Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning, Westside. My name is Josh. I'm the youth pastor here, and I am so honored to get to share with you guys today. As we are in the book of James, and I get accused of hyperbole, I get accused of being, like, fake stoked. It's never fake, I promise. But I have to start by telling you guys, James is my favorite book in the Bible.
[00:00:30] So it wasn't my favorite book, but it is now my favorite book. And this series, as we've been going through, James has just been amazing.
[00:00:40] Whatever I'm doing at the moment is usually my favorite thing. And I had a friend recently tell me that they saw me driving and I was like, oh, great. And they said. And you were clapping.
[00:00:51] And I said, really?
[00:00:53] And I told my wife Emily that. And she's like, josh, you just clap all the time. Like, you just. Like, when you get really stoked about something, you just start clapping. I'm kind of like a monkey.
[00:01:04] And so James is my favorite book because we're in it right now, and it has been wonderful. But it's also my favorite book, I've realized, because I love when someone tells me the good thing to do and makes it really straightforward.
[00:01:22] I'm a simple man. Give me that kind of info. Say, here's the right thing you should do. Here's the next right thing. Here's the good thing that. That you should be doing. I love the idea of, like, thinking about stuff and we can discuss, like, why we do things. But I really like how James writes a New Testament proverb book that just says, here's what you should do.
[00:01:43] And if you've been a part of the series these last couple weeks, it's just been excellent. Pastor Ben and Pastor Evan have done a wonderful job. I would encourage you to go back through and listen to those messages, especially the first part of Pastor Evan's intro to James. That really gives us the perspective on it. Who was James and why was he writing this? And so I'm gonna be doing the last section of James, but before we do, I wanna read a verse from chapter one that, to me, really sets the tone of how we look at this. And this is found in James 1, verses 3 and 4. It says, for you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and. And complete, needing nothing.
[00:02:33] That word perfect in the Greek can Be translated as whole or complete.
[00:02:40] And so I want us to take this time and look at it through a lens of thinking about what does it mean for me to become complete, for me to be perfected by Christ, for me to feel whole.
[00:02:55] And it's a process, right?
[00:02:58] The word we use is sanctification, where we become more the person that God wants us to be.
[00:03:06] Two weekends ago, we had baptisms here. It was just wonderful. Down in the lower lawn, had baptisms. And I was talking to a family member of someone who got baptized, and they said, I don't know if it happened when they came out of the water in that very instant moment or what it was, but they're a different person.
[00:03:27] They said they've had a faith for sure. They've been a believer, they've been following Jesus, but it's like they have new eyes and their decisions are different.
[00:03:35] They're being perfected.
[00:03:37] So cool to see. And so as we jump into the Scriptures, I want us to look at it through that mind of God wants to.
[00:03:48] He wants to perfect us. He wants to complete us. And it's a journey that we're on with him. We're Gonna read chapter 5, verses 13 through 20.
[00:04:00] Are any of you suffering? Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray.
[00:04:05] Are any of you happy? You should sing praises.
[00:04:08] Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.
[00:04:28] Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.
[00:04:39] Elijah was a human, as we are. And yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years. Then when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.
[00:04:56] My dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will. Will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins.
[00:05:14] This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray.
[00:05:19] Heavenly Father, you are so good.
[00:05:21] Would you speak to us today through your word?
[00:05:24] Would you help us to turn towards you?
[00:05:27] Would you give us eyes that see who you have intended us to be?
[00:05:33] And would we know your love?
[00:05:35] Would we be able to love you because you first loved us. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:05:43] The title of today's message is Turn towards God. Turn towards God. That section of scripture we just read talks all about turning towards God. And there's a. There's a popular concept, and it is that it's a way of looking at life. It's two completely different perspectives on the events that, that we experience in life.
[00:06:06] And it's been made well known in like pop psychology recently, but it goes way back. And it's this idea of, you can look at it as life happens to you, or life happens for you, Life happens to you, or life happens for you.
[00:06:23] I was able to catch up with an old friend who just moved back to central Oregon after many years away. We went to middle school together and we were talking and we were catching up and it had been years.
[00:06:36] And he told me, he said, did I tell you, you don't know this? He said, but I was diagnosed years ago with Ms.
[00:06:46] And I said, no, I didn't know that. And then the next line, he didn't know what I was teaching.
[00:06:51] He didn't know where we were going with this. But he said, and it was the best thing that could have possibly happened for me.
[00:06:59] He said, it changed the way that he viewed his time.
[00:07:03] It changed the way that he viewed his family and his relationships.
[00:07:07] It changed the way that he viewed his relationship with God and his purpose in this life and what he was called to do.
[00:07:15] And so when we think of the idea of life happening for us or to us, here's how I like to think of the distinction.
[00:07:25] When life happens to me, then I turn one direction. When I understand that life is happening for me, I turn a different direction.
[00:07:35] When something happens to me, I turn in a bunch of different ways. I could turn inward and withdraw, right? Something could happen to me. And you know what my response is? Oh, I should probably go work a lot.
[00:07:52] I should probably like, oh, I should probably go fill my time and get away from this thing.
[00:07:58] Or the really bad response for me. Something happens to me and I go, I bet I can get them.
[00:08:05] I bet I can have a better comeback than that.
[00:08:08] I bet I can plot, I bet I can scheme. I bet I can come up with something to do. This thing happened to me, I can do something about this.
[00:08:19] But when we realize that life is happening for us, what do we see here?
[00:08:24] Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray.
[00:08:29] Are any of you happy? You should sing praises.
[00:08:33] James is calling us to understand that life is going to happen. And when it does, our response is to turn towards God.
[00:08:42] When something difficult happens, if this can be our response, we're going to find ourselves in such a better place, such a better place if that can be built into us.
[00:08:57] I love the saying, he who kneels the most stands the best.
[00:09:06] Because something can happen to me.
[00:09:09] And I'm like, I would rather not deal with this conflict. I'm going to go do the thing that just distracts me, or something can happen and I can say, God, I want to invite you into this.
[00:09:22] I want to ask you, what would you have me do?
[00:09:25] I want to pray for my enemy.
[00:09:28] I want to pray for resolution. I want to pray for wise words. Before I respond to the thing that was just said to me.
[00:09:37] Herm Edwards famously said, don't hit send, right? There's an amen for that one. Don't hit send, right? We write it up. We write our little novel response, and we should step back.
[00:09:56] God, what would you have me say?
[00:09:59] And you know what it might be?
[00:10:01] Delete phone. Hey, can we talk?
[00:10:06] Right these are you guys. Life is gonna happen.
[00:10:11] Life is gonna happen. And this idea of, does life happen to us or for us? Is an old thought, popular concept at the moment, but it's an old thought.
[00:10:24] Let's look at this quote. I love this from Timothy Keller.
[00:10:28] He says he, jesus controls all things for the church. He's at the right hand of God as the executive director of history, directing everything for the benefit of the church. If you belong to him, then everything that happens ultimately happens for you.
[00:10:51] That's a radical perspective in a life where bad things happen.
[00:10:56] Right. That's a pretty intentional position you have to take to be able to look at things that way when life is happening.
[00:11:07] But Timothy was not the first. Mr. Keller was not the first one to say that. And someone said it even really short and straightforward. The apostle Paul in Romans said, and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purposes for them, this life is gonna happen.
[00:11:34] And it can be some gnarly stuff, but what do we do with that?
[00:11:40] The Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, his concept was that we don't control the things, but we control our mind. After the things we control, how do we respond? What do we do with the thing that just happened? We don't control the circumstances. But there's this idea in stoicism that doesn't have Jesus. So it's missing out, and we have Jesus. But this idea is True that, like the thing might be the way to a better thing.
[00:12:09] Even when the thing is very difficult and appears to be bad.
[00:12:15] So we see here, these first two are like a solo thing, right?
[00:12:22] I'm suffering, I pray, I'm happy. Other translations say cheerful. I like the translation that says stoked. I haven't found that one, but that's the word I'm going to use.
[00:12:34] You're sad, things are hard, pray, you're stoked. Worship.
[00:12:40] Both are individual turning towards God, right? It's this thing happens and so I turn towards God. But then we get into more corporate, collective, relational things.
[00:12:51] Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
[00:13:13] This is calling us into some close relationship, right?
[00:13:19] That's not done from afar. It's not done.
[00:13:22] It's not done in the dark.
[00:13:25] It's done in the light.
[00:13:28] It's bringing the things that we maybe need to confess into the light and inviting someone else into it.
[00:13:35] It's asking someone to pray for us.
[00:13:38] It says that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful.
[00:13:44] The word righteous, I love that word. And I think that it got a really bad name because of the word self righteous.
[00:13:54] We want we should covet the prayers of righteous people, but I don't want the prayers of self righteous people.
[00:14:02] Right? Like turning towards God is good, but if there's a self righteous person, then it's like, oh, how do I get to God? They got in the way, right?
[00:14:10] Because righteousness means right with God.
[00:14:14] Right with God. And I love two ideas with this, that you're right with God as in you're in right standing with God. And also you're right with God as you're in right standing with God.
[00:14:25] Like righteousness is a closeness to God. And Corinthians says that the Father made him Jesus, who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.
[00:14:40] So when we are actually righteous, it's because of what God did, not us. A closeness to God is accepting what he's offered and entering into that. And so we should be on the lookout for, for righteous people who you're like, that person's close to God. I would like that. And I would like to invite them into my life. Will you pray for me?
[00:15:01] Can I talk to you about this thing I'm dealing with?
[00:15:06] And I love this part about Elijah where he says, elijah was a human as we are.
[00:15:15] Another translation says, elijah was just like you.
[00:15:21] I have this thing in my head where I think of people from the Bible as being different than us.
[00:15:30] I have this thing where I think of them as having a higher standing with God, maybe more closeness to God, maybe more power.
[00:15:41] And James, the half brother of Jesus, who is overseeing the first church, he's overseeing the church in Jerusalem, and he's writing to all the believers. And he gets it and he knows it. He says, you guys, Elijah, just like us.
[00:15:59] Just like us. We have the same things he has.
[00:16:04] And we are created in the image of God like Elijah is.
[00:16:08] We have access to the throne like Elijah did.
[00:16:12] And so what's holding us back?
[00:16:16] What's keeping us from taking that bold step and saying, I wanna be whole. I wanna be complete. I wanna be perfected in God. I want to pray boldly.
[00:16:25] I want to pray earnestly, as this says.
[00:16:29] And earnestly to me is like, it keeps happening.
[00:16:33] One of my faults, one of my personal faults that I've been working on and I've gotten better this year, but it's still a fault, is that I don't like asking for anything twice.
[00:16:45] I like to ask one time, put it out there, take a step back, and then be like, okay, I guess that's not a thing. That's not very earnest, right?
[00:16:59] That's not what Jesus told us when he said, come to the door and knock and don't stop knocking. And he said, guess what? If you're knocking in the middle of the night asking for a loaf of bread, at some point in the middle of the night, your neighbor's gonna be like, okay, I get it.
[00:17:14] I'm getting you that loaf of bread. And Jesus is the one who said that. And then he said, and how much more so is the Father if we ask for good things from him?
[00:17:24] And so the prayer of a righteous person.
[00:17:29] Yeah, but this also says the earnest prayer of a righteous person. Don't stop praying.
[00:17:35] Right? Don't stop praying. Keep praying. Keep moving forward in your requests of God.
[00:17:44] What does it mean to be perfect, to be whole and complete? I love Proverbs 3, 5, 6, says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him and he will make your paths straight.
[00:18:10] To become whole and complete is to be wholly and completely surrendered.
[00:18:19] It's to be wholly and completely dependent on God.
[00:18:26] We can think that there's like, courses you take to, like, get something done, and then you, like, have done the thing and now you move on from the course. You. You know what I mean? You're like, you're trying to achieve something and you achieve it. And maybe it's like a certification you need. And you get the certification and you check the box and you're like, that was good info done. Right? Moving on.
[00:18:47] And this wholeness, this completeness, this perfection is not a box that will be checked. That then, now we're on our own. This is a constant call to surrender.
[00:19:00] This is an idea that we would spend more and more time like this, that we would become more powerful and it would look like this.
[00:19:10] And so life either happens to us or for us.
[00:19:17] And the way that we know if it's happening to us or for us is based on where we turn.
[00:19:22] Because the sun shines on the just and the unjust, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust. And we are all going to experience things, but how are we going to respond to those things?
[00:19:36] Are we going to be constantly turning towards God? Because if we are, you can see this thing come full circle. We're going to become righteous because it won't be us, it'll be God.
[00:19:46] We'll be in right standing with him. We'll constantly be turning to him and then we'll be able to be this.
[00:19:53] This prayer for others, this place that people can come.
[00:19:58] When I look at this last section, the verse 19 through 20, my dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins.
[00:20:20] I absolutely love the word repentance.
[00:20:25] I love it.
[00:20:27] I didn't used to.
[00:20:28] I didn't like it. Not only love it, I didn't. I was uncomfortable with it because when I was younger, I thought repentance was this.
[00:20:38] It was calling you out and it was saying repent. And it was this posture of standing on a box and yelling at me and. And telling me that I needed to repent.
[00:20:49] And then I learned that repentance looks like this.
[00:20:57] And the Greek word for repentance means to change our mind, to change our heart, to change our direction.
[00:21:06] Repentance means to turn from God. Turn towards God. Sorry, no, lightning.
[00:21:14] Repentance means to turn towards God. That's grace, right? That's mercy.
[00:21:20] I Used to think about repentance as being this angry thing that anger and fear drove repentance. But listen to what Paul says in Romans 2, 4. He says, God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance.
[00:21:38] God's kindness leads us to repentance. Repentance is beautiful.
[00:21:43] Repentance means that I went away, I was astray, I was lost.
[00:21:48] Repentance is now I'm found, now I'm loved, now I'm home, now I'm safe, now I'm where I was supposed to be.
[00:21:57] And I don't know about you, but for me that happens. And then, oh, look at this shiny thing. And I have to come back, right? I have to. Repentance is not a one time thing for me. I have to be repenting, I have to be turning back towards God. And repentance can be required because I have found myself in this very dark, far off place. Or repentance can be because there was this thing that's good and I made it the most important thing.
[00:22:28] Like there can be very, very good things that we need to repent of because we've made them God, but because we've made them the top priority. And we can be off just a little bit.
[00:22:42] And we see here the beauty in the prodigal being found.
[00:22:49] There's the story of the prodigal son and the good father who's waiting for the prodigal son.
[00:22:56] And he celebrates when his son is brought home.
[00:23:00] And some of us in the room may be prodigals. And if we're not prodigals, right in this moment, we surely have a prodigal that we love.
[00:23:11] We surely have someone who we wish could just come back and know God's love and repent because of God's kindness.
[00:23:21] Not because we're doing this, but because, oh, he's your dad. He wants to love you, he wants to give you something amazing. He wants to be close to you, he wants to make you whole.
[00:23:33] And so we are constantly called to repentance and to invite others into it.
[00:23:42] And it's not a one time thing, but it has to be a one time thing to start.
[00:23:46] There has to be a moment where we first repent.
[00:23:50] There has to be a first moment where we turn towards God and we say, God, I want to receive this love that you have. I don't want to do it on my own. I can't do it on my own. I've had life really happen to me and I found myself trying to cope and trying to fill up and trying to do these things, and it doesn't work.
[00:24:11] And so I want to have life happen for me.
[00:24:14] And maybe that worst thing that happens would be the thing that causes a person to cry out for help.
[00:24:26] And if they did, then that thing happened for them because it changes everything when we repent and come into a relationship with God.
[00:24:39] I'm gonna pray a simple prayer of repentance, and I wanna encourage you to join in with me. If you would like, I'm gonna raise my hand and as I pray this Heavenly Father, I repent.
[00:24:59] I receive your love.
[00:25:03] I put my trust in Jesus.
[00:25:06] I know you are good.
[00:25:09] Amen.
[00:25:13] One of the things that I just absolutely love about our church is that we take communion every week.
[00:25:20] I love that if I'm here on a busy week, I take communion multiple times in a week, three times in the morning sometimes.
[00:25:30] And I'm not sad about it, because communion is beautiful.
[00:25:35] Communion is powerful.
[00:25:38] Communion is such a perfect moment to repent and reorient.
[00:25:43] It's such a great time to turn towards God and we take communion.
[00:25:51] I've been at Westside for quite a while, and Pastors Evan and Ben and the leadership, their decision a while back that we would take communion every week, I feel like has been such a good thing for me.
[00:26:07] And I love this idea that I can be doing the things.
[00:26:13] I can be going, going good, going bad, going wherever. But then there's going to be a moment where it stops and I'm going to turn towards God and everything's going to get quiet in my spirit. And I'm going to be able to take the backpack off of all the things I'm carrying. I'm going to be able to lay it at his feet. I'm going to remember that I am loved, that I am chosen, that there was no greater gift ever given than what communion represents and what Christ gave for us.
[00:26:46] Not only the obedient son who was willing to give his body and shed his blood for us, but the loving Father who is willing to have his son do that in my place, do that in your place.
[00:27:06] And so, as we enter into communion, I want to just remind us how special it is.
[00:27:13] And I want us to, if we need to repent, which I always do, then let's do that.
[00:27:21] And I want us to celebrate this new life that we've been given.
