I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on James 1-5.

I love the Book of James.  It contains so many lessons for us.   James starts off by telling us that we should take joy in whatever troubles come our way, because troubles test our faith.  The testing of our faith gives us the opportunity to grow our faith and as our faithful endurance improves we become better people. From there James segues into a topic which he comes back to later in this letter: if we lack anything, we should ask God for it.  In this case, James tells us that if we need more wisdom, God will provide it to us if we ask Him for it.  Later, James tells us that quarrels and fights happen among us because we want what we do not have, and we do not have it because we do not ask God for it.  Even when we do ask, we ask in order to please ourselves rather than to please God and others.

In the beginning when James speaks of asking God for wisdom he warns against seeking wisdom other than God’s.  Then when he later speaks of asking God for what we want he warns against seeking the pleasures of this world.  I cannot emphasize enough the connection between these two things.  The world considers wisdom to be those things which will show us how to obtain the pleasures of this world.  God’s wisdom shows us how to serve others in faithful obedience to God.  The foundational principles of godly wisdom teach us to do those things which are necessary to accumulating material possessions, which often misleads people into thinking that wisdom leads to the acquisition of wealth.  Thus, if we put our focus on the material instead of on God, we can be misled into following the wisdom of the world rather than the deeper principles of true wisdom.

I feel like I have failed to completely explain my title, please read the Book of James to see how he explains it.