Session Four: Day Two- Faith Perfected

You see that faith was active together with his works and by works, faith was perfected.

James 2:22

"Foolish man!  Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless?"  James throws this out there and it sticks in my heart.  Am I willing to learn that even though I have faith, am I living a life that acts on it?  Being immersed in the scriptures as I do this study, another reading plan and a smaller devotional means that every day I have an opportunity to hear what God wants to teach me and to do the work he asks of me. 

James takes us by the hand and shows us the evidence of two very specific people in the bible who were willing to learn that faith without works is dead.  First he shows us Abraham and then Rahab, two very different people.  One the father of Israel the other a prostitute.  What things did you list under each person name in the margins?

Lisa:
     ABRAHAM:

• Ancestor of the Israelites
• considered righteous
• offered his son as a sacrifce
• faith and actions worked together
• faith was made complete by action
• believed God
• called God's friend

     RAHAB: 

• a prostitute (a porn star...)
• considered righteous
• gave lodging to spies

Jill:  Abraham

• God's Friend
• Righteous
• Father of Isreal

     Rahab

• Prostitute
• Righteous
• Helped the spies

James sees faith and works as being absolutely intertwined with one another.  After reading Genesis and James, list everything works accomplishes according to James 2:24

Lisa: I wasn't exactly sure what she was looking for, but I wrote: "We are justified by what we do."

Jill "You see the person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone"

In your own life, do you struggle more with superficial faith or with legalism?  Why?

For me it is superficial faith.  I believe 100% that once you are saved you are saved.  My struggle is always in getting complacent and not doing the things that God asks me to do.  I need to always be aware of whether or not I am living a life consistent with what scripture tells me to be doing.

Lisa: Me too.  Legalism is such a dirty word to me, and I am utterly repulsed by it.  I am really praying hard against both of these ways of living.  I want to be the real thing, inside and out.  I also liked the quote from Beth leading up to this question that talks about Paul and James:

...but they (Paul and James) had two different objectives.  "James was combating a superficial faith that had no wholesome effect in the life of the professed believer.  Paul, on the other hand, was combating legalism - the belief that one may earn saving merit before God by his good deeds."

 Jill I stuggle with both equally.  Growing up Catholic clearly I have issues with legalism, but along with that I have seen my share of superficial faith.  And stuggling with the Catholic faith as I did both were very difficult for me to try and find my way.  Lisa I underlined that section as well.  It really made me understand who Paul and James' audiance was and why they needed to write what they did.

My favorite part of today's study was reading the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew.  While I have read this passage many times before, it was the first time that I was made aware of the women listed in the lineage.  How awesome that in the line of David leading up to Jesus, there was a woman named Rahab, who was able to change the course of her life from broken to healed and from healed to being an ancestor of the Savior.  Talk about God knowing who we are to become!  

Lisa:  I loved that too!  How many times have I read the lineage of Jesus, and this is the first time that I really realized how close she was to King David.  Without her decision to do something HUGE for the Lord (that wasn't even her God at the time) and something that endangered both her and her family, she CHANGED the course of history.  Of course, we know, that if she hadn't, that God would have someone else, but how AWESOME that SHE DID!!!  Then, thinking about Boaz, and why he was so willing to accept Ruth for who she was!  "If you know anything about the story of Boaz, maybe his compassion for Ruth and his willingness to see her as more than a foreigner makes perfect sense.  After all, he was his mother's son.  Rahab's boy grew up and became Ruth's kinsman redeemer, taking her as his bride."

Jill:  Dont you just love the way God works.  Jesus has a prostitue as a grandmother how many generations back, and his mother was unwed.  I love how God can use ANYONE at ANYTIME in their life, even in the period that you feel you have hit rock bottom.  He is there with us and He uses us even during those periods of greatest dispair when we may feel the furthest from him.  I LOVE THAT. As for Ruth, I used Ruth in part of our wedding (Ruth 1: 16-17).  I love the story of Ruth, again I just love the way God uses us in ways we cant even imagine.

FAVORITE QUOTE FROM TODAY:

When He who was, who is, and who is to come sees each one of us, He sees who we were, who we are, and who we will become!

Amen and Amen!!!  I love you Father.  Thank you for loving me in spite of who I have been, who I am, and who I might be.  Thank you for sending your precious Son to redeem us.  YOU are so good.

One more thing.  I read this on a friend's Facebook status, and I almost thought she snatched it from this lesson:

  

Who I used to be is a big part of who I am to become. Who sacrificed for me is responsible for what has changed in me. No matter where I have been, or where I am going, I am who I am and who He has created me to be. Good or bad, win or lose, right or wrong, worst or best. It is what it is, I am who I am, He is who He is.

~Julie Liston

 

Jill:  Wow