James 1

Unit 2 Choice 1

James 1:5 is such a MAJOR scripture for everyone to know and understand.  I can ask the Lord any question and He can teach me.  It doesn't matter how small or large the question is, He is there for me.  James tells us that we need to ask in faith and adds "nothing wavering".  To me this needs that we need to go to the Lord knowing that He will answer us and also that we will listen to His answer.  We can't go their asking and already have the answer we want in our minds.

James 1:8 tells us that a double minded man is unstable and in the footnotes we are directed to 2 Kings 18:21.  This helps us to understand the scripture by using an analogy of a damaged reed used as a staff.  If we don't use something solid to lean on, it will not stand and will end up hurting us.   Mathew 6:24 ties in to this as well when it tells us that we cannot serve two masters.  We can only serve either God or Satan.

James 1:13-15 and 19-27 give us some direction on how we can live the gospel.  It starts off and tells us that the Lord is not the one that tempts us.  We are tempted by our lack of control of our own lusts.  And if we do not control those it will lead to sin and then spiritual death.  James also teaches us that we should be slow to anger and that an angry man is not a righteous man.  He also tells us that we need to remove our haughtiness and replace it with meekness.  We also need to do more than hear the words of Christ.  We need to be doers of His word.  In verse 26 we learn that our religion needs to not just be in our words but that we need to have a testimony in our hearts.  James calls this pure religion and when we have that we will have the desire to take care of those in need.

James 1:22 is the scripture where it talks of being doers of the word, not just hearers of the word.  This past few months as we have been working on our Women's Conference for 2015 we were talking about all the things we learned while listening to the Women's Broadcast in September.  It was all about temples and we thought we would make that our focus.  As we continued to talk we felt the Spirit guide us and that we didn't need to talk about temples but we needed to attend the temple.  For this conference we will be taking all the women of our stake to the temple.  It is a huge undertaking but we want to be doers of the word.

Bruce R McConkie talked about James and how the verse 1:5 led to the restoration of the gospel.  Also, anyone who has investigated the church has been in the same shoes as Joseph Smith and has asked as he did when inspired by the words of James.  This simple verse led to the heavens opening in modern times.