Posts from 2025

“For we all stumble in many ways,” James wrote (3:2). Amen to that. Most Christians I know are painfully aware of the many ways we fall short. Some failures are obvious; others are tucked away in the corners of the heart where no one else sees. But we know. And God knows. If you’ve spent any time in James 4, you’ve noticed he doesn’t exactly ease into things. He comes out swinging. He accuses his readers of wanting what they…

If you’re squeamish about a little PG-13 spiritual honesty, you might want to bail now. James didn’t exactly specialize in soft landings. He called things what they were, with no euphemisms and no polite throat-clearing. And he certainly wasn’t afraid of hurting feelings if it meant waking people up. Case in point: this line probably stung like a slap in the face, and James knew it would: You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is…

Most of us would like to believe that God says yes to all our prayers. But he doesn’t, at least not in the way we want or when we want. You’ve felt that, right? James says one of the reasons is uncomfortably simple: You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your pas-sions (James 4:3). I can look back on specific seasons when I felt like God was ignoring me. I begged him for…