James: Faith/WorksSample

Faithful / Faithless

James constantly points us to the fact that the Christian life is about glad-hearted obedience. After all the practical application of spiritual truth that James had addressed for five chapters, he started to close his letter with a call to prayer. 

We’ve done the same thing throughout this book. At the end of each day’s personal study, you found instructions to pray about the ongoing application and expression of your faith. You were prompted to respond to what you read and to ask God to continue working in your heart so that your actions would increasingly bear the fruit of faithfulness and righteousness. 

Prayer is infinitely more than a transition in our lives from our everyday routines
to a spiritual moment and then back again. Prayer is ongoing communion with God. 

If God is the source of our life, salvation, hope, and righteousness­—and He is—then prayer is the way we approach Him in utter dependence and satisfaction. James repeatedly pointed out that knowing the right things about God isn’t the same as a faithful life in relationship with God. 

Faithfulness requires relinquishing the delusion that we can be self-sovereign. It’s having our eyes opened to areas of our lives in which we’re still white-knuckled, clinging to control, so that we can let them go, fully surrendering them to the Lord.

Faith works. James’s entire letter has exhorted us to live faithfully as followers of Jesus. From beginning to end, he insisted that the Christian life puts into action our belief in God’s sovereign power and goodness.