Facing Life’s Difficulties Series

Sermon: Facing Life’s Difficulties

Series: James - Real Faith for Real Life

James 1:1-12

Background of James

Written by James, the Lord’s Brother

Written around 45 A.D.

Written to show that a Real Faith is lived with Real Actions in Real Life

James tells us a real faith

Finds Joy in the midst of Hardship (v. 2-4, 12)

We can only experience this joy to God’s glory when we

Seek Wisdom through Faith (v. 5-8)

Take Pride in our Position in Christ (v. 9-11)

Slide

Series introduction

Living life in this world can be quite challenging.

We have so many things pulling at each one of us; Family, work, relationships, our relationship with God. It seems like we are rushing from one thing to the next down the busy sidewalks of life.

It is easy to sit here on a Sunday morning and talk about faith and believing God, but how does that translate to the real world? What does Real faith look like in Real Life?

Well, we are beginning a series where we are going to be looking into that. How is it that we live a Real faith in Real life. We are going to be going through the book of James through the summer and we have entitled this series Real Faith for Real Life.

Slide

We are calling it that because James is a very practical book that gives us a lot of good insight into what a real faith looks like lived out in the real world.

Transition to sermon

Now, if you are a Christian here today, you know that living out your faith can be challenging. And you know that just because you are a Christian, your life is not always easier to live. Many times it is more difficult. This morning, as we start this series, we are going to talk about Facing Life’s Difficulties.

Slide

We are going to jump right in this morning so I am going to ask you to turn with me to James 1:1-12

Slide

This morning, as we learn to live out a real faith in real life, we are going to see how James tells us that we can face the difficulties of life for God’s glory and our good.

Series encouragements

As we begin this series, I want to encourage you to keep up with it. I know that people have vacations planned in the summer and there will be days that you miss, but I want to encourage you to listen online to those messages you missed because this should be a great series to help each one of us live out our faith in real life.

And to help all of us get the most out of it, I want to encourage you to do a couple of things.

First, this week, I would like each one of us to read through the book of James twice.

It is only 5 chapters and will help us get an overview of the teaching in James.

Secondly, after this week, I am going to ask you to read each day the section of James we just studied as well as the section we are going to study next.

Thirdly, I am going to give you a few questions each week that will help you meditate on the verses we just studied so you can help to get the Lord’s word inside you so you can be better equipped to live it out.

It is my hope that this will be a great summer of spiritual growth as each one of us learn how to live out a real faith in real life.

Now let’s read James 1:1-12

James 1:1-12

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:

Greetings.

Ok, I want to stop here a second and, before we get into the main teachings of the first half of chapter 1, I want to give you a quick background of the book of James.

We see in this first verse that the book is written by James. James who?

Well this letter was

Written by James, the Lord’s Brother

Slide

Now, If you are coming from a Roman Catholic background, like me, and saying, “Hang on a second, Jesus didn’t have any siblings because Mary was a virgin for her whole life, so how could this be the Lord’s brother?”

Well, while I appreciate my Catholic heritage and the facts of the gospel that were taught to me, and while Scripture teaches that Mary was a virgin up until Jesus was born, there is no Scriptural support for the Catholic Church’s teaching that Mary was a virgin perpetually.

In fact Scripture teaches otherwise.

Matthew 1:25 tells us that after the angel visited Joseph that he took Mary as his wife but “he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.”