James 5:13—Pray. Sing.
Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. James 5:13
No matter your shape or condition, go to God. Whether you’re hitting rock bottom or are happy as a clam, make it your practice to look to the Lord—for help or to praise.
Is anyone among you suffering?
Are you suffering? Be honest about it—many times Christians don’t like to admit when their circumstances are too much for them. As a result, they neglect finding the help they need by pretending nothing’s wrong. However, God is intimately acquainted with your stress, pain, anxiety, frustration, shame, and fear. He not only knows all about it but also understands how it grew to be so enormous. He knows more about it than you do yourself—and He knows how to bring the remedy and solution into your situation. Why live with the knots in your stomach, the sleepless nights, the crying jags, or the fits of frustrated rage any longer? Are you suffering? You must pray.
Then he must pray.
When you’re facing incredible frustration, agonizing stress, or unbearable heartache, the last thing you should do is “not bother God”. Bother Him! He knows the number of hairs on your head (Matthew 10:30); He knows when you sit down or rise up; He scrutinizes your path and your lying down, and He’s intimately acquainted with all your ways. Even before you say a word, He knows what you’re going to say (Psalm 139:2-4). He knows more about you than the NSA (they may read your emails, but they can’t read your heart—that ability belongs to Him alone!), and He loves you with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). He’s on your side, and He has all the answers—along with the power and desire to bring those answers to you.
Is anyone cheerful?
Much of what is written in the Bible concerning our day-to-day lives is to equip you to stand fast in the Lord during troubles and tests of all kinds. However, you’re not always in the middle of an intense trial, and this little phrase in James’ letter acknowledges that fact. Do you feel great? Are things going well? Have you just experienced one of God’s blessings? Is it hard to wipe that smile off your face? Then there’s an app for that—a “James app”:
He is to sing praises.
Sing. Sing to the Lord. Sing praises to Him. Make singing to Him a practice every time something wonderful, sweet, kind, or merely pleasant happens to you. Give Him the glory—He is so worthy of it. You don’t have a decent singing voice? Join the club! Sing to Him anyway. Sing songs that you know and songs you make up—sing about the specific blessing He’s given you. It may sound funny to others, but you’re not singing for them—it’s to the Lord on High that you lift up your voice.
Moses spoke to a people on the verge of entering into great blessing. He said, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you” (Deuteronomy 8:10, emphasis added). Singing to the Lord is a tremendous way to bless Him.
Moses went on to explain why it is so imperative to prioritize blessing God. He said, “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God…otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them…and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (see Deuteronomy 8:11-14).
You bless the Lord so you don’t forget all that He has done for you. You sing praises to Him so that you don’t take His kindness for granted. And there’s something about singing to Him—your heavenly audience of One—that is deeply personal, vulnerable, and intimate. What a way to draw close to Him! What a way to minister your love and appreciation to His heart!
Are you suffering? Then pray. Are you cheerful? Sing praises. Your God is with you in tight places, and He’s the Architect of your breakthrough and blessings, as well. He never fails.
Dorothy
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8a
All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. John 6:37
Read MoreJames 5:12—Do not swear
But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment. James 5:12
But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath…
Jesus said something very similar to this in the Sermon on the Mount: “…I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil” (Matthew 5:34-37).
The Lord said, “Make no oath.” James said, “Do not swear.” Both of these words, “oath” and “swear”, are the same Greek word, omnyō, which means “to affirm, promise, threaten, with an oath” (see http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Jam&c=5&t=KJV&ss=1#s=1151012).
Why would this be such a big deal to the Lord and other writers of the Holy Scriptures? Does He not want us to make promises or enter into covenant with others?
I believe the central issue here is integrity. People often “swear to God” or “on a stack of Bibles” or make oaths of outrageous declarations such as I swear on the life of my firstborn. If you swear to God and do not fulfill your promise, your oath is meaningless—you can’t make God do a thing about your ill-conceived oath. He doesn’t answer to you! If you swear on a stack of Bibles and don’t follow through, your oath does not change one letter in the Word—your oath is meaningless. I swear on the life of my firstborn. Oh, really? So you’re ready to lose the life of your kid if you don’t follow through? If anyone falls for that, I have oceanfront property near Ferguson to sell them. And how about my personal favorite, Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye? That was an oath I often swore throughout my childhood. I broke most of those oaths but never stuck a needle in my eye—and I’m still alive to this day. Lord, help us!
…but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no…
James started this verse with the words, Above all. Above all, have integrity in yourself. Don’t enter into a pattern of outrageous swearing by or on anything. Instead, let your “yes” mean “yes” and your “no” mean “no”. And then follow through. Others will start seeing you as reliable and trustworthy, and you will earn the reputation as a man or woman of your word. You won’t need to swear extreme oaths to gain someone’s trust.
…so that you may not fall under judgment.
Again, why is the prohibition against swearing or making oaths such a big deal in the Bible? James answers it this way: so that you may not fall under judgment. I know from my vast history of crossing my heart, hoping to die, etc., that I rarely kept my promise. And if I was so quick to break my promises, I surely wouldn’t keep my flamboyant oaths any better. I may have promised to keep your secret about who you liked; I may have uttered cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye; but if I felt like telling your secret to someone else the next day, all bets were off—I told. And then I made them swear to secrecy. I no more hoped to die than the man in the moon! And forget sticking a needle in my eye! Without knowing it, I put my little blonde girly self under judgment.
Do you realize that adults are very often no better? We may not use the same juvenile terminology, but we are capable of swearing and making oaths, nonetheless. Oh, but the Lord knows my heart, we think flippantly; and then we spill the beans on someone who had entrusted us with their deepest concerns. Ouch! This pains me to write; but I get the feeling that so much of the stuff that we brush off as innocent conversation is—in reality—quite destructive. I include myself in that assessment.
What should you do if you’ve ignored the warnings of Jesus and James and find yourself in a bind with something you’ve unwisely sworn or promised? Psalm 15:4b says this about the man of integrity: “He swears to his own hurt and does not change.” You swore it; you stick with it—even if it hurts. That’s a big reason I believe the Lord is so adamant about oaths—He knows they are typically extreme, often hasty, and He wants to protect you from having to face the painful outcome. Whether it’s the agony of following through with a nearly impossible oath or the prospect of being judged for your lack of integrity—it’s best to avoid swearing and making oaths altogether.
What do we do? We practice integrity. We practice being slow to speak. We check with the Lord before answering. We listen carefully to Him and develop the ability to recognize when we’re starting to run off at the mouth. We practice saying “yes” or “no”, period—no oaths; and we back our yeses and nos with action.
The Lord takes us seriously. May we take His concerns seriously, as well.
Dorothy
O Lord, who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy hill?
- He who walks with integrity
- and works righteousness
- and speaks truth in his heart.
- He does not slander with his tongue
- nor does evil to his neighbor
- nor takes up a reproach against his friend
- in whose eyes a reprobate is despised
- but who honors those who fear the Lord
- he swears to his own hurt and does not change
…He who does these things will never be shaken. Psalm 15:1-4, 5b
Read MoreJames 5:11—The impact of endurance
We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. James 5:11
We count those blessed who endured.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). Because of your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, you are blessed, before, during, and after every trial, despite the outcome. It’s a standard feature of your new birth. But there is something uniquely remarkable about the man or woman who endures to the end under hardship, oppression, false accusation, or outright persecution. God counts all of His children blessed; we count those who endure blessed. Faithful endurance seems to crank up the “bless-o-meter”.
I think it has something to do with the thing called grace. Those of us who know the Lord are aware of how abundant His grace toward us is. We were saved by grace; we remain saved due to the sustaining continuance of His grace. Without His grace, we would all be, as my pastor often says, “burnt match heads”. When we fall (I’ve lost count of the spills I’ve experienced throughout my life), God’s grace is there to pick us back up, dust us off, clean us up, soothe our wounds, and put us back on the path. But as James wrote in chapter 4, verse 6, “But He gives a greater grace.” Those who have endured through thick and thin have learned the secret of accessing God’s greater grace. And that sets them apart from the pack.
You have heard of the endurance of Job…
No one in their right mind would want to swap places with Job—at least during a certain two years of his life. The things that happened to him over a short period of time and then lingered while so-called friends accused him of bringing it all on himself would have driven many of us to complete hopelessness and despair, to the point of—like Job’s wife advised—cursing God and dying (see Job 2:9).
This woman viewed the very beginning of Job’s two-year stand of endurance—and despised him for it. In the same verse she raged , “Do you still hold fast your integrity?” Don’t be surprised if others mock your desire to stand fast in the Lord when under an attack. The natural way is to give up. The carnal method is to ditch the Word and get mad. The fleshly thing to do is to wallow in self-pity. And yes, Job was tempted to do all of the above—and even dabbled in a bit of it, too—but he kept coming back to his first love, God. After approximately two years, Job emerged from his ordeal. But not until he had endured the following:
- Sabeans raiding all his donkeys and oxen and killing all of those servants
- Chaldeans raiding all his camels, killing all of those servants
- His oldest son’s house collapsing on top of all of Job’s children in a huge windstorm, killing every one of them
- Being covered in painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head
- A foolish, antagonistic wife
- Three friends who told Job that he brought all of this on himself; they were pushing him to accept the blame for what he didn’t cause
A fourth man, Elihu, witnessed the escalation of all of the accusations as Job and the other three clashed against one another. When he had heard quite enough, he stepped in in an attempt to bring order and stop the blame game; and then the Lord spoke. He set Job straight: “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me!’” (Job 38:1-3).
The Lord then arrested the finger-pointing of the three friends as well, saying to one of the men, “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has. Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has” (Job 42:7-8).
… and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings…
“The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the Lord increased all that Job had twofold… The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had 14,000 sheep and 6,000 camels and 1,000 yoke of oxen and 1,000 female donkeys. He had seven sons and three daughters… In all the land no women were found so fair as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers… And Job died, an old man and full of days” (Job 42:10, 12-13, 15, and 17; emphasis added).
…that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.
James wrote, “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12). The Lord is with you in the midst of every difficulty. As you choose to cling to Him and tune out the voices—both from others and yourself—to “curse God and die”, you will be strengthened by His mighty power to access His greater grace—the grace that will power you across the finish line.
Enduring to the end is rarely ever pretty. It is gritty, sweaty, agonizing, often lonely, very often tear-drenched, and in extreme cases, bloody. But the end of endurance is this—the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.
Listen to the prophet Jeremiah who endured nearly constant persecution at the hands of those to whom he was sent: “Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:21-23).
Don’t give up. Run your race with endurance; when you have finished your course, you will receive the crown of life. We count those blessed who endured. You are called to be in that company.
Dorothy
Read MoreA lesson from Gideon
The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in due time. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. Psalm 145:15-16
Gideon has a personality like Barney Fife. That cat virtually sniffs with cockiness around his feline siblings, nosing his way into anyone’s food bowl whenever he pleases–even the bowl of his 19-pound brother. You see, it’s not the size of the cat that counts; it’s the size of the attitude. Gideon has attitude in spades.
But like Barney Fife, underneath Gideon’s bluster lies a great big scaredy cat. Just sneeze when he’s snoozing sweetly next to you, and up he leaps with a start, wild-eyed with terror, scrambling for cover. The mighty Gideon is first to flee with a knock on the door or the roar of the vacuum. You get the picture.
And Sunday morning before church, God used this little red cat to convey profound spiritual truth to me.
I stumbled out of bed that morning feeling like a cross between a corpse and an empty Hostess cupcake wrapper—surely the result of that humongous piece of caramel apple pie I devoured on Saturday. I ached in more places than I didn’t, and as I groped for coffee it dawned on me that God was somewhere out there…and that He wasn’t aching.
The cats, certain they would starve to death, demanded immediate attention. I obliged, feeding the girls upstairs in the kitchen, and separating the boys from each other in the basement.
They grew up eating the same thing in the same room, playing musical chairs with their food bowls—every meal, all meal long—until every bite was gobbled up. No big deal—no one starved—and I was free to do my own thing.
But now the boys both have special needs. Rowe eats specific food for urinary tract health support, and Gideon was diagnosed a few months ago with failing kidneys—as a result, he’s on a strict low-protein diet. His health and telltale behavioral issues have improved, but I hover like a hawk—he’s convinced everyone else’s food is much better than his. Frustrated with his pickiness and insistence that he search out everyone else’s bowl, I quickly learned that he would eat his food if I fed it to him with a plastic spoon. Now all I have to say when he ignores his dish is, “Wanna spoon?” and there he is, basking in the attention—lick, lick, lick. Chew, chew, chew. Shake, shake, shake—crumbles of cat food flying. And then lick, lick, lick all over again. He milks it for all it’s worth.
That morning, I was absent-mindedly aching and thinking that it had been way too long since I’d really dug into the Word as I spoon-fed my red menace. Minutes crawled by. And then Rowe wanted out of his breakfast room and Gideon wanted Rowe’s leftovers. And the girls wanted anything they could find flung around from Gideon’s mess.
After securing the leftovers for their rightful owners later on, I wrote in my journal, “I’m craving my relationship with the Word, Lord. I’ve gotta do that for which I was created—feast on Your Word and receive food and revelation by Your hand.”
And then it hit me: God wants me to become like Gideon! That cat didn’t just want food—he insisted that I spoon-feed him. He wanted his food and closeness with me. In the same way, God didn’t want me to ignore Him while I downed verse after verse, chapter after chapter (shaking off chunks of Scripture before I wolfed down some more)—that wasn’t the way He wanted me to feed on His Word. He wanted me to sit with Him—like Gideon did with me—and feed on the portions of Scripture that He saw fit to feed me by His hand.
Even though I get annoyed with Gideon’s “love of the spoon”, I am noticing great improvements in his feline quality of life. Gideon is a living example of how all of us should become in our relationship with the Lord and His Word.
And the amazing thing is this: God will never get annoyed when any of us persistently push in for closeness with Him while feeding on His Word! He enjoys it!
Gotta go—the cats are telling me it’s dinnertime.
Dorothy
…like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation… 1 Peter 2:2
Read MoreJames 5:10—Take the prophets, for example
As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. James 5:10
My guess is that it has never been convenient or comfortable to be a messenger of righteousness in the midst of a godless or backslidden generation, even back in the days of Noah: “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly…” (2 Peter 2:4-5, emphasis added). I can picture Noah preaching repentance and righteousness to the rebellious pre-flood world the whole time he worked on the ark—more than likely being scorned and mocked the entire time.
…take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Amos spoke to God’s people living in the midst of prosperity. While the people conformed to a display of religious tradition, many also cozied up to pagan worship. Leaders were becoming more and more corrupt, families were growing increasingly unstable due to widespread immorality, and class hatred was on the rise (taken from notes on the Book of Isaiah and the Book of Hosea, Spirit-Filled Life Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., ©1991).
Joel prophesied during an interruption to the prosperity in Judah when it was overrun by a devastating plague of locusts that stripped the land of all vegetation within a few short hours.
Micah saw the beginnings of the divided kingdom and witnessed the spread of idolatry as it competed with the worship of God. Zephaniah was the last to prophesy to Judah before its captivity; and Habakkuk witnessed increasing violence against citizens, oppressive treatment of the poor, and the collapse of the legal system in Judah, just before Jerusalem fell (taken from notes on the Book of Micah, the Book of Zephaniah, and the Book of Habakkuk, Spirit-Filled Life Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., ©1991).
Daniel and Ezekiel prophesied during the time of exile; Haggai and Zechariah prophesied in the days following exile as the people returned to their land, and by the time of Malachi, the final prophet in scriptural record before the birth of Christ, the people had become immoral and careless once again (taken from notes on the Book of Malachi, Spirit-Filled Life Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., ©1991).
None of these godly men had an easy task; with fire in their hearts and tears in their eyes, they warned a rebellious people of God’s judgment.
As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience…
Although some of those prophets met with seasons of favor, none of them saw lifelong celebrity or fame. It didn’t matter; what did matter was the message God had branded upon their hearts.
Prophets had a unique manner of staying separated to God even as they connected with people. They were often loners who were misunderstood because of the message God gave to them and the methods by which He led them to share that message. They were the proverbial sore thumb, sticking out in the crowd. They were typically unpopular. They were rarely viewed as rock stars.
Although Isaiah enjoyed more favor than most of the others, it is traditionally thought that he was sawn in two under the reign of wicked king Manasseh. Daniel, another more favored prophet, was deported to Babylon as a teen at the beginning of the captivity of Jerusalem, never to return home. Ancient historian Josephus wrote that this godly youth was likely made a eunuch early in his captivity (see http://www.biblestudy.org/question/what-is-a-eunuch.html), and as an older man under the reign of Darius the Mede, Daniel was thrown into a den of lions. His crime? He violated the edict created to ensnare him by jealous satraps and governors—he prayed to the one true God instead of the king. Isaiah and Daniel each patiently served God in their time and were both willing to suffer death if necessary to maintain their loyalty to Him alone.
God directed Hosea to disrupt his domestic peace and expose himself to heartbreak by marrying a prostitute. In this way, Hosea’s life became a living sermon about the agonizing waywardness of God’s people and the greatness of His mercy, forgiveness, and love.
And then there was Jeremiah. Called as a young man, Jeremiah was immediately informed by God that his message would not be well-received. The Lord told him, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you” (Jeremiah 1:8). He also said, “They will fight against you, but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver you” (verse 19).
He was commanded by God not to marry and to remain childless as a sign of the destruction coming upon his generation (see Jeremiah 16:1-4). When Jeremiah prophesied in the court of the Lord’s house about the coming doom, the son of the priest struck him and put him in stocks outside at the gate, leaving him there all day and all night (see Jeremiah 20:1-3). When he later prophesied concerning King Zedekiah’s soon undoing, he was imprisoned within the king’s house (see Jeremiah 32:1-3).
While in prison, Jeremiah continued prophesying, not shrinking back from the word of the Lord despite the consequences. The king’s officials begged Zedekiah, “Now let this man be put to death, inasmuch as he is discouraging the men of war who are left in this city and all the people, by speaking such words to them; for this man is not seeking the well-being of this people but rather their harm” (Jeremiah 38:4). The king responded, “He is in your hand,” so they took the prophet and threw him in a dungeon filled with mire—deep, slimy mud (and who knows what else)—leaving him there to die (see verses 5-6). But, praise God, an Ethiopian eunuch, Ebed-Melech, pleaded for Jeremiah’s life before the king, and in response, Zedekiah ordered the release of the prophet (see verses 7-13).
James wrote, “As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” You have a rich heritage, passed down from men of faith, running through your veins. Stand fast in that Truth; it is the Word of life that can set men free. Cling tightly to Jesus; He is the Rock that will never roll; He will never leave you or forsake you.
Dorothy
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. Revelation 12:11
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