James 2

Screen Door song inspired by James 2....Rich Mullins...one of my favorites!  enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lZzp1u1PDQ&feature=related     with fun percussion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcvBsNcIzu4&feature=related      clearer song/lyrics

I love tea.   You probably don't care about that fact.  But if I said I love tea and you never saw me drink it, you might wonder.  If I insisted that I love tea and turned it down every chance I had, you might wonder if I was a liar.  If you saw that my cupboards had no tea on them...doubt would definitely arise as to the veracity of my words.  I would wonder, too. 

However, I thank my Perfect Creator for tea, I cook with tea (boil chicken in lemon tea, jasmine tea with rice, ...), I drink tea, I brew tea, I ice tea, I share tea, I encourage tea, I give tea, I buy tea, I freeze tea, I even wear tea (splashing happens),  I love tea.  Not a day goes by without tea, and usually it's tea all day long.  Pastor Troy's words,“ Righteous people do righteous things, but the righteous things that we do, do not make us righteous”, made me think of this.  The fact that I am a tea-person is demonstrated by my "activitieas".  But all of my "activitieas" do not and never will make me tea or a tea-lover.  God made me a tea-lover.  He gives me "opportuniteas" (this is fun) for tea; but no matter what I do and how much I do it, I am not the "activitea", "ministrea" nor the tea.    And as James 2:17 says, "So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless."  My belief that I love tea is a waste, a corpse of words and time if I do not live that to the fullest of my "abilitea".  My God faith/belief is evidenced by my public displays of affection for God, my private encounters with my Savior, my obedience to the Holy Word, my yieldedness to His authority, my interactive and ongoing relationship with the LORD of the Universe who knows my name. My works show where my heart is; what I treasure; but they are not the treasure.

Another thing that came to me is that when I claim to be a tea-lover but I do all the activities I mentioned with okra and not tea...that really does mean I am not a tea-lover.  I love okra.  That's like the unrighteous things (okra=evil) we do. Again, the work is the evidence of the heart's truest desire.  Joining this with the last line of James 1, "to keep oneself unstained/from being polluted by the world", we must say "no" to okra.  In order to have that pure and undefiled religion and only by God's "undiminishable" grace can we be kept from the stinking filth of the world which stains us and impacts the works we do...lest they be evil or just wasted (wood, hay, and stubble).

Lord, help me to never let time, leisure, comfort, organization, opportunity, oppression, fear, laziness, selfishness, the tyranny of the urgent or anything else  to divorce my faith from my (good) works.    God, I don't want a trial separation, either.  Help me to choose the good works You have for me to do that they might be the signs of life, the heartbeat or respirations of my faith in You and Your Word. Give me discipline and wisdom (I'm asking and believing that You are giving generously to me without finding fault) to keep me from being stained by the world.  I do want my religious expression to be my life, I want that expression to be pure and un-debased in order that the results of the expression may be good and well-done, according to You.