it, if when you are buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently?  But if, when you do well, and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God."

Suffer.  Take it patiently.  In other words, God knows what is going on in our lives.  He knows what we are going through.  All of us will suffer in some way or another.  It's nice to know that if we do it well, that it is acceptable to God.

Ken is doing it well.  I have no idea how he does it.

The dialysis unit could not treat Ken today due to his weakened condition.  They will try again tomorrow.  If they still can't, he will be hospitalized.  This can't continue much longer.  I have told him not to feel like he has to stay here for me.  I do not want him to suffer like this because he feels like he is leaving me alone.  Ken knows that I want what is best for him, and that he is the love of my life.

There is a chance that a new drug they started today will give him strength.  But it is only a matter of weeks or days.  We will see.

I am fine.  Knowing that God has a plan for each of our lives gives me strength.  I may not understand, but I trust God's wisdom and can't imagine how those who do not know Christ and his precious love  go through times like this.

I will try and post tomorrow.  However, I am living in the moment right now.  Thank you for you prayers.  I feel so comforted knowing that there are people uplifting me through all of this.

There are some things that Peter said that I would rather he would have left out.  Hard things to hear.
1 Peter 2:13-15  "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well.  For so is the will of God, that with well doing you may  put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:"

Stop at red lights.  Obey the speed limit.  Pay your taxes.  In other words, obey the law.  In this way people know that we live peaceful  and honorable lives, which is a testimony to Christ.

However.  However.  I am not a pacifist. Peter cut off an ear.  Even Jesus took a whip to the money changers in the temple.  I'm not advocating using a whip, but there is a time for protest.

In a gas station across from our Jr. High,  I asked a manager to put some magazines under the counter.   My concern was that they were inappropriate for kids who were coming over during their lunch hour.   The manager said, "No."  So I went home and  made a picket sign and started a small protest.  Within an hour the community heard what I had done, quietly agreed, and made themselves some signs. It grew so large that it ended up being news.  A friend in California called and said, "What is going on?  You are on National TV. "  Now it seems my protest was in vain--as porn is rampant and everywhere.

But that day, every establishment in our town that carried those magazines came down where I was picketing and begged me not to picket their stores.  "We've removed all the mags," they said.  "Our suppliers have already been notified not to bring them back." And all I had asked for was to put them under the counter!  I was amazed.  I didn't know you could peacefully protest and accomplish something like that.  I don't know if that fits in with what Peter told us. But knowing Peter, I don't think he meant for us to do wrong things against the will of God just because there is a law.  Peter certainly didn't.   He ended up getting crucified.  Follow the laws.  God's laws first.  I hope you don't get crucified.  

When Christ told Peter that Peter was a pebble, Peter got it.  He understood how the church was going to work.  In 1 Peter 2:4-9  he goes into detail about "stones, and rocks" and the allegory of building a church on the foundation corner stone that is Jesus Christ.  I am going to pick out some phrases.  You probably need to read it all.

Verse 5:  "You also, as lively stones, are built up (into) a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."

Verse 9: "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:"

In these two verses we, the members of the church,  are described.  Peter calls us:
1.  Lively stones.   We don't sit and soak.  We do stuff.  Good stuff.
2.  Built up.   We learn and grow.
3.  A spiritual house.   Together we form a church where God dwells.
4.  A holy priesthood.  We are our own priest.  Each one of us is holy due to Christ within.
5.  Chosen generation.  God chose us before we chose him.
6.  Royal priesthood.   Jesus is King.  We are joint heirs.  Royal.
7.  Holy Nation.   This is probably referring to the Jews who are now Christians and all of us as well.
8.  Peculiar people.  I love this.  I am definitely peculiar.  We are all very different from the world.

Peter says the first point of all that is to offer up spiritual sacrifices.  (Not sheep, lambs or doves)  And he says that the second point is that we show others the praises of God.  Because he called us out of darkness.  Into His marvelous light.  Marvelous.  Peter said we had become something special to God.

When my children were young, we had a beautiful collie dog named 'Feet' that went missing.  He would never have left on his own, so we knew he had been stolen.   I kept telling the children, "It's just a dog."   I had never been an animal person and I looked at the dog as just another kid to clean up after.  He was never allowed in the house because I wasn't going to vacuum up dog hair up every day. I didn't know at the time that dogs had personalities!!!  I figured they were like turtles.  They needed to live outside.  The only difference of one from the other was size and color.

But  one day I opened the front door  and there was Feet, lying on the porch facing the door with his head between his paws.  His paw pads were bleeding and missing skin.  He had found his way home from some place far away and suffered great injury in doing do.

I brought him into the kitchen, cleaned his paws with warm water and put cream on them.  He licked my fingers.  He stayed in the house that day.  I realized that even though I hadn't loved him, he had loved me.  Someone has to love someone first.

Now I know about dogs.  They are all very different.  A few weeks ago I had six of them in my house all at once.  They all had very different personalities.  And one was my favorite.  He sleeps with me.  Where I go, he goes.  His name is Squig, and this morning he is getting his teeth cleaned for the first time.  And I am praying (!!!) for my dog that he will come through this safely.  My children all say, "Is this our mother???  Who is this woman??"

Someone has to love someone first before we can know what love is, what it looks like, how it feels.
1 John 4: 19  "We love him, because he first loved  us."

After Peter realized how much Jesus loved him, he was never the same.  When he writes something, he is passionate about it.  Do you think Peter had a dog that followed him on his journeys?? I hope so.

I don't know how I raised 4 children, taught at a Jr. College full time, drove 60 miles both ways every day, taught Sunday School at the church and cooked all our meals etc. etc.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Now I find myself wandering around wondering what I am doing.  As Ken always said, "Getting old is not for sissies."

1 Peter 2: 2 "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby."  We have to eat to grow.  The thing is, you need to desire to eat.

I love food.  But now and then, I find the day is half gone and I have forgotten to eat.   That is not healthy for a person's body.  It's also not healthy for us to forget to eat spiritual food.  You get a bad case of spiritual anemia.

You can't quit reading God's word and expect to stay spiritually healthy.  You just have to be consistent and stay in there.  Read.  Eat, digest God's word.

My dog ate the leather cover off of one of my Bibles.  And the first chapter of Genesis.  That isn't what I mean by eating God's word.

 I have a very holy little dog.  And he was totally unrepentant.

1 Peter 1:13 "Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ…"

Mind control.  You are in charge of your own.  Your mind can be trained to think right and instruct your body to do right.  Everything begins in the mind.  You need to fill it up with good stuff.  Peter says to gird it up just exactly as if you were going into battle.  Which we are.

Sobriety.  Don't be stupid.  You can't function at your best if you numb yourself.  If you numb your mind.  You need all your faculties to think.  And thinking is what you gird the mind up to do.

Hope.  I wonder all the time if today will be the day.  I told you yesterday that I look up every morning and raise my hands to a holy God.  I also check the East just for good measure.  Will Jesus come?  Hope is what we live by.  We believe.  We have faith.  And we hope.

Grace.  It is going to be brought to us by Jesus Christ.  I need some grace.  Taking care of Ken is getting more difficult.  He is trying so hard to do the things he needs to do and losing the fight.  I just hate it for him.  The two of us haven't ever done this before, and every day I ask myself, "Am I doing this right.  Could I do better."  Ken is the love of my life and watching him struggle is so hard.  He never quits, he just loses ground.  He is bigger than life--in his spirit.  But his body is not getting the message.

A lesser man would give up.

I have always liked mazes, puzzles, cryptograms and anything to do with solving problems.  When we took those tests that they gave us when we started school, where you had to look at a multi sided object from one perspective and identify where it fit from another view point, I could "see" it.  I thought everyone could do that.  I loved to sew and figure out how the pieces went together.  If I wanted to change a sleeve or whatever, I figured out how to cut a new pattern.  I always loved Algebra, Calculus, Physics.  They are puzzles waiting to be solved.  I guess I'm a female nerd.

I get up every morning, put on my robe and houseshoes and go out and get the paper. And then I come in with the paper and work the Sudoku puzzle, Cryptograms, and blog.  In that order.  I always look up, raise my hands to the sky, and thank God for the weather, the clouds, the sunshine or moon and tell Him what a good job He did designing our world.  I am so thankful to be alive.  There is so much to be thankful for.  (This month it has been five years since I had surgery for breast cancer.  I survived)

Maybe my desire to work puzzles has something to do with why I love the Bible.  It is like a great big puzzle.  If you don't know what the prophets said,  you don't know what you are looking for as the story unfolds.  It's all tied together.  But like a puzzle, first, you get the outside edges.  Then you work on one color, or one shape, and then you find a connection between what you have put together and some other part within the puzzle.  It begins to make sense.  And finally the last piece falls into place.

Peter didn't quite get it.  He had a big moment, "You are the Christ…" and then he denied Christ, cut off someone's ear, and finally he quit the whole thing and went back to fishing.  The last piece of the puzzle for Peter was the resurrection.  Then he was able to see the picture.  All the pieces were in place.

1 Peter 1:8 "Whom (Jesus) you haven't seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:"  He's talking to you and me.  Us. Those of us who haven't seen Jesus.  Peter saw Christ and wanted to rejoice with all of us who have heard his story and believe.  Nothing is more miraculous  than a 180 degree turn around like Peter's life.

One of the more famous remarks concerning Peter is in Matthew 16: 15-16, 18  "He (Jesus) said to them, But who do you say that I am?  And Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God….And I (Jesus) say also to you, that you are Peter, (Petros, in Gteek, meaning a small pebble)  and on this rock (Petra, in Greek, meaning a large rock, boulder, cornerstone) I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

You can see the gestures as Jesus points at Peter, names him, and tells Peter that he got it right.  Jesus is the Christ.  At the same time, he tells him (Peter) that he is a small rock.  Then Jesus turns his hand and points toward himself and says, "…upon this large rock I will build my church…"  No one but Jesus was ever intended to be the cornerstone of the church.  We are all the the small stones built on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Peter was quite specific about this when he gave his his speech in the temple in Acts 4: 10a, 11-12 (after Christ's death).  He tells all the people, "Be it known to you all...by the name of Jesus Christ…who God raised from the dead…the stone which was set at nought of you builders, (the Jewish leadership) which is become the head of the corner.  Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

Paul says it this way:  Ephesians 2: 20-22  "And (you) are built upon the foundation of the apostles, (all of them) and prophets, (all of them).  Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building, fitly framed together grows to a holy temple in the Lord:  In whom you also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit."

That's us.  We are all resting on those who have gone before us.  We are the church.  God inhabits us.  We are the temple of God.

We used to play hopscotch.  Marbles.  Hide and seek.  Now I ride down streets and rarely see children outside.  Nobody sits on their porches anymore.  What happened to porches?  I think I'm out of date.  I would like to see my neighbors every now and then.  If I hadn't given tomatoes away, I don't think I would ever have seen them.

We push  a button and the garage door goes up, we back the car out and we go somewhere, come home punch a button, up goes the garage door and we're back in our houses.  Last night Ken said, "Let's go drag main.  I want to see what's going on."  It was dark outside.  So I got him in the car and drove him downtown.  We drug main.  By ourselves.  Nobody drags main anymore.  Main street  in Pryor was pretty well empty.

I don't know what to think about all that.  I can't be like Peter and go down to the docks and tell everyone what Christ has done in my life.  So I go through the window at McDonalds and say, "God bless you."

But the nicest thing happened yesterday.  The man who lives on the South of us knocked at the door and said, "If you will get your garbage can outside your garage door,  I'll get your garbage out to the street from now on."  (We have a long, long driveway.)   "Don't worry about it anymore.  And when I get in from work at three the next morning, I'll bring the garbage can back to the garage for you."  What a nice thing for him to do.  And what a help that will be to me.  I met them passing out tomatoes!!  

Neighbors are out there.  I just have to work harder to connect, to meet new people and tell them about Christ.  Tell the guy who comes to fix the heater!  That's what I did yesterday.  And he listened.

I'm happy.  Blessed.  I got up this morning and thought about all the women in the world who don't have running water.  Thank God for running water.  And my heater is running again.

It is hard to skip any of the verses in 1 Peter.  1 Peter 3b-6a "…by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you.  Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  Wherein you greatly rejoice…"

Short, sweet, and to the point.  Peter doesn't mess around.  He is an evangelist.  He gives us the entire story.  He starts with the most important detail of Christ's life, the resurrection, and tells us everything that is going to happen next.

1.  By the resurrection of Jesus Christ
2.  To an inheritance incorruptible
3.  And also undefiled
4.  That does't fade away
5.  Reserved in heaven for you
6.  Who are kept by the power of God
7.  Through faith
8.  Unto salvation
9.  Ready to be revealed in the last time
10. Wherein you and I greatly rejoice

And it makes me pretty happy to think that everything is all taken care of and I that don't have to unpack boxes, decorate, hang pictures or line the kitchen shelves with paper.

When Ken was in the Marine Corps, we made 19 moves in 15 years.  My next move is up, up, up.

Peter and James couldn't be more different in their personalities.  James was very exact.  Peter was over the top exuberant.  Peter never did anything halfway.  When he wrote, he was full of adjectives.

1 Peter 1:3  "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,"

First, he blesses God.  Not just God.   Not just Father.  But God and Father.  And then, not just Lord.  Not just Jesus.  And not just Christ.  But Lord, Jesus, and Christ.   I love the way he describes mercy:  Abundant mercy.  And the way he describes hope:  Lively hope.

And then he gives us the gospel.   "…by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."  That is the historical event that ties the knot. The event that changed Peter's life.  Jesus was God.  He was the Christ.  He was the Messiah.  He is God.  He is the Messiah.  He is God.  He rose from the dead.  Top that!!!

I love Peter.  I identify with him.  I am impulsive.  I am outgoing. I am verbal.  I make mistakes.  I repent.   I am totally committed to the Lord Jesus Christ.  

When Peter got it right, he never turned back.  I can just see him returning to the sea to find some of his old buddies and telling them that Jesus had risen from the dead!!  Telling them how his friend Jesus had changed his life.  Those guys would have listened to him.  I doubt they would have listened to James.

There is someone out there that your personality will connect with.  Get going.  What do you have to lose.  You may save someone's  life.

We've looked at James.  Let's look at the first of three letters that Peter wrote.

In 1 Peter 1:1, Peter identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ. and addresses people he doesn't know who are scattered throughout five different regions.  Although they are strangers, they are brothers in Christ.  New Christians.  Peter wants them to know that he is authentic, an apostle of Jesus.

1 Peter 1:2  "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ::  Grace unto you and peace, be multiplied."  Peter doesn't know these people, but he knows what Christ can do in the life of a person who finds Christ.  Believers have been sanctified.

He explains that it is the blood of Jesus that saves them.  Not the sprinkling of the blood of sacrificial animals on the alter in the holy of holies.  Jesus is the lamb.

Then he blesses them.  With grace and peace.  Why those two things?  Why not health and prosperity?
When you think of the ultimate blessing, it is Grace from God and Peace in the world we live in.  That is what we all need.  And we need it to be multiplied--as Peter wanted.  More and more.

I am so tired of conflict.  It seems like the entire world is in conflict.  Even our nation.  It wearies me.

Yesterday was Ken's birthday.  He is 84 years old.  It was a good day with family and friends.   He was able to get up and join us and eat strawberry shortcake.  Right now it doesn't get any better than that.  He asked me, "Did you ever in your wildest imagination think you would be married to a man who is 84 years old?

I told him, "In my eyes you are always 26.  Just like the day I met you."  And he is.

         James is not a book about the way  to salvation.  It is a book about the results of salvation.  It is a book about behavior.

         One of the most controversial passages in James is his black and white statement concerning Faith and Works in James 2: 15-18.

"If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warmed and filled; notwithstanding you don't give them those things which are needful to the body; what does it profit?  Even so faith, if it doesn't have works, is dead, being alone.  Yes, a man may say, you have faith, and I have works:  show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works."
          Dead Faith.  A statement of belief in God without any changes in behavior.  (Remember even the devil believes in God.)
          Productive Faith.  A faith that produces differences in the way you live your life.  Especially in the way you treat people in need.  True faith is generous with the less fortunate.  True faith does good.

           On Saturday, we fill up paper bags for the poor, to be picked up by the Postal Service.  This is one way everyone can help.  Don't just fill it with things you don't want.  Fill it with the things that everyone needs.  Flour, sugar, canned goods, etc.
           Don't put your unwanted clothing in a garage sale, give them to a local shelter.

           If you are like me, I don't know any poor people.  People who have no food or clothing.  They are out there, I just don't cross their paths.  If you are like me, you have to go out of your way to find them.  But you can.  It just takes some effort on our part.   We need to remember where it all comes from in the first place.   Don't build bigger barns.

James 3:4a  "Behold also the ships, which though they are great, and are driven by fierce winds, yet they are turned about with a very small helm…"

Earlier I had written in James 3: 3 about "…bits in the horse's mouths, that they may obey us; and we can turn about their whole body."

James uses those two comparisons to present  what he wants the people to understand concerning a particular sin.  James 4:5a  "Even so, the tongue is a little member, and boasts great things.  Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindles!…"

As we have seen the huge fires in the West this year that were kindled by a match or campfire, we know this is true.  People die.  Thousands lose their homes.

Small things.  Bits, helms and tongues.  They can produce mighty works.  But when misused, can cause disaster.  And each disaster is final.  You can't un-buck a spill from a horse, or un-crash a ship.  In the same way, you can't take back your words.  Once you say something, it is irretrievable.  Your words do great good or great harm.

We are social people.  We love to communicate.  But care is needed in what we say, how we say it and whether it should be said at all.  I have such difficulty in this area because I am a public speaker.  I find by writing to all of you, I can edit, and reedit what I want to say.  You can't do that when you open your mouth.  If you say something, you can't very well edit it.  All you can do is apologize.

In James 3: 10 James gives further warning.  "Out of the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing.  My brothers, these things ought not to be so."  Basically, that means don't curse.

Yesterday, my oldest son Scott said something that I thought was interesting.  He said, "Wouldn't it have been hard to have your older brother always being perfect.  Can your imagine what James felt like having a brother that was always good.  Never got into trouble.  Was always obedient to his Mom and Dad.  Never missed church.  Gladly shared everything he had."  Then my son said, "That would have been really, really hard to live with."

Sometimes we read the Bible and we don't think about the humanity of the people we read about.  We know that James didn't think that Jesus was the Messiah.  He didn't think Jesus was anything but his older brother until the resurrection.   Then it all came into focus.  Jesus was God.  Jesus had lived a perfect life in order to die for us.  When Jesus rose from the dead, James was forever a changed man.

James started the letter he wrote by saying, "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,…"  James had given his life to God and recognized the Lordship of his own brother.  He realized that everything his mother Mary had told him about his older brother had been true.  After the resurrection, James understood the prophecies of the Old Testament had been fulfilled.

Mary and Joseph.   Jesus,  James and their sisters and brothers.  Wouldn't that have been an interesting family.  I had never even thought about that.

There is so much in the Bible that I have never thought about.  That's why reading it is so interesting.  You always are learning something new.  It is alive.

I'm going to tell you a story.  Six months ago, I got tattooed.  A radical procedure for a woman who is  75.  But there is background.  You don't just jump up and go get tattooed at my age.  My mother probably rolled over in her grave--as the old saying goes.

Five years ago, after a long illness, (I survived, praise God)  not only did my hair fall out, so did my eyebrows.  Permanently. Then a year ago one of the chambers of my heart quit working.  Stopped. So I had to have shock therapy and then they put me on a drug that makes me shake.  Which meant that every time I tried to sign my name it looked like  chicken scratching.  And every time I tried to use my eyebrow pencil it took forever and a day to pencil them in and was a mess.  Lipstick was even worse.  So I had my eyebrows  tattooed on.  Best thing I ever did for myself.  It was so great I decided to have my lips tattooed as well.

Yes,  I could  have given the makeup up, but my generation always makes up their face.  Our mothers instilled real fear in us if we left the house without looking our best.  And Seventeen magazine reminded us in every issue of all the things that were wrong with the way we looked.

James 4: 17 "Therefore to him (her) that knows to do good, and doesn't do it, to him (her) it is sin."

James is definitely not talking about tattoos. He's talking about doing good.  Not getting something good--like a tattoo.  He is saying that not only is doing the wrong thing a sin, so is not doing the right thing.  That divides sin into two categories.  Mercy.  Just when I thought I was almost there, I find out that there is an entire other category of sin.  This is getting serious.   I am certainly not doing enough good things for others.  I can do better.  And James says if I know it and don't do better, I'm in trouble.

It's time to give up on the okra and tomatoes.  For me, it's hard to pull up the stalks that have served me so well all summer long.  It's like saying farewell to an old friend.  But the okra has made seed that will get planted again in the spring.  And the tomatoes were so prolific that I have been begging my neighbors to take them.

When I was very young, my dad once told me  that if there weren't any yellow blooms on the okra, there wouldn't be any okra. And if there wasn't any rain, there wouldn't be any blooms.  I wasn't very big, and had never known anything about growing things, but I understood what he was saying.  You have to have rain.  So in Oklahoma, we always pray for rain.

James 4: 17 "…the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."

My dad was all of those things.  Pure.  Peaceable.  Gentle.  Easy to be Entreated.  Merciful.  Full of good works.  Without partiality.  Totally without hypocrisy.  I was  truly blessed.

He gave me the wisdom that he had without making me feel stupid.  Now, when I pick okra, I always look to see how many yellow blooms are there.  So I know how much more okra is coming.  And I always think of my dad.  Maybe that is why I like to garden.

How do you pass wisdom along?  Maybe the reason that the younger generation doesn't listen to us like they should is because we don't have the qualities needed to pass wisdom along.  They need it.  We have it.  So maybe those 8 qualities James talked about God having, are qualities we need in our own lives.

Bloom where you are planted.

We have a dear friend (Cleta) who brings Ken a coconut pie every couple of weeks.   Ken loves coconut pie.  He has half of it eaten before the day is done.  And then finishes it off before noon the next day.  It is such a nice thing for her do for Ken.  Her husband Jim was part of the Normandy invasion on D-day.  We eat breakfast with them every Saturday and Ken and Jim swap war stories.

We have been so blessed with people in our lives that really do what James said we should do.  Do good.    When James writes something, it's all black and white.  No gray.

James 2:19  "You believe that there is one God; you do well: the devils also believe, and tremble."

Now there is an interesting thought.  Believing that there is a God doesn't save you.  Believing there is only  one  God doesn't save you.  If there is anyone who believes there is one God, it is Lucifer--Satan himself.  He went head to head with God and lost.   He, the devil, knows positively that there is only one God.

Now he (Satan) roams the earth.  1 Peter 5:8  "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking who he may devour."  We must take this fact seriously.  We are in danger of an adversary who spends all of his time  looking for people to ruin.  Their lives.  Their relationships.  He is relentless.  You are his target.

The Holy Spirit is what saves us.  Inviting Christ into your life is the step we must take after believing that there is one God.   It is Christ who saves you.  "...Christ in you, the hope of glory. "  Col. 1: 27b

He alone is our hope.

James 2: 8  "I you fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, you do well'."

John put it this way:   "A new commandant  I give to you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another."  John 13:34.

The other disciples said it in similar ways.  But one thing is sure, Christ changed the way we look at law. Keeping 10 rules no longer cuts it.   That's just a starting place.    We have to love others in exactly the same way Jesus loved us.  It has to come from within our hearts.

You can't possibly do it unless you have been changed.  Even when you have been changed it is sometimes difficult.  Some people just aren't lovable.  But we are not given a choice.  Love and "Like" are two different things.

Love is not a feeling, it is a behavior.  It doesn't matter how we feel, what matters is what we do.

James nails this down in James 2: 14a  "What does it profit, my brothers, though a man says he has faith, and doesn't have works…."

Faith, followed by works is the natural result of being changed by Jesus.

There are lots of ways to love others.  Sometimes chicken soup will do.  But sometimes it takes writing a check.  Other times a person just needs someone to listen to them.

Thanks for listening to to all the stuff I've written.

The word "religion" is very seldom used in the Bible.  Of the three times I found it referenced, two are in the book of James.  Once in James 1:26 and once in verse 27.  James realized  that Christianity was something very, very different from Judaism, and tried to define some basic behaviors that any religion

should produce in the lives of its followers.   He was primarily speaking to Jewish converts. 

James 1:26 "If any man among you seems to be religious, and doesn't bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is vain."

James 1:27  "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this,  To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

I think that James was correct about the necessity for a few identifying  characteristics  that any religion should have.

1.  You know when to keep your mouth shut.  I got on one of my daughter's horses a few months ago and was able to lead him where I wanted him to go because of the bridle in his mouth.  God needs to be in the saddle of  your life and you need a bridle in your mouth.

2.  You attend to the needs to those who are in need:  those who are sick, those who are homeless, and those who are alone.   

3.  You live differently (unspotted) from the world.

But religion in itself isn't enough for salvation.  You must give the saddle to God.  You must accept the bridle.  When you truly give yourself to Christ, you have the heart to do his will.  The Holy Spirit.

There is nothing worse than getting on a bucking horses that won't do your will.   They aren't worth anything to the rancher until they have a heart to do the master's will.   

Last week was difficult for Ken.  Thank you for your prayers.  Like I told you, I don't believe in luck.  I believe in prayer.  And when you are exhausted, it is very comforting to know that others pray for you.

So I can't help but skip from the first chapter of James to the fifth chapter to tell you this:

James 5:16b  "…and pray one for another, that you may be healed.  The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much."  Effectual.  Fervent.  Prayer.  Of righteous people.

He's better, siting up.  He ate  a huge dinner  and finished it off with Blue Bell peach ice cream.

Some of you have asked why I haven't answered your comments.  I didn't know how.  Yes, it is easy if you know what you are doing.  I don't, but as it turns out, the system didn't work.

Your comments now work.
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