Our study through the book of James continues into chapter 4 with good momentum and incredibly practical and challenging content from the text. Here are the notes divided into sections.
Here we are at the beginning of another year! This lesson is a break from our James study, though the topic flows directly from our discussion from the first two verses in James 4, and we will actually land right back in James 4 for our conclusion. God had given me this topic back in October for our annual New Year’s lesson, and I had been thinking about it since late 2015.
Lately there has been a lot of talk about “casual Christianity” in church and among our leadership. The more I think about it, the more concerned I am that I and many others are practically living exactly that type of Christian walk, and aren’t even aware of it.
It is because of that possibility that this study compares Jesus’ “greatest commandment” and our lives to see if we are living up to His expectation of us – and our commitment to Him.
Our study through the book of James continues into chapter 3 with an appropriate balance and reasonable speed. You’ll notice that my study notes changed format with this study. My Bible program of 20+ years finally broke with the latest MacOS update, so I had to (hurriedly) buy and get up to speed on the excellent, but incredibly pricey Logos. Here are the notes divided into sections.
Our class decided it would be cool to change our tack a bit and do a Bible book study instead of our typical topical studies. I’m not sure they’re still glad they did because we (I) are taking quite a bit of time going through, and I’ve gotten a bit too technical in the presentation. I think we’re doing well with a better balance of background, application, and velocity in Chapter 2. Here are the notes divided into sections.
In our class times together, passages and themes from the book of James kept coming up and we decided it would be cool to change our tack a bit and do a Bible book study instead of our typical topical studies. I’m not sure they’re still glad they did because we are (I am) taking quite a bit of time going through, and I’ve gotten a bit too technical in the presentation. You’ll notice as we get close to the end of chapter 1 that I started doing better with that, and I think we’re doing quite well with a better balance of background, application, and velocity in Chapter 2 (next post). Here are the notes divided into four sections along with a bonus (no extra charge!) simple worksheet that I created for my kids since we are studying it with them in parallel.
James Introduction (Pt. 1 of 2) – March 13, 2016 – AAC, 42 min., 21MB
BTW, if you’re interested in the discussion in the introduction about the actual name of the author of the book of James, you should also listen to the first eight or nine minutes of the Palm Sunday lesson, since that topic came up at the beginning of our time together that next week.
James Introduction (Pt. 2 of 2) – March 27, 2017 – AAC, 39 min., 19MB
This study came from four different sources that are closely related in their practical truths. I was reading something and came across this quote:
“Bad habits are easy to make, but hard to live with. Good habits are hard to make, but easy to live with.”
And somehow God took that thought and reminded me of one of my favorite Andy Stanley sermon series, Destinations: The Principle of the Path. And when I started thinking about that, I remembered a recent sermon by one of our teaching pastors where he talked about the process of how our thoughts become attitudes and actions, and how those actions become habits, and how those habits will determine our lives. And then I remembered some great wisdom from Andy Andrews that really helps make it all practical.
I began thinking about all four principles and realized there is an important reminder / warning for us at any age and place in life that we be careful with our minds, intentionally choose what is influencing our decisions, and make sure the destinations that are set by our current paths are where we want to end up.
Here are the recordings of my teaching this series (AAC format playable in most browsers, iTunes, and iDevices):
(My new lapel microphone does a much better job getting my audio, but a much poorer job picking up audio from the group, and this lesson had a huge amount of wonderful discussion that ended up being large chunks of silence on the recording, so I had to remove it. That results in some odd transitions, but it’s better than wasting the listeners’ time. I may have to start running two separate recordings to capture both well.)
This study came as a follow-on to the study in Colossians that ended in love, and then Jesus’ instruction in John 13. Though we cannot attempt to recreate the setting of the early church, we can at least look at them and learn from their example as a group of new Christians responding without precedent to the Holy Spirit’s direction. Acts 2 describes their characteristics and then shows the results of their behavior. Wow!
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