James

As a team, we recently did the Book of James Bible devotional taught by Francis Chan.  It was pretty incredible. Each one had a 7-12 minute video taught by Francis Chan where he would breakdown the chapter and verses of James into small chunks.

I appreciate Francis’ ability to communicate with such passion and conviction.  Every day each video was in a different location throughout San Francisco. A small detail that I picked up on was each location had a small application to the scripture.  The music was very good as well. It would help emphasize the moment in the video. From the production angle, I really could appreciate the details in the planning of wanting everything to matter and relate.

The study itself was great all 12 days.  I wanted to highlight day three where it highlighted and talked about James 1:19-27.  The passage opens up with James 1:19 which is a verse I have clung to personally for about two years now.  Honestly, I have clung to this verse because I was terrible at the warning it gave. “Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.”  Side note:  I even have the screenshot of this verse on my phone home screen!  That is how much I need to be reminded of this daily.

Anger, James says, does not produce Godly righteousness.  Listening, with patience and perseverance, allows us to receive “with meekness” the word of God.  James is writing to religious people, which I believe, without a doubt, still relates to us Christians today!  James is pushing them (us) to take the next step. Don’t be just listeners of the Word, but doers. Let our faith show up in our actions!  A lot of the book of James is that we put some feet to our words to live what we say we believe.

Today, everyone has something to say.  There is just not a lot of action compared to the amount of words being said…  May we all be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.