Podcasts about because james

Introduction:  James Scouller spent 15 years researching and writing his trilogy of books, how to build winning teams again and again…   He led three international Companies as CEO for eleven years before he founded his executive coaching practice, The Scouller Partnership in 2004. Today he coaches Leaders and their teams. James is the author of the bestselling book, The Three levels of Leadership: how to develop your leadership presence, knowhow and skill. He is the holder of two postgraduate coaching qualifications, and he has trained in applied psychology at the UK Institute of Psychosynthesis. In addition, James holds a 4th Dan Black belt in Aikido. He lives in London with his wife Tricia. Podcast episode Summary:  This episode explores what you need to know, what you need to do and how you do it to become a winning team. James shares his passion for teams and his quest to reveal what it takes to build real teams. It takes effort. Questions asked & points made throughout the Episode:   o    How would you like to fill in the gaps, in terms of my introduction? James is an ex-CEO and that is an important part of his identity. James firmly believes that if individuals and team want to grow they need to address their unnoticed psychological obstacles. Peoples biggest obstacles are not to do with technical stuff, but it is more to do with psychological blocks. James believes that most people, if they can recognise these psychological blocks and work on them they can not only see greater improvement in work results but also greater levels of personal satisfaction. James has been working for nearly 48 years. 20 years ago he decided to set up on each own as a Coach, to train as a coach and along the way he wrote the book The three levels of leadership which he calls a self-help psychological manual and for the last 10 years his focus has been on writing the trilogy on teams. -that's James story in a can.   o    What does your first book unearth in terms of the psychological principles you speak?  The first book has a role in the trilogy to describe what you really need to know about teams. What you need to know about teams is firstly the distinction between what a team is and is not, the definition of a team and the many alternative work group units. You also need to know about the psychological forces that are going on beneath the surface and if you do not know about them you are going to end up a victim of them and you will not act and succeed as a genuine team. The third big thing that you need to know is the commit, combust, combine model which James explains is a psychological model but it is also a practical model and a team can use it to determine which issue they are facing.   o    How do you help teams you work with through the collective forces and individual forces material you describe in your book? James is clear that he doesn't, certainly not in the way he described in the book. He does not take teams into the dual forces model, it is a little academic and doesn't give a team an immediate “so what”. James remains as a coach with his clients and not an educator, although now the books are out he may find himself having to spend more time in an educative role. What James really wants teams to know is that there is stuff going on beneath the surface. He will use a scaling question from 0-10 where he asks a team how well they can skilfully assert themselves in a conversation 1:1 and with the same question in a group. Typically the response is much lower in the group setting and this helps sensitise a group to the knowing that something more is going on in a group setting. This question and revealing is about as much as James will ever do with a team when it comes to the dual forces model. James will more readily use the other psychological model, Commit, Combust, Combine as well as the material from his second book with teams. James wants to make his sessions with teams as experiential & as developmental as possible. James will always explain The Team Progression Curve, which features in book one, which differentiates the different work groups such as task group, potential teams, pseudo teams, real teams and high performing teams. James find that most teams and in particular senior teams like this mapping. Teams get it, it intuitively makes sense and they see things that they didn't know that there is a choice of unit and there is a trap called the Pseudo Team. On the same flip chart James will draw arrows on the ascent between the potential team to the real team that shows Commit, Combust and Combine. James is intent on allowing the teams he works with experience what each of these psychological elements feels like and it is only when he is bowing out of a team coaching assignment he will refer back to the explanation of the Commit Combine and Combine model. Instead James gives teams the team fixer model, book three so the team can self-diagnose. In summary James does not give his teams intellectual food on the models discussed in book one.   o    How did you find the synthesis of these three models helped you and your practice? I am a synthesiser. The world of applied psychology frustrates James because he finds that there are so many people describing the same things using different language. The work has an application for James because he can assess which issue is foremost in terms of commit, combust and combine to help him figure out which of the seven principles and action keys, in his 7 principles model described in book two will be most useful for the team and which to zoom in on.    o    James what do listeners to this podcast need to know in terms of the interplay between the three models described in book one? The only thing that team members or team coaches need to take away from this conversation is that there is a model, a dual forces model that explains what is happening beneath the surface that is making it difficult for teams to form easily. James wrote book one to make the point that if a team does not take the material seriously enough it is unlikely to succeed in building teams. He wanted to create some pain to make the point. Book one is going to be of far more interest to psychologists and coaches than to teams other than to make this important point, you have to understand it takes effort to build winning teams. The Commit, Combust, Combine model is much better for teams to help them answer the question “what do I do with this information?” o    Can you give the listeners a thumbnail sketch of each of the three elements in Commit, Combust and Combine? James starts by saying that the world has been fascinated with the idea of Psychological Safety and he will put it in perspective with respect to the C-C-C model. Trust and Psychological Safety are not the first immediate issue with a team. Commit, Combust, Combine is an attempt by James to take the brilliant work of William Schutlz who first came up with a model called FIRO-Elements in 1950, to make this work applicable to teams. Commit is the first issue for Teams. Commit is all about engagement. It asks am I psychologically in this team or am I not? This is not about whether you are physically present on a team, very often you do not have a choice but you do have a choice about whether or not you commit to the team. The commit issue gets revealed with these questions; what is this team going to be like?, is this going to be a good team, what do we have to do here? How does the Leader react to me? How are other people reacting to me? Can I sense a role that adds value to what I think this team is about? Do I feel included and noticed based on  the behaviour of other people towards me and on my experience to date? If team members can say, yes I understand why this team is here, I like the purpose of the team, I can be part of this and I feel noticed & valued and the leader pays attention to me and I can see a role for myself here, then they will likely declare “I'm in” That the simple way of describing the Commit issue and what has to happen to navigate through it successfully. This phase can go on indefinitely and many work groups do not get past the commit issue.   o    Is ambivalence the shadow of commit? Yes because if a team is unclear about the aim of a group, or they do not care about the aim, or they cannot see a role for them in the team then they are unlikely to be able to commit and the result is ambivalence.   o    How long does it take to help a team see their order of Commit? The elements commit, combust and combine do not work like a ladder or linearly. There can be recycling of issues. Moving through or getting commitment can take minutes or months especially with work teams who can often be so fuzzy about their purpose.   o    If we continue with Combust and Combine what do they both mean? When Commit is resolved enough and enough people declare “I'm in” this is when the combust issue emerges. Combust is essentially about Power. Now the team is asking itself questions like; how do we get things done here? How do we make decisions here?, Is that clear and acceptable? Individually questions are asked like; what is my part in those decisions?, how happy am I with my influence over those decisions? Combust is all around influence, power and role. In commit we are trying to sense our role and in combust we are trying to settle into a role that meets our power needs. Not everyone has the same power needs. Combust is resolved when people are happy with their role, influence and how decisions are made.   o    How was the choice of the word combust made? Is it indicative of this phase that combustion will be likely? James lets us into a secret about the naming of his model. He shares that Bruce Tuckman admitted that the real success of his model was because it has a neat rhyming to it and similarly James wanted a memorable model. Psychological Safety comes in at the third issue of the C-C-C model. James restates that in his view, based on research by William Schultz, Psychological Safety it is not the first issue. Combine is a bit more intricate because there are two sides to it. The first side of combine is about trust  & intimacy and the second side is about focus. This is where we have questions like; Is it safe to say what I am really thinking? Who can I trust here? Do I trust? Is it safe to be the real me or if I express myself naturally and honestly will I find myself being rejected. Is it ok to be open, to say what is really on my mind. The other side of combine is about focus. The first two and half parts of the C-C-C model has been about the individual. This second half of the combine issue is about the team or “we” This is where a team member asks if they are prepared to put the groups agenda ahead of their own. The focus needs to be on “we” if the team is to navigate Combine successfully.   o    How do you segue into your 7 principles model? If you apply these 7 principles in a sequence that makes sense in the situation you are in, you will nail the three psychological issues of Commit, Combust and Combine to form a winning team. The 7 principles and the action keys underneath them are designed to try to help a team address the issues described in the commit, combust & combine model.   o    How does resistance feature and where? Because James works mostly with senior teams he finds that they are likely to resist when team coaching is introduced. If you can work quickly on helping a team work on something to do with commit you will find the scales of resistance drop. There are occasions if teams have gotten into the habit of lying to each other and are well down the path of becoming a pseudo team, James will work to help the team become more genuine with each other, otherwise James will start with a team's motivating purpose. It's a great piece of work to starting being honest with each other and feeling valued & noticed and feeling that their collective objective is something they care about.   o    What is the difference between a team's basic purpose & their motivating purpose? The motivating purpose comes from James first book where he describes Leadership as paying attention to four dimensions, and the first of the four dimensions is motivating purpose. A motivating purpose for an organisation is a vision and for a team a motivating purpose Is their number one goal. The distinction between basic purpose and a motivating purpose is an essential distinction. So many thought leaders and books blur the two. A basic purpose and a motivating purpose are connected and distinct. A basic purpose answers the question “why do we exist” and a team needs to get that clear because it signals what kinds of skills and people are required to fulfil the purpose. Most teams that James works with do know what their basic purpose is and it is not a problem for the team, however on two occasions he has met teams where the basic purpose was not clear and its affects were devastating. James has described the two cases in his second book. Sometimes it's enough that a basic purpose says something like “our job is to lead the company to enjoy continued success and growth” A motivating purpose brings urgency, it is much more localised and specific. It answers the question, what is the most important thing we have to get done together in the next 3-12 months. This purpose will reflect the basic purpose but it is much more here and now. A motivating purpose is a device for building a team. You are not going to have commitment if nobody knows exactly what they are committing to and typically the basic purpose is not enough. If you have a sensational basic purpose like “to get Tara Nolan to the moon by Christmas and bring her back safely” that is a serious purpose or for a project team it could be “to save the business from going under by finding €15 million in savings by the end of February” That is a basic purpose that can function as a motivating purpose. A basic purpose if often more philosophical.  A Motivating Purpose is very specific and urgent expressed in emotional language, with no more than three metrics and targets against these metrics and you check to see that team members care about its achievement and if they don't they will feel pretty awful they will feel that they have let themselves down. As a device developing a motivating purpose helps a team speed through the commit issue.   o    What is Leadership in your 7P model? It is the third principle that James calls shared flexed principled leadership. Essential for Leaders to grasp. The word leadership is a massive problem for executives. They have a very unhelpful mental model about Leadership. It is not a person, an office or a role, it is a process, it is in fact a four dimensional process, the process of paying attention to a motivating purpose, task progress and results, upholding group unity and paying attention to individual nuances. This definition according to James is very significant. People need to make a shift in the way they see leadership. The way Leaders see leadership is making it difficult to lead a team and the way team members see leadership makes it difficult for them to share leadership. Asked to define leadership most people say something reasonable like, “leading a team of people to realise its purpose” James will then ask and “how useful is that definition in guiding you about what you do and how you do it? To which he will invariably get the response “not helpful at all” When James digs further to probe the definition of leadership he gets answers like “leadership is done by people with remarkable capabilities who get sensational results” This definition affected James when he was a CEO and it has affected every CEO client he has met and sadly we are not aware of it consciously. This definition sets up leaders to feel an incredible inadequacy and it can set off defensive behaviours like becoming task obsessed, micro managing, or over criticising because leaders are simply terrified of failing. Leaders and the people they are trying to lead are conflating leadership with leader. Shared Leadership as a principle recognises that there is an official leader, who in difficult circumstances will make the ultimate decision if the team is stuck and everyone is there to move things along in terms of the four dimensions mentioned. Shared leadership means everyone is paying attention to the four dimensions  of leadership which for James means motivating purpose, task progress and results,  team unity and individual nuances. Interestingly The SAS, Rangers, Special forces in the USA have got the idea of shared leadership that is so obvious on a sports team. Hierarchy means nothing to these entities. In business we haven't yet grasped the idea of shared leadership.   o    James what keeps us attached to this idea of Leadership? The false idea of what leadership means and its conflation with the leader and the second thing is that people are unaware of the distinction between performance groups and real teams.   o    James in your third book you call out your team fixer approach to apply the material from book two, what surprised you? How difficult it was to answer the frequently asked questions. James wrote answers to 40 and about 5 or 6 were really tricky.   o    What is the current state of teams and what would you like to see happen? There are a couple of myths I would like to bust and a trap I would like everyone to know. Myth number one: Team building is not rocket science and we do not have to put great effort into it. Team building is tougher than rocket science, you do have to put effort into the process. Putting a rocket into space can be solved with mathematics. Teams are comprised of human beings, different human beings with free will. Members can change their minds at any time and you have these subterranean forces causing havoc. Building winning teams is demanding. Why do so many elite sports team leaders gets fired every season? This work is difficult and these leaders, sports leaders have been learning the art for years unlike business leaders. Myth number two: Team building is not easy to do consistently. If you put the effort in you will get better results and you will enjoy the experience The trap is the trap of a pseudo team. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith came up with the  term sixty years ago. Most people do not know it or have forgotten it and James has resurrected it. James invites us to visualise the team progression curve and to see that between the potential team and the real team there is marshland or quicksand. This represents the pseudo team trap. A pseudo team trap is a common one. They are not rare and probably more common the more senior you go. The pseudo team chases the idea of being a genuine team, not because they have a collective something that they have to achieve together but because they assume it is what you do in the 21st century. These types of teams put all the emphasis on teamwork, being emotionally supportive, asking supportive questions being nice to each other. Essentially this team is pursuing harmony above all else and they end up achieving poor results because they lose their focus and they give teams a bad name. Pseudo teams do not have a highly motivating performance goal that demand they pool their efforts.   o    How would you like to close. This is not an easy area. This work is difficult and it is why top team sports coaches get fired. Accept this work is difficult. If you put the effort in you can learn the art. You have to practice. You can realise that working on a team can become one of the most interesting and joyful of experiences. You have to put effort in and there are things to learn but you can do it!   o    How can we be in touch with you? www.leadershipmasterysuite.com and for listeners who are interested if you add /GOT you will go to a welcome page where James has offered sets of tools to download for free.   Resources shared across this podcast  o    www.leadershipmasterysuite.com o    www.leadershipmasterysuite.com/GOT o    How to build winning teams again and again – a trilogy by James Scouller

Fanny Kittridge Loses Her Religion.In 8 parts, based on the works of Bardot1990. Listen to the ► Podcast at ExplicitNovels.It took several weeks for young Fanny Kittridge to succumb. She’d personally witnessed her brother and his girlfriend fornicating orally on a number of occasions. One cannot witness human copulation without wistfully wondering after one’s own participation in the Mating Game.Fanny was not a virgin. Unlike her brother’s public confession, she’d fallen from grace last summer, repented quietly without consequence, and stayed within the good graces of the Kingdom Hall Church. A good number of Jehovah’s witnesses repent their sins silently without being publicly reproved.In Fanny’s case, she’d given up her virginity to one of Tony Gangel’s uncles repeatedly over the course of a worldly holiday. She’d enjoyed the experience in the moment, and repented her sin after the man went home. From that time to this, she worked on her spirituality while struggling to refrain from delving back into the sensuality that experience had unleashed. Seeing James and Delphia fornicate so lavishly caused her to lose her battle against masturbation. She was almost twenty years old now. Like most young people, her loins were afire from the moment she awakened daily.Fanny was sexually curious. She began to seek opportunities to see James’ phallus rise. It was a personal fetish. She’d be lurking in the hallway in the mornings when James exited his bedroom and made his way into the bathroom. His morning woody was always evident. It was always hidden in his boxer shorts, protruding like a third leg. Fanny wanted to see the real thing. She’d seen it in the darkness of their backyard, just before it was hidden again inside Delphia’s Cunt. The glimpse of her brother’s cock helped as she toyed with her own genitalia.James now informed Fanny that he was skipping some classes to fornicate with Tonya Castillejo, Penny Fowler and Sonjia Metusek. Fanny insisted that he describe each interaction in detail, taking pains to describe what each girl did to make him cum and how it felt to have their buttocks pressed against his pelvis. She made sure to give him the smarmy JW look of disapproval. But she listened intently nonetheless.“You’d better make sure mom and dad don’t find out.” she cautioned.At night, Fanny would imagine herself to be Tonya, Penny or Sonjia. She imagined James atop her. She imagined his phallus thrusting deeply in her Cunt, masturbating to this vision. She would cum. Afterward, Fanny felt embarrassed and ashamed at her incestuous diversion. But her devolutions into this magical fantasyland occurred with ever greater frequency. Her prayers did little to assuage her lust.Fanny wondered if James harbored similar prurient thoughts. Try as she might, she could not rid herself of the vision of lying prone, mounted beneath him. James was the only person she’d ever witnessed having sex. Sure, she remembered her encounter with Joey Strong in great detail. But as time went on it was James’ sweaty face growling his lust atop her, not Joey’s. James was the only person she knew that might understand her fetish. They could never be in love, she was taught. They simply shared a love of having intercourse. Fanny listened intently as James described his angst at being celibate. He was not. No, James had occasional relief. Fanny had none. She yearned to tell him of her predilection, but could not bring herself to do so.Instead, she found every occasion to surreptitiously measure his endowment and compare it against her own. She even made it her business to give him “unintentional” nipple slips and/or cunt shots. She then watched his reactions, always proud to see that her efforts bore fruit. James’ phallus tented at the drop of a hat. Fanny's ashen skin was constantly in need of lotion, to restore the golden ebony luster she contented herself with. She was not allowed to ‘paint her face with cosmetic vanities. So one day when she was at the local beauty supply shop, her lusty cravings were arrested by a display of lotions un a long plastic squeeze tube, capped by a big half round cap, which was as wide as the nearly two inch diameter. That tube was one her nightstand every night, and could be found in the shower with her, the next morning. After about 8 weeks, she returned to the shop for a new supply. To her delight, the shop had a special shipment of ‘bonus size' lotion tubes. Instead of the normal 8 once containers, which were about 7 inches long over all; the new promo featured 12 ounces and with the semi spherical cap, it was a whopping 10 inches! Fanny bought two, and purposed to keep one of the tubes full. She just had to remember to take it to the shower every morning to keep it from smelling like ‘cunny'.For a while Fanny to sate herself with the make-shift dildo, but it was not the real meat she lusted after.Finally and inevitably, this little dalliance came to a head. Fanny chose a weekday in which James’ complaints about his lackanookie peaked. She waited for the moment when James stepped into the shower and their father was at work. Mrs. Kittridge was downstairs cooking. Fanny gathered her courage, stripped her clothing (except for a bathrobe), and slipped into the bathroom as he showered.James didn’t hear her come in. The radio was playing, the shower was loud, the bathroom was steamy. James lathered himself from head to toe. He began to stroke himself. James masturbated languidly every time he bathed. He had to.Fanny scooched her bathrobe up and sat on the toilet. She peeked behind the shower curtain to watch James. His eyes were closed. His cock was hugely erect, hidden beneath a foamy cloud of soap bubbles. Fanny suspected he would masturbate until he came.This wouldn’t do.Fanny stood. She doffed her bathrobe to stand naked in the middle of the bathroom floor. She needed to catch James’ attention without seeming to be too forward. Thinking quickly, Fanny bent to reach under the sink, making sure to knock over a few cleaning bottles, making enough noise to make her presence known.Astonished at not being alone in the shower, James peeked out from behind the curtain. He was even most astonished to witness Fanny from behind, bent over, her neatly coifed cunt blazing confidently from between her buttocks. Already aroused, James’ phallus leapt. What was Fanny doing standing naked in the bathroom while he showered? Look at that ass!Fanny continued to piddle around under the sink. Swaying her ass sensually, she knew James was gazing at her cunt from behind. She wanted him to have a good, long look. She’d done as much as a girl could do. It was his move now.James’ mind raced. Instinct told him to pounce on that ass and ram it in. But this was his sister! More than that, this was his only friend and confidante in the house. He could lose her if he made such an inappropriate move without her consent.And yet he wondered, why was she even in there? It’s not as if she’d been in the bathroom first and he’d barged in on her. Fanny’s presence was no accident. If she’d needed to pee so badly, there was another bathroom downstairs. Plus, she was naked! Who goes looking for Comet cleanser in the nude? Something had to be up.Now a wicked thought occurred. Fanny had been really persistent, lately, to hear tales of his exploits. She’d made him go into detail and questioned him closely about the smallest minutiae. She’d wanted him to describe every sensation he felt during his sexual escapades, claiming an ignorance of the male perspective. Maybe, just maybe, Fanny was signaling her readiness for a walk on the wild side? It was worth a shot, anyway. She now stepped her feet out, apart, as she fidgeted with the various bottles on the counter. The vanity mirror was fully steamed.Leaving the water running to mask any sound, James stepped naked from the shower. Streamlets of clear, hot water pebbled and ran down his chiseled body. His cock, already erect, locked onto Fanny’s open cunt like a lurking jaguar. He stepped onto the bath mat, then up behind her, intending to accidentally-on-purpose bump his dick up against her cunt. He hoped she’d jump to the moon and they each could have a good laugh at the expense of the other.Creeping up behind her quietly, James didn’t have to point his dick into her crease. Fanny was still bent over, unaware of his proximity. Her ass swayed before him. From this position their genitals were perfectly aligned.James watched intently as his cock zeroed in on her cunt. He couldn’t believe that Fanny hadn’t detected his presence behind her yet. Most people can sense the nearness of another individual if the intruder encroaches too closely. James’ toes were almost touching Fanny’s heels now. In another millimeter, the crown of his dick would press her fuzzy opening. James watched the impending collision with fascination. That first merger of cock and cunt is always the most erotic of any ongoing tryst.Closer and closer still. Now Fanny’s pubic hair began to tickle James’ urethra, allowing him to sniff the heaven shielded behind her clasping labia. James drew a deep breath. He was almost there. A small nudge forward and his cockhead was bathed in the translucent stickiness of a queen cunt. Fanny’s cunt yielded before his imminent insertion.But Fanny did not jump or shriek. She set both hands down flat on the vanity counter, and held her ground before James’ penile assault. In fact, she didn’t seem surprised at all. She looked back at him as if he’d interrupted her while working a crossword puzzle at the kitchen table. Her look bore a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. And yet her hips continued to twerk gently, allowing James’ phallus purchase at the opening to her Cunt proper.It was James’ turn to be surprised. Kittridge dick rested in the valley of Kittridge slit. Not all the way in, but not all the way out either. Fanny was amazingly wet already. James was already familiar with the ethereal joy of a sloppy wet cunt. The slightest thrust would bathe his cock in incestuous slather. And here Fanny was acting as if the whole encounter were an entirely natural interaction between assuming siblings.James placed his hands upon her quivering buttocks. Still, Fanny didn’t move away. An eternity of indecision ensued. Did she want to fuck? Because James’ cock was certainly engaged and raring to go. But this was his older sister! Did he want his sister to suffer the same congregational shunning that he was currently enduring? No, he did not. And they were practically best friends! How would their relationship be affected by this impending action? Ramming your dick up a woman’s twat always complicates things; it never simplifies. James was morally torn.Ultimately, of course, James’ phallus made the decision for him. Holding Fanny’s ass steady, he pressed forward. Her cunt expanded widely before closing sloppily along the line of his veiny shaft. Four inches of cock disappeared into her Cunt. The familiar blinding wave of initial insertion engulfed James’ sensibilities. Fanny did not demur. There could be no doubt. This was consent.They were officially fornicating.Fanny unleashed a full body shiver. She’d waited an eternity for just this outcome. She’d trusted James with news of her secret affair with Joey Strong. She’d held her peace during James’ religious inquisition. James was the only person she could fully trust. And now his dick was easing its way up her ass. So thick! So deep! Fanny shivered again. They began to roil in tandem.James suddenly pulled out as he wrapped his arms around her narrow waist. Fanny placed her hands over his, keeping the connection understood. Without words, he pulled her gently from the counter and guided her to the far side of the large shower. Once she was facing the tiled wall, opposite the source of spraying water, he slid his hands back, and grabbed both her wrists. He placed her two hands high on the tiled wall. This silent act confirmed his intent to copulate from behind her beautiful peachy ass.A typical woman’s Cunt is arched to accept a seven-inch phallus from the missionary position. An erect cock slips into this arch like a glove so that all her erotic zones are in play. Her tits, her lips and, most importantly, her eyes are fully engaged as a dick probes her cunt.From behind, however, it’s the reverse. The upward arc of a man’s cock gouges an unintended wedge in the reverse arc of a cunt. The result, for women, is an unnatural pressure that makes a dick feel thicker and heavier. Such a dick is capable of roiling greater surface area, eliciting deeper penetration. It exaggerates the illusion of size. Often, doggy-style sex creates air pockets in Cunts, and facilitates a blunt slapping of a woman's ass by her man's pelvic surface; which generates that thwacking noise, so critical to the perception of “great energetic sex”.Fanny’s senses were fully engaged as her brother sluiced his phallus into her. Normally, such first encounters ended quickly and awkwardly, followed by the shame and embarrassment of having one’s fantasies so exposed. Fanny did climax quickly. She hadn’t been fucked in several years. She was more than ready to be righteously railed.James wasn’t so disposed. He wasn’t “in love” with Fanny, indeed, had never fantasized about her. Only the sight of her exposed punani while he was masturbating led to this encounter. Plus, his recent activities gave him a measure of immunity to new cunt. When Fanny skittered downward from her orgasm and realized that James was still back there pounding away, she was grateful. She knew that the aftermath of this fuck was likely to be an uncomfortable change in their relationship. She wanted to explode into bliss several more times before that happened.Fanny straightened. She pressed her sweaty left cheek and both her tits against the wall, poking her ass out, that James might have a better target. She spread her legs a bit. The rhythmic slapping of their intercourse reverberated throughout the little bathroom, though the running shower dampened the sound. James reached around her hips and held Fanny’s ass steady as he rammed his cock into her. Fanny quivered uncontrollably. Soon this would be over. There would be consequences, maybe some regrets. But right now Fanny’s biology was dictating her behavior. She needed this in the worst way.“Oh god, it’s Good!” she thought. “I can repent in silence again. And I will. But right now I need this. Oh God, I need this!”James’ thick phallus was a tremendous balm for Fanny’s smolder. Delphia had really taught him well. He reached around to caress her full, dangling breasts even as his cock continued to thunder home. In. Out. In. Out. Each thrust bouncing Fanny off the floor. She was enthralled. Her only other sexual tryst had been (repeatedly) quick and violent. Joey had mounted her missionary; the two of them came (repeatedly) in tandem. Today’s encounter was Fanny’s first attempt at doggy-style.It was not James’ first. Two orgasms in, James knew it was time for a little rump rangery. Still stunningly erect, James withdrew his dripping missile from Fanny’s cunt. Fanny slumped. She was dizzy from her most recent explosion. James took this moment to slather his erection in hot water and soap. Soon enough his cock was shrouded in foam.When Fanny felt James’ cockhead probing her buttocks open again, this time seeking her sphincter, she was a little chagrined but assumed it a mistake. She arched her back to clasp his cock with puss. James declined. He eased back, knowing well the difference between the two entrances. Fanny’s eyes widened.“No. No!” she exclaimed.But it was too late. Slick with sudsy lubricant, James’ steaming cock found and penetrated her outbox. Fanny began to struggle. James calmed her.“Shush. Relax,” he cajoled.Fanny stiffened. In her wildest dreams she hadn’t expected this. James hadn’t mentioned that Delphia had shown him the southern highway. Fanny’s sexual imagination didn’t yet extend that far. She’d only hoped that maybe, just maybe, her brother might grace her cunt in tongue. That’s as far as she’d dared fantasize beyond this singular tryst.The suds on James’ cock eased some of her pain. His dick was fat. Once he got his pud past her gatekeeper, the slide into funkytown was a fait accompli.Fanny gritted her teeth and bore it. She’d never experienced the like. James pressed forward. Fanny felt that she was in labor, great with child. No. She was great with dick.Just as Fanny was reaching the limit of her endurance she felt the welcome flap of James’ nuts between her thighs. He was hilted. Instead of easing back for a second thrust, James held his phallus steady, fully clamped inside Fanny’s ass. Fanny breathed a sigh of relief. It was her turn now. She took a few deep breaths. With a monumental effort, Fanny arched her ass a half-inch off James’ dick. The pressure inside her body eased a smidgen. Fanny took another couple of deep breaths. She eased her ass downward. The pregnant feeling returned with a vengeance.Fanny eased upward an inch. Once again the internal pressure of James’ pulsating cock dissipated a bit. Fanny eased back down. The full feeling returned.Fanny eased upward a couple of inches. Relief. Downward? Mania.Soon the dichotomy between pressure and relief became a growing opiate. James held his dick steady as Fanny humped it. She started out slowly, agonizingly slowly. James’ cock, slathered in foam, scrubbed Fanny’s ass clean of fecal detritus. Fanny went from revulsion to annoyance to realization to joy. She’d found a second orifice whose needs might serve to dampen her youthful libido.Faster and faster Fanny worked James’ dick, churning her ass like a set of pistons. Soon enough the entirety of his length disappeared into and then re-appeared from Fanny’s fundament. She tugged at his foreskin with her rectum, twisting it up and over his pudenda like a pro. James was in ecstasy. His sister was a natural. He noticed Fanny dripping with sweat. She was really working it.With Fanny finally picking up the rhythm, James began to fuck. He withdrew and thrusted forward in tune with Fanny’s churn. Soon Fanny’s body cleared the floor each time James’s cock powered home. Her ass cheeks thundered with wobble. Fanny wanted to scream out her lust but knew it to be a bad idea. She was being fucked silly. There were other people in the house. Her brother really knew what he was doing.James reached around to caress Fanny’s clitoris. The tangled patch of fur covering her cunt parted. Her clitoris was in full bloom. She took his hand and spread his fingers that they might slide smoothly over her clitoral erection. James was amazed at its girth and firmness. He cupped a tit with his free hand.They fucked for an age like this, pausing only when their mother passed outside the bathroom door while doing her chores. Little did she know that her two eldest children were engaged in sexual congress on the other side of that door. Fanny quailed

James concludes his letter by writing about the ups and downs of community life and how PRAYER and PRAISE need to be woven throughout our relationship with God and one another. James' final sentence focuses on people who may have wandered away from FAITH. Because James is about doing faith, not just having faith! Why not act now to pray and encourage people in their faith journey! Especially friends you might know. As J.R.R. Tolkien said, “Not all who wander are lost”!

 Audio recordingSermon manuscript:People want to be the greatest because being the greatest is a lot of fun. It is fun to be the best at a sport. It is fun to be the best at an activity. Jesus's disciples, James and John, wanted to be the greatest. That is what they are driving at when they say to Jesus: “Let us sit in your glory. One of us can be on your left and the other can be on your right.” Jesus did not rebuke them. He gently says, “You do not know what you are asking.” James and John didn't know what they were asking because glory in God's kingdom is strange. It doesn't operate by the same rules that make for greatness in this earthly life. The rules for greatness in this life are well known: Work hard, practice, prepare, set goals, and so on. If you follow these rules, and if you have been given the prerequisite genetics and talents, then you too might achieve greatness. Greatness in God's kingdom operates by the rules that are seen especially in Jesus. Jesus asked James and John: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” The cup that Jesus speaks about is the cup of suffering. On the night when Jesus was betrayed he prayed to his Father three times that he be spared the cup of suffering that was coming upon him. The baptism with which Jesus was about to be baptized was the baptism of blood on the cross. Jesus would be smeared with it, dying like a criminal in disgrace. Greatness in God's kingdom involves suffering and being regarded as the least. Why are suffering and being regarded as the least the rules, so to speak, for greatness in God's Kingdom? Here, again, we must think about Jesus. Why did he suffer? Why was he regarded as the least? There are perhaps several reasons for that. I would like to offer three. The first reason why Jesus suffered was because of evil-doers who wanted to continue with their evil-doing. Jesus annoyed them because he would speak against them. They wanted everyone to think that they were fine, upstanding people. Jesus, however, knew the truth and spoke the truth. They weren't fine upstanding people. They were liars, hypocrites, hungry for power, honors, and money. Like whitewashed tombs, they kept themselves looking respectable on the outside but inside they were full of death and uncleanness. Jesus could have kept his mouth shut. If he would have left them in peace, they would have left him in peace. In fact, things would have gone much differently for Jesus. They would have given him promotions and honors. They would have hailed him as a great preacher with a pastoral heart. But then Jesus would have become a snake just like them. He would no longer be a reliable guide, teaching people how they may attain eternal life. Which brings us to the second reason why it was necessary for Jesus to suffer and be regarded as the least: He believed. He believed in the power of the Word of God to change people's hearts. He wasn't a cynic. He didn't assume that things are how they are and have to remain the same. If it was impossible for sinners to repent—to change their ways, to turn from evil to righteousness—then there certainly would be no point in the Son of God suffering and dying. If it were impossible for people to change, then people should be left to follow whichever course suits their fancy. The Word of God should die out, and perhaps be replaced by more modern methods of education and inspiration that help people achieve their earthly goals. But Jesus continued to believe that the Word of God would do what God wanted to achieve when he causes it to be spoken. The third and final reason I'd like to offer for why Jesus suffered is love. Jesus loves us. He's a lover who goes after his beloved. Jesus pursues us. He says, “Don't stay off on your own, doing your own thing. Be with me. I want to be with you, and I want you to be with me.” And the amazing thing, of course, is that we are evil-doers, and yet Jesus wants to be with us. Jesus isn't disgusted by all our disgustingness. He truly loves us, and wants us to be together with him and with God eternally. This is where Jesus's cross especially comes in. The cross is how we were redeemed and separated from our sin. The cross is how we have died with Christ to sin. Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The cross makes what should be impossible to be possible. It should be impossible for evildoers to live happily with the holy God. However, we have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. If we have died and it is Christ who lives in us, then it is no longer merely possible to live with God, it's the way it should be! We belong together. These reasons show how Jesus's suffering and cross are awesome. To be sure, it is a hidden awesomeness. When Jesus drinks the cup and is baptized with blood he looks terrible. He looks poor, weak, and utterly defeated. What is really going on, however, is that he is rewriting the rules. Among the rules that are rewritten are the rules for greatness. Greatness is otherwise achieved by killing, crushing, lying, stealing, and, in general, using every resource—including human resources—to their fullest. Chew everyone up until you're done with them. Then spit them out and move on to the next one. There is no other way for anyone to accumulate the powers that the greatest of this world have amassed for themselves. They achieve what they achieve by taking advantage of others, and making sure that they are never taken advantage of. They believe that they are great because everyone tells them they are great. They believe they will always be remembered because they've been in the news. However, how small their victories really are! How fleeting their memories! They achieve nothing that lasts. Contrast them with what you and I have been given. You and I have the Gospel, the good news that Jesus is king. The Gospel connects sad and helpless sinners to almighty God, making them righteous by the forgiveness of sins. You have been given this Gospel. In that way you are no different than the apostles James and John. James and John believed the good news. You believe the good news too. Because James and John believed the good news, they spoke it to others. You should do that too if you believe it. You don't have to be an apostle or a pastor or a professional church worker to do that. The Gospel is no less effective coming from you than it is coming from me. The Gospel does what it says. This is an encouragement to evangelize. You've probably heard about evangelism many times over the years. What you don't hear as often is how you are called to suffer and to be regarded as the least while you are doing your evangelism. Here, again, you are like James and John. You have the very same Gospel as they. You have the very same cross. Jesus first asked them if they were able, then he flat out told them: “You will drink the cup that I drink. You will be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with.” Those words apply to all true preaching of the Gospel. The cross is our banner. It is our battle standard. It is how we can recognize true preaching from false preaching. If we preach what is true, then we will suffer and be regarded as the least just as it was with Jesus, James, and John. The reasons why we will suffer and be regarded as the least are the same reasons Jesus suffered and was regarded as the least. We have evil-doers today who want to go on doing evil, and they don't want anyone to say anything about it. They don't want to be disturbed. God's Law, which we are to speak just as forcefully as Jesus ever spoke it, disturbs them. We will suffer and be regarded as the least because we have faith in the working of God's Word. We won't give up speaking God's Word even if the whole world should declare that it is no longer relevant, helpful, or powerful. God's Word converted us, and so we will speak it. Finally we will suffer and be regarded as the least because of love. We will pursue our fellow sinner whom we love, even if it makes us look like a fool. We will talk to them even when we don't know what to say. We'll get turned down, which hurts. We'll be regarded as the least—like that poor, ugly, awkward guy whom the girls laugh at. If our mission and James and John's mission involves such suffering and humiliation, then why should we ever do it? The answer is glory. We should say, along with James and John: “Jesus, let us be seated with you in your glory.” Jesus's glory is that good! That's why James and John wanted it. That's why we should want it too. The writer to the Hebrews agrees. He says: “Look to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Don't be afraid of suffering or humiliation. These powers can look so daunting and intimidating. Jesus is victorious over all things. Whatever suffering or setbacks or hardships we experience are so very temporary. Jesus is forever.

Welcome back to another dadcast.  Audio didnt turn out so well, I did try and make it sound better.  For all inquiries reach out to timonspodcast@gmail.com Act 15 The Jerusalem Council 1But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. 3So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. 5But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”The demand for salvation through circumcision was from Pharisee converts. This group became known as Judaizers. They taught that Gentiles had to become Jewish proselytes, following all the Mosaic laws, before they could receive salvation. They had a compelling argument because in Genesis chapters 12 and 15 God established an everlasting covenant with Abraham. Later in Genesis 17 God added the rite of circumcision to this earlier covenant. Circumcision was given to Abraham and every male descendant of his house forever. Look at Genesis 17:7 & 13-14: And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you... both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” Notice that this sign is given to men only. However, this sign does not correlate with personal salvation. Remember, Abraham was righteous in God's sight before the covenant of circumcision was ever implemented (Galatians 3:6). The sign of circumcision was to accompany a heart that obeyed God. Circumcision was a national sign for the men of Israel, a mark to remind them of their commitment to serve God alone and no other. In the Old Testament, wives and daughters were set apart as unique because they were connected to a family where the men were circumcised – they were set apart along with their fathers and husbands for God's purposes. Circumcision made Israel different than all the nations that surrounded them. And this unique quality is what the Judaizers wanted to preserve. They insisted that circumcision remain obligatory, that all male Gentile believers must be required to keep it. The fact that Gentile believers were bypassing the Mosaic codes was perplexing and odious to the Pharisee converts. They felt that Paul was forsaking the Pentateuch and circumcision altogether. But Paul, who was trained as a Pharisee, disagreed with their position. He had been preaching salvation through faith in Jesus, not through the Mosaic Law. Look at what he proclaimed at Antioch in Acts 13:38-39: Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man [Jesus] forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. And in Galatians 2:16: yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. And in Romans 2:28-29 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not bythe letter... Paul knew that circumcision did not necessarily birth salvation. Consider Israel's sordid history. It produced a myriad of circumcised males who rejected their own God. Salvation had always come to both men and women through a personal relationship and commitment to God. So what was circumcision even for? As I hinted earlier, it was a physical mark that reminded a man that he and his family belonged to a unique faith community. That community was supposed to train it's own populace to know and love the Lord and invite other nations to seek the Lord with them. Each Israelite man and his family had a God-given task to remain faithful to the Lord and their national calling. But it was up to each individual to choose to participate in that calling. Now let's tackle baptism. But why throw baptism into the mix? Because Paul argued that in the New Testament, baptism worked in a similar way that circumcision worked in the Old Testament. Look at Colossians 2:11-12: In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. First note, that believers are circumcised with a “circumcision made without hands.” This event occurs spiritually, inside a believer's heart. Second note, the circumcision of Christ frees us from our flesh, our sinful nature. It is very important to understand that it is not our commitment to Him; but, it is His commitment to us that brings salvation. He initiated the relationship. Third note, baptism symbolizes the war that Jesus won in Sheol: we are buried with Christ in the grave and we are raised with Christ into the heavenly realm. 1Peter 3:18-22 has much more to say about the connection between spiritual warfare and baptism. To put it another way, baptism is a non-physical sign that proves the “inner circumcision” of our heart. It is the New Testament sign of the Old Testament sign of circumcision. John the Baptist, Jesus and his disciples all baptized people as a sign of an inner working of faith residing in their hearts. Note also that baptism is not gender specific, both male and female believers were baptized. Again, circumcision and baptism do not save you, but they are supposed to be a representation of what you already believe. They are a membership card, so to speak, that you belong to Christ. Recap: 1 – Circumcision in Christ is an inward, spiritual event 2 – Circumcision in Christ brings freedom from the sinful nature 3 – Baptism relates to the burial and resurrection of Jesus from Sheol. 6The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. 7And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe (he is referring to Acts 10 where Cornelius and his household received the Holy Spirit about 10 years earlier). 8And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, 9and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith (their hearts were cleansed by faith, not the law). 10Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”12And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. 13After they finished speaking, James replied, (Notice that James, not Peter, is presiding over the council at Jerusalem. This is one reason, among several, why I object to the teaching that Peter was the first Pope.) “Brothers, listen to me. 14Simeon (his Jewish/Aramaic name) has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. 15And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, “‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.' James is quoting Amos 9:11-12 here. “After this” means that after the exile, God will do three important things. First, God would raise up the Messiah. This correlates to “David's fallen tent” because the kingship lineage of David had fallen into disarray after the exile. Jesus has corrected and fulfilled the ruins of David's kingship. Secondly, God would raise up a remnant of Israelites, who would seek God in truth. These are Messianic Jews; the 1st century Jewish prophets, evangelists and apostles that witnessed to the Gentile nations around them. This remnant of Jewish believers founded the Church and turned the world upside down. Third, God would raise up a new group of people that would follow the Messiah. This new group would consist of both Jew and Gentile believers. By the way, this refutes replacement theology which teaches that God has replaced Israel with the Gentile Church; not so, the “remnant” that became the church was a community of both Jewish and Gentile believers. In contrast, Jews and Gentiles who reject God, unbelievers, are the ones who fail to participate in God's purposes. Recap: 1 After the exile God would raise up the Messiah 2 – God would then raise up a faithful remnant of Jews who would seek the Messiah 3 – God would add to this group of Jewish believers a remnant of Gentiles who would seek the Messiah. 19Therefore (James is still speaking) my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, 20but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. 21For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.” Verse 20 why does James list these four things in particular? Why not list all 613 Old Testament commands? Or why not list the really bad sins like a murder, adultery or stealing? Because James is recalling the “holiness codes” of Leviticus, especially chapters 17 – 23. Like circumcision, these codes were given exclusively to Israel to make them different than the nations around them. But there are three particular places in Leviticus where God includes restrictions on Israelites and Gentiles alike. He prohibits both groups from idol worship (17:8; 20:2); He prohibits both groups from sexual abominations (18:26); and He prohibits both groups from eating meat with the blood and in it (17:10-12). The fourth thing that James points out is avoiding strangled meat. I suspect that strangling an animal is prohibited because that kind of death would retain and congeal the blood of the animal inside of it. Which would be similar to consuming its blood [1] . These horrible practices were all connected to pagan rituals that summoned demons and fallen entities to that worship service. These rituals acted as a portal for the fallen realm to enter and inhabit the bodies and the physical territory of the worshipers. God wanted His people and His land to be a dwelling place for His righteous presence. So James' intention is to reiterate the long-term plans that God had for the remnant Jew/Gentile church long before its existence. A movement that had started after the Tower of Babel event. This was where the nations united against God, and then as a correction, He divided them. The nations were given over to angelic shepherds who ended up seducing them away from God, rather then shepherding them back to God (Deuteronomy 32:8-9). And so God raised up Abraham and his lineage to follow the Lord. Israel's job was to live as an exemplary culture so that the lost and pagan world would be attracted back to God. And the nation of Israel was also to produce the Messiah Who would one day unite and rule over all the nations. The Council's Letter to Gentile Believers 22Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas (note that the church didn't vote. Unity was reached by church leadership). They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers, 23with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. 24Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions,(Although the issue of salvation through circumcision was settled here, this faction of Judaizers will continue to oppose Paul). 25it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. (Judas and Silas are sent along with the letter to the Gentiles as non-biased, second witness to the decision of the council). 28For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: 29that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.” 30So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. 31And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. 32And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words. 33And after they had spent some time, they were sent off in peace by the brothers to those who had sent them. 35But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also. Paul and Barnabas Separate 36And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.” 37Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark (who wrote the Gospel of Mark). 38But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work (Acts 13:13). 39And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, 40but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. 41And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. The outset of this chapter begins with disagreement: the Judaizers against Paul and Barnabas. This resulted in the first church council to correct faulty doctrine. The chapter ends with disagreement between Paul and Barnabas. Many commentaries side with Paul. But I don't think we need to side with either Paul or Barnabas. I think it's okay to live with disagreement among the saints. This is reality. Notice that Scripture neither condemns nor commends either man. Nor does the Holy Spirit step in and correct either man. Let's wrap this up. In the Old Testament circumcision was the membership card into the Israelite community. The community was supposed to train you and nurture you in the things of God. The Judaizers insisted on continuing circumcision as a rite of entry into the Kingdom of God. Paul and the other apostles realized that God desired Jew and Gentile believers to have a “circumcised heart.” This was the fulfillment of Jeremiah's 600 year old prophecy (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Entrance into the Kingdom was about inward faith, not outward symbols. In letters of Paul he points out that in the New Testament baptism was the membership card, so to speak, for believers. The job of the church was to train and nurture its members in the things of God. But it was also understood that neither circumcision nor baptism could replace one's personal faith in Jesus. Today, our job in this church is to continue the work that God began after the Tower of Babel. God called Israel to be a light to the nations that had gone rogue. We are to be a remnant from every nation that has joined the family of God, grafted into that remnant of Jewish believers. Together we are to summon the nations back to the Lord. JCN 2/24 Lord please reveal to us Your ways. Reveal to us Your ancient paths. Rip open the veil of darkness that has been cast over the nations. Let the fullness of the Gentiles come in so that Your house is filled with every people, tribe, tongue and nation. 1 [1]As a side note, eating steak rare is not consuming blood. The juices of a slice of meat are mostly water and myoglobin. Myoglobin is a protein that turns red when exposed to oxygen.

Glory be to God! Welcome everyone to Episode #753, Season 8. **

Because James cares about his readers, he warns them of the deceitfulness of sin. He exposes the origin of sin and its outcome of death, but he doesn't leave us hopeless. The obituary of sin has been written through the living Word of truth, who became flesh and defeated sin and its effects.

Title: “Waiting Actively” Part 2 Text: James 5:10-12 FCF: We often struggle to wait patiently on the Lord. Prop: Because the Lord is coming soon to judge sinner and show mercy to His people, we must be patient. Scripture Intro: [Slide 1] Turn in your bible to James chapter 5. Last week James revealed the seventh lack in his audience's faith. A lack that God has deliberately designed trials for them to endure so that their faith may be perfected. That lack, is patience. James assures them that the Lord of glory is coming soon. He is coming to judge sinners and to judge them. That is both a comfort but also a concern to them. James' command is for them to be patient. And what does patience look like? Well so far, James has given two aspects of patience. Two ways that they can wait actively. First, they must fortify their hearts. They must strengthen their faith. We pointed out last week that God has given various means by which we can strengthen our faith. Ordinary means like hearing and obeying the Word, prayer, and fellowship with God's people. And special means like Baptism and the Lord's Supper. All of these build our faith and fortify us against difficulty and trials. Second, if they are to wait actively, they must resist the temptation to grumble against one another. Grumbling against other believers including their spiritual leaders, is a sure sign that they are not waiting patiently. Today, we will see two more aspects of what it means to wait actively. I am in James 5. I'll begin reading in verse 7 again, just to pick up the context. I am reading from the ESV, but you can follow along in the pew bible on page 1363 or in whatever version you have. Transition: You have no doubt heard the expression, “Monkey see, monkey do.” The essence of this expression is to remark on the predictable nature of human beings. We often simply blend into the environment in which we find ourselves. I saw a video once of an experiment. The whole room was made up to be the waiting room of a doctor's office. Upon arriving, each subject came into a room with five or six people already there. A few minutes after sitting down a bell would sound over the loud speaker. All 5 people who were there already were in on the experiment, upon hearing the bell ding, got up out of their chairs and stood for a few seconds. A second bell rang a few moments later and then they all sat down. What is remarkable is… that almost every single test subject, while struggling to understand why… eventually just went along with everyone else. Even after a new person came in. They just kept standing and sitting according to the bell. Oftentimes, we do what we see others do. We mimic – especially when we are in uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations. James calls his audience to wait on the Lord. And to do so while they are in a very uncomfortable and unfamiliar spot. So James draws the attention of his readers… to those who have gone before them. Monkey see… monkey do. I.) The Lord is coming soon to judge sinners and show mercy to His people, so we must draw encouragement from previous examples. (10-11) a. [Slide 2] 10 – As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. i. It is truly rare to find a prophet of Israel who was not hated and reviled. ii. Some of the most quoted and noteworthy prophets of God were despised and rejected by their own people. iii. Even Jesus, the GREAT PROPHET was despised and rejected by most of the Jewish people. iv. Yet these prophets faithfully endured, preaching the words of God, even though some of them knew that the people would not listen. b. [Slide 3] 11 – Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. i. But speaking to Christ-following Jews, James speaks more highly of them. ii. He reminds them that they looked upon these prophets and the GREAT PROPHET Jesus, as blessed. As favored of God. As gifted with power and passion from Yahweh. iii. And what is the evidence that this was so? They remained steadfast. They held out. iv. They did not cave to the pressure. They did not bow to the wishes of kings, priests, other prophets, or emperors. v. Though they were tortured, imprisoned, abused, mocked, scorned, afflicted, ignored, killed, and put through hell on earth – they endured suffering to do what God had for them to do. vi. And we now reflect on their ministry and consider them blessed of God. vii. Why? viii. Because they held fast. ix. They endured. x. They patiently trusted God. xi. James brings a second example. c. [Slide 4] You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, i. Job lost everything – for a time. ii. He lost his possessions – for a time. He lost his friends – for a time. He lost his wife – for a time. He lost his health – for a time. iii. And although he was quite arrogant with God and demanded answers from Him… he certainly never rejected God. He never followed the advice of his wife to curse God and die. iv. He endured through all his pain without turning from God or rejecting Him. v. He may have cursed the day he was born, but he never cursed God. vi. In many ways what James' audience is experiencing is certainly no more than what Job experienced and probably far less. vii. But James doesn't simply point to the example of the prophets and Job. viii. No. He points to the God behind those examples. d. [Slide 5] And you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. i. What was the Lord's purpose in the prophets suffering? ii. What was the Lord's compassionate and merciful end for Job? iii. What is the Lord's purpose in our suffering? iv. What is the Lord's purpose in our trials? v. What is the Lord's purpose in our pain? vi. Is it not compassion and mercy? vii. But you might say - the prophets died… many of them tortured! Job still lost everything… even if he did get more back in the end. How can we call that compassion and mercy? viii. Friends, all the Lord does is full of compassion and mercy. Even His wrath is merciful and compassionate. ix. When you understand the sinfulness of sin and wickedness of man's heart – you realize that even these prophets and Job did not get what they truly deserved. x. Not to mention the compassion and mercy that comes as a result of their ministry. xi. The Lord put His prophets through the ringer so His message of judgment and call for repentance could be preached. Certainly, we know that many who heard them with their own ears, did not listen and certainly national Israel was judged for not listening. xii. But there have been countless Jews won to Christ because of Isaiah's prophesy in chapter 53! xiii. An innumerable number of suffering servants of God have looked to the book of Job and seen the gospel on full display! xiv. Our personal pain, trial, and suffering… could be a way for God to show compassion and mercy on others. xv. And no matter how much God puts us through, it is far less than we deserve. For there are far worse things than being oppressed and afflicted by men. xvi. Men can only harm the body, after all. But God can cast a person's soul into hell. xvii. Indeed, Jesus said that to suffer for His name is to be blessed. That we should rejoice. xviii. My friends… the Lord is compassionate and merciful to us… even in our suffering. Even in our oppression. Even in our pain. e. [Slide 6] Passage Truth: Although it is less obvious in this particular portion, the main truth of this passage continues. The Lord is coming soon. The same Lord who had a compassionate and merciful purpose behind the suffering of the prophets and Job, is coming soon. f. Passage Application: So, James has told them to be patient. To wait on the Lord. One way they can be waiting actively is to go back and remember these examples. They should go back and remember what the prophets endured by the grace of God. They should go back and reflect on the compassionate purpose and merciful ends of those who endured by His grace. And they should endeavor to do likewise. g. [Slide 7] Broader Biblical Truth: The whole cannon of scripture reveals that the Lord of glory will one day make all things right. He will do so by returning to His people. He will bring them close to Him and they will never be separated from Him again. h. Broader Biblical Application: So, CBC, what does that mean for us? Since we know the ending, that God will return – what does that mean? It means we must be patient. We must wait on the Lord. Certainly, this is true – but how can we do that? We have learned last week that we must fortify our faith, partaking of the ordinary and special means of grace. We have seen how not to be patient, which is to grumble against other believers. But how else can we be patient in the midst of suffering and trial? We can look to the examples given to us in scripture. How God has dealt mercifully and compassionately with His people. How He has designed good for them in spite of all the pain. And how God's purposes are often far grander and greater in trial that we could possibly imagine. God's blessing is on those who endure suffering patiently. So, we must endure. We must be patient. We can do that by looking to those who have gone before us and seeing God's mercy and compassion on them. Transition: [Slide 8(blank)] Regardless of what we are facing in this life, we know that we have a God working all things for the good of those who love Him and who have been called to do His will. We can observe that throughout the history of His people. We can fortify our faith to endure and we can keep our tongue from grumbling against others. In all this we can wait patiently on the Lord's return. But what else can we do? How else is patience defined? II.) The Lord is coming soon to judge sinners and show mercy to His people, so we must hold fast to our confession. (12) a. [Slide 9] 12 – But above all, my brothers, i. Because James says above all here, many believe that this verse belongs with the next section. ii. In fact, myself and only a select few commentators believe this verse goes with James' thoughts concerning patience and waiting on the Lord. iii. What could be an alternate way to interpret “above all” if not establishing some kind of distinct context or closing out the letter? Well, perhaps when James says above all here, he speaks to the greatest sin related to impatience. iv. The greatest sin that we could commit when faced with long trials, persecutions or pains… the greatest expression of not trusting our God is found… right here. v. That is why James says… above all. vi. Well, what could it be? b. [Slide 10] Do not swear i. In English vernacular to swear can sometimes mean to use vulgar language. ii. That is not what is happening here. iii. To swear or to make an oath is to do one of two things. iv. First it is to promise that you are telling the truth and to promise that in the name of something precious to you or on the life of something that is immovable or unshakable. 1. Perhaps even swearing using God's name. 2. The purpose of this kind of oath is to immediately dismiss any doubt in someone's mind as to the legitimacy of what you are saying. v. A second form of oath is to bargain or barter to get something you want by offering something you love. In this case a person who swore an oath on God would be invoking Him to do something for them and they would keep their end of a bargain or deal. vi. Certainly, to swear an oath in God's name regardless of which one we picked, would be blasphemous? vii. But James, like Jesus, does not consider this the only form of oath that is blasphemous. c. [Slide 11] Either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, i. The Jews were taught about the seriousness of swearing an oath in the name of Yahweh. ii. The prevailing interpretation of Leviticus 19:12 was that all vows that were made in close association to Yahweh, God's name, were binding and must be kept iii. However, vows made with a significant distance from God's name were not binding. iv. Like swearing by heaven or by earth. v. An oath says that for the sake of the earth or for the sake of heaven – let them all dissolve if I am lying. vi. Therefore, there were entire booklets at the time outlining what you could and could not swear by if you intended to break your oath. vii. James mimics Christ's teaching in the sermon on the mount when he eliminates these as options for making oaths and vows. viii. Christ said that heaven was God's home and that earth was His footstool. ix. The Jews desired to make oaths that were distanced from God but Jesus shows that you can't get away from God in His creation. He is everywhere. Therefore, to swear by anything is to swear by God. x. James forms the same conclusion that Christ did too. d. [Slide 12] But let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no i. In other words, tell the truth. ii. Keep your promises. iii. If you say yes, mean yes. If you say no, mean no. iv. And in this, no one will doubt you since you are always trustworthy and truthful. v. This doesn't necessarily make it sin to swear an oath where an oath is appropriate. In court hearings or in the taking of an office – oaths are appropriate. vi. In this vein, making a covenant with someone is akin to making an oath. When we promise to keep our membership covenant with one another, we are, in effect, giving an oath. vii. We offer vows in our wedding ceremonies – even in God's name. viii. But for normal everyday life – we are not to swear oaths to prove we are not liars. Or to intentionally deceive others. Or to make bargains with God to get what we desire. ix. Instead, what we say should be what we mean. x. Why? e. [Slide 13] So that you may not fall under condemnation. i. This is one strong reason that I believe this verse should be included in this context. James again refers to the coming judgment of the Lord. ii. He insists that the Lord is coming soon, that he is coming to judge sinners and His people. He will deal compassionately and mercifully for the faithful but will condemn the faithless. iii. But why would God bring condemnation on those who swear an oath? iv. What makes this particular command to not swear an oath, above all? How does it relate to being patient? v. [Slide 14] There are two basic interpretations for how this is an expression of impatience. 1. A foolish vow made promising something valuable in exchange for something else. a. Perhaps in his look back at positive examples of prophets and Job, James thinks of some negative examples of impatience and foolishness. b. Perhaps he thinks of Herod who in a moment of foolishness swore to his niece to give her anything she wanted. Which he regretted, since she asked for the head of John the Baptist. c. Or perhaps he thinks back to Japheth's vow in Judges 11. i. For those unfamiliar with the story, ii. The Ammonites rose up against a branch of the tribe of Manasseh called Gilead. The tribe sought out Japheth's help. Indeed, they were in such dire straits that they offered him leadership of the branch of the tribe. iii. Japheth begins by trying to settle the matter with the Ammonites. The king of the Ammonites did not listen. iv. At this point the Spirit of God was upon Japheth and he rode out to meet the Ammonites head on. v. Before doing so, he made a vow. He promised that if the Lord delivered the Ammonites into his hand, that the very first thing that came out of his house when he returned in peace, he would offer as a burnt offering to God. vi. God gave him victory over the Ammonites. But when Japheth returned home the first thing out of his home was his only child, a daughter who was too young to have been wed. vii. Although there are many attempts by several commentators to try to lessen the blow, it is obvious that after a period of mourning, Japheth sacrificed his daughter on an altar to Yahweh. d. Coming back to our context here, James is commanding his audience to not do the same. e. Do not enter a bargain or plea deal with God to trade alleviation of your pain, suffering, or trial for something you hold dear. Don't swear to give something to God if He would only ease your pain. f. Instead, let your yes be yes and your no be no. You have said that you believe that God is good… so keep believing. You have said you trust God. So, keep trusting. There is no need to strike a deal. Simply be patient. g. Indeed, to strike such a deal is to imitate Gideon or Jephthah from the Old Testament and their very little faith in God's promises. h. But another way we could see this is… 2. A hasty vow made to escape persecution. a. Although similar in substance the details diverge quite quickly in this second interpretation. b. Similar to the first, an oath is made to attempt to get out of persecution or pain. c. However, this vow is not made to God but to the rich and powerful who are doing the oppressing. d. Perhaps James' mind goes to the negative example of the disciples and in particular Peter. e. Peter made an oath, swearing that he did not know Jesus at all. All so he could not be captured along with Jesus and killed. f. James then warns against denying Christ, making a vow, swearing by heaven or earth or anything at all, that you do not know Him, so that you can be freed from the pain and oppression given to Christ's followers. g. Instead, they should let their confession stand and take what they get. Their affirmation, their YES to Jesus should be a yes at all times and in all circumstances. h. If this interpretation is right, James has condemned in His letter any kind of salvation that does not include both confession and lifestyle. Just as it is not genuine saving faith to confess Christ but live as the world – so also it is not genuine saving faith to deny Christ but live in obedience to His commands. vi. All things considered I believe the second interpretation fits the context the best, but I think either interpretation would be suitable application to being patient. vii. James wants his audience to tell the truth and not make some kind of vow hoping to dupe their oppressors. To do so would show a lack of faith in God that He has good for them even in their trial, and it would be deliberately lying which God hates. viii. Therefore, patience in a trail does not attempt to weasel out of trouble by swearing an oath of non-affiliation with Christ. f. [Slide 15] Passage Truth: Through the entire passage now from verse 7 through to verse 12, James has emphasized the immanency of the Lord's return. The Lord is coming to judge the living and the dead. He is coming to vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked. g. Passage Application: Therefore, they must be patient. They must wait on the Lord. And they can wait actively by not denying Christ to get out of their persecution or trial. h. [Slide 16] Broader Biblical Truth: Do we see this taught throughout the scriptures? I hope that by now you can see that point conclusively proven. God is at work to bring about the completion of His will. He has written the end from the beginning. He will soon return and usher in the last chapter of His plan. i. Broader Biblical Application: So, CBC, we must fight the urge to deny our Lord. When we are hurting, when we have a long trial, when we are in pain – we can do some pretty crazy things. Things that we wouldn't normally do. And our actions become even more unpredictable as we add in things like persecution, suffering, and facing potential martyrdom. It may be tempting for us to distance ourself from God. We might think – “I can deny Him and then immediately repent of it after I am safely out of harm's way.” There is a myriad of problems with such thinking. First, the Lord's return is immanent. You may not have an opportunity to repent of your denial. Second, Christ's words ring in our ears, “if you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father.” Third, to make a vow or oath intentionally to deceive someone so you can get out of trouble is blasphemous and faithless. God HATES a lying tongue. Can you do something God hates on purpose and be a Christian? That is a thought worthy of consideration regardless of the answer. My friends, though we face uncertain days ahead – we must purpose in our hearts to let our yes be yes and our no be no. If we confess Christ, we must hold fast to our confession. In this we are being patient. For we do not fear what men can do to us – but trust that God is merciful and compassionate toward us – His people. Conclusion: [Slide 17 (end)] So what have we learned CBC and how then shall we live? I think we can wrap it up in a nice little bow by quoting Christ in Matthew 10:26-33. 26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. My friends. The Lord of glory is returning soon. He will come to judge the living and the dead. He will come to punish the wicked and reward the righteous. And we will give an account for every action we have done and every word we have spoken. Though we won't face His wrath we will certainly face his judgment. One day, everything that has been said in quiet that people cannot see - will be shouted from rooftops and will be obvious to all. The light of truth will be seen even by the spiritually dead. And those who harm, maim, kill, and destroy us today… will not endure then. So be patient. My friends – I know I sound like a broken record. I know that you may tire of me saying it. And you may still be in denial about it. And while I still think that revival is possible and the rescue of this nation is possible – I think it would be healthy for us to come to grips with the very real probability that within the next few decades we may see actual, real, and intentional persecution of genuine Christians in this nation. In James' day they faced persecution for eating and drinking the blood of their dead leader. Is this an accurate description of the Lord's Supper? Of course not! But that is what they saw. And our culture will see the same things in us. It doesn't matter how kindly or winsomely we disagree. They will still hate us simply for disagreeing. Very soon if we do not affirm (not just tolerate) but affirm the transgender, LGBTQA+ community, if we do not begin considering abortion a human right and only keep our disagreement in the realm of when we can abort and not if we can abort, if we do not admit openly that we not only need Christ to free us from sin but in addition we need to repent and make reparations for our inherent racism simply because we are a particular skin color. Very soon, my friends, if we do not bend or break on these matters. We will be persecuted. It has already begun. JP morgan chase has allegedly cancelled several accounts of religious freedom organizations and if they want their account reinstated, they must provide to JP Morgan Chase a list of all who donated to them. What if every bank in America did this? What if every credit card company did this. What if every employer did this. At this point it is probably too late. If you are here among us today – all your information – no matter how off the grid you think you are – your affiliation with Christ, this church, and our increasingly unpopular viewpoint on these matters – that connection is well established. Very soon – you may not be able to be a Christian and get a job. Or buy a house. Or get a loan. Or receive your pension or social security. Or find a lawyer to represent you. Very soon protestors may be meeting in the front of our church every week. Very soon, I may be hauled off to St. Clair County jail for teaching what the bible says. What will you do then? What should you do then? You should be patient. Why? Because the Lord is soon returning. Fortify your hearts. Don't grumble against each other but draw near to one another. Look to the examples of those who have patiently endured suffering for His name. Look to them so you can gain the courage to patiently endure and rejoice when you are persecuted for His sake. Finally… Don't deny Him. When the persecution of the church first began and Paul was hunting down Christians to haul them to jail. How do you think Paul found out where they lived? Some of them were fairly obvious. But some would have no doubt been hard to find. Do you think sons, daughters, friends, fathers, brothers, mothers, uncles, cousins, do you think they turned them in? Do you think they did so to escape persecution themselves? The same is going to happen here in this country. Perhaps even under the sound of my voice right now… a Judas walks among us. One who will turn us in to the authorities to escape imprisonment themselves. God forbid my friend. Steel yourself against such temptation! Do not forfeit your soul for temporary comfort! You cannot betray God's people and expect to be welcomed into His Kingdom. Do not agree to any terms where you must deny your Lord or abuse His bride to save your skin. Instead, be patient. Suffer with us. Endure. Why? For the Lord will soon return. And He will show us the purpose and end of all of this. He will show us His compassion and mercy. Are we not worth many sparrows? Those whom the Lord has purchased with His death, earthen vessels He has chosen to store His treasure in, the bride of His Son… are we not worth much to Him? Don't be afraid. Be patient instead. Wait on the Lord.

Join host James Vincent, a founding partner at FNDR, as he talks to amazing and transformative founders about their creative journeys. Because James knows each founder personally and has helped them build narrative strategies for their companies, you'll get a level of intimacy and understanding that's not always possible. He'll also share anecdotes from his time working with Steve Jobs and other well-known founders, where you'll learn how they developed enduring brands like Apple and Airbnb. Tune in to hear their stories firsthand and glean valuable lessons. New episodes start on July 12th!

Are you ever tempted to show favoritism to someone or some group of people because of their position of prominence in this world? Evidently, this is something at least some of James's readers were struggling with and James wanted to put a stop to it. Because James loved them and wanted them to love one another well, he commanded them, "Show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ…". To help his readers obey, he also shared six reasons why they must not play favorites.

 Discover what your gift is and how you can use it to do good in the world while getting sales Learn how doing a beta test before releasing a product is crucial to your sales and business growth Find out why you need to be dropping those five-day challenges, summits, and webinars and start doing what you do love Resources/Links: Wanting to Find How to Move Your Business Forward While Being the Best that You Can Ever Be? Learn how you can monetize your gifts and build your business around you instead of the other way around: lookaheadmarketing.com/vipfreebie Summary Have you been wondering how you can turn your gift into an answer to people's problems worldwide? Do you want to find out which online platform will help you market more and get higher sales? Are you ready to jump-start your journey into building a heart-centered business around your gift? James Lam helps heart-centered entrepreneurs discover their superpowers and then use those gifts to shape their businesses into change-making enterprises. In this episode, James talks about how you can find your gift, build a message around it, and spread it worldwide while getting sales from it. He also shares his tips and insights on what you need to do to make the most out of your gift and finances. Check out these episode highlights: 01:40 – James' ideal client: “As I said, you said it for me, I work with five-figure heart-centered entrepreneurs who have an inspiring message, who need to get on the ladder, so they need to monetize. They need a product to stand for.” 02:34 – Problem James helps solve: “We've got who they are, what they sell, and how to do it. That's basically it. So I have a signature 12-week course. And basically, in there, we figure out what their gift is, how to wrap messaging around that gift, how to do marketing based on what they know, what their interests are, and it can always work.” 03:19 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to James: “We're talking a little bit nebulous here, but let me put it this way. They distract themselves with things that don't serve. One of the things I help them try to do is find courage.” 04:09 – Common mistakes that people make before they find James' solution: “They have a dream and they have no way to get there. And they are sustained by a slowly diminishing sense of optimism, and a very quickly diminishing bank account, right? It's one of the things that is absolutely true as well.” 05:14 – James' Valuable Free Action (VFA): “One of the biggest things I'm going to tell you right now is to build your business around you. And I'm going to give you three examples really quick, okay? One of them is to build the business around the best transformation that you can achieve– what you can do, not what other certifications can do.” 06:06 – James' Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out James' Workshop: lookaheadmarketing.com/vipfreebie 07:09 – Q: What's the biggest takeaway for people who work with me? A: And yes, they have a monetized product. Yes, they have a group coach. And yes, they have a way to a mastermind. But honest to God truth is they're on the ladder. They have the confidence that they can actually sell. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “Build your business around the best transformation that you can achieve- what you can do, not what other certifications can do.” -James LamClick To TweetTranscript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:10 Greetings, everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming out to you from little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia, as per usual, joined today by the nest of the mobile, James Lam. James, good day, sir. A very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out? James Lam 00:26 Hello. I can't believe you're on an island. We're not an island. I'm based in Calgary, so we're in Canada. And if you look at the map of Canada, it's on the left side by the mountains. So, we're not quite hitting the water. We're sort of three-quarters of the way left. Tom Poland 00:38 That's a beautiful part of the world, I have heard. Do you have snow right now? James Lam 00:41 Oh, it's for those of you who work in Celsius, it's about -15 Celsius, and it's snowing. And we're recording during the season. So, it's going to be a White Christmas here. Tom Poland 00:51 Right. Well, it's Christmas Eve here on the 24th of December 2021. Wherever you are, whoever you are listening to this, I think you're in for a great little episode here Because James helps heart-centered entrepreneurs discover their superpowers. And then use those gifts to shape their businesses into change-making enterprises. And this is a big thing, James. So many people start with a bank account balance. “What's going to get more money in the bank account balance?” But your superpower is showing people how to start not with the bank accounts, but to start with the authentic them. And their gifts and their inclinations and their passion. And that bank account becomes just a symptom of fulfilling that very well. This brings us nicely to the title, “How to Build a Heart-Centered Business Around Your Gifts”. James, our seven minutes start now. Sir, question number one is who is your ideal client? James Lam 01:40 As I said, you said it for me, I work with five-figure heart-centered entrepreneurs who have an inspiring message, who need to get on the ladder, so they need to monetize. They need a product to stand for. And to be honest, one of the things they're doing is using all the mechanisms without the heart. So, all the tricks without any of the heart and passion that goes in there. So, I work with a lot of solopreneurs, feelers, coaches, those people who want a digital group program that is my specialty, and we do a great job and get them locked there. Tom Poland 02:06 Bonus question, do you find this great sense of relief for your clients when you tell them they don't have to bend themselves out of shape in order to be successful? James Lam 02:13 Yes, absolutely! There's a whole story behind that, but I'll make it really quick. We have a company called, “Learn Photography Company”. It's got 10 locations internationally. We've had over 5000 students. We only achieved that when we stopped being somebody else. Tom Poland 02:24 Wow, powerful stuff! We only achieve that when we stop being someone else. Question two, tell us more about the problem you solve. Six minutes left. James Lam 02:34 We've got who they are, what they sell, and how to do it. That's basically it. So, I have a signature 12-week course. And basically, in there, we figure out what their gift is, how to wrap messaging around that gift, how to do marketing based on what they know, what their interests are, and it can always work. Right? One of the best things we do is- a key plank of what I do is do what's called a “pilot beta” or “founder club”, whatever you want to call it. Essentially, it's launching to some raving fans to test the product. What a lot of people don't do is test the product. They try to sell it full board and launch a full price and it doesn't work very well. Tom Poland 03:07 So that's a common mistake. And, let's go to question four, then I'm going to circle back. What other common mistakes do people make? Five and a half minutes left. Before they find your solution, what do you see that these people are making? James Lam 03:19 We're talking a little bit nebulous here, but let me put it this way. They distract themselves with things that don't serve. One of the things I help them try to do is find courage. And I know I'm taking time here; it takes courage to launch a product. It does. If this is your first product ever, it takes courage. A lot of people try to do all the “right thing”– five-day challenges, doing a summit, doing a lot of webinars and not getting anywhere because they are constantly distracted from what needs to happen, which is they need to stand for something and they need to put that out into the world. And it is much easier to do busywork than actually be productive. Tom Poland 03:51 Right and be accountable! So, the next question, we've got four and a half minutes left. What I'm after here is kind of a heads up. Someone listening to this going, “Oh my goodness, that's me!”. Some of the symptoms that your clients feel before they become clients: what's going on in their life or the business that gives them a heads up that they need to talk with you? James Lam 04:09 They have a dream and they have no way to get there. And they are sustained by a slowly diminishing sense of optimism, and a very quickly diminishing bank account, right? It's one of the things that is absolutely true as well. A lot of my clients and it's not- look, the paradigm these days is if you're not successful, what do you do, Tom? You hustle and grind. You work harder. You put in more hours. And entrepreneurs are the greatest thieves in the world. We steal from our health. We steal from our happiness. We steal from our family, right? We steal from our bank account. And the honest to goodness truth is if you are working too hard and making no money, and you're hoping things are going to happen, that is not a plan. Hope is not a plan. Let's get you doing the things that you need to do in the time that you have to get results. And there was a very clear delineation of what to do before doing a summit or doing that five-day challenge. Tom Poland 04:09 Perfect! Thank you for that. Three and a half minutes left, sir. Question five, let's flip it! We've talked about some of the people listening to this, the challenges they're facing. What's one valuable free action that's going to help them move forward like a top tip? James Lam 05:14 They're really- one of the biggest things I'm going to tell you right now is to build your business around you. And I'm going to give you three examples really quick, okay? One of them is to build the business around the best transformation that you can achieve– what you can do, not what other certifications can do. Okay? Number two, choose marketing channels that are going to work for you. Look people have been successful on YouTube. People have been successful on Facebook. People have been successful with email. Choose what's going to work for you. There is no one thing you're missing. And number three, as I said, look, launch a beta before anything else. Please, for the love of God, launch a beta, like a charge for it so that you know there's interest before spending all the time and effort to build something that no one's going to buy. Tom Poland 05:51 Perfect! Three top tips, over-delivering. Thank you, sir. Two and a half minutes left. Two questions left. A bucketload of information already in value, but plenty to come! One valuable free resource. This is question six. Where can people go to find out more about what you do and learn even more about your work? James Lam 06:06 Right. So, I think it's in the show notes but it's going to be lookaheadmarketing.com/vipfreebie, all lowercase. So, my last name is Lam, Look Ahead Marketing is an acronym for my name. Lookaheadmarketing.com/vipfreebie. You get- this isn't for everybody, let me say this out of freight. Okay, it is completely free. It's a workshop I actually charge $197 for, real people have paid that amount. And in there, we're going to iron out the best transformation you can make, your story arc for true abundance, how to compete in the market where you don't have any competition, and how you're going to launch your product for 1000s of dollars without having complicated funnels jayvees, Facebook ads or even with a teeny tiny email list. Tom Poland 06:44 This sounds great! I'm on that page right now, folks. There are lots of dates to choose from. It's really simple to get started. It's in the show notes, as you said, James, but if you're listening to this, and you don't have access to the video and the show notes, lookaheadmarketing.com/vipfreebie. All lowercase at the moment. So, thank you, sir. Question seven, last question. We've got 75 seconds left. What's the one question I should have asked you but didn't? James Lam 07:09 Alright. First of all, if you do join me, which I would love you to do in that workshop, please turn your camera on. It's one of the best things I can tell you. Tom Poland is going to tell you the same thing. If you're going to show up, show up well. Okay. Well, first of all. The biggest takeaway for people who work with me is- the question that you should have asked is, what's the biggest takeaway for people who work with me? And yes, they have a monetized product. Yes, they have a group coach. And yes, they have a way to a mastermind. But honest to God truth is they're on the ladder. They have the confidence that they can actually sell. They have the confidence that the product is actually wanted. More importantly, they believe in themselves that they can achieve the transformation. And now they are ready to scale and spread their inspiring message all over the world. That's what I do, my friends. And the very first thing before that is understanding you need to build the business around yourself. Tom Poland 07:57 Perfect! James Lam, thank you so much. And thank you for sharing so that people could swap their frustration for fulfillment and freedom! James Lam 08:03 You're welcome, Tom. Good to be here! Tom Poland 08:05 Cheers. Tom Poland 08:07 Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we're doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It's very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.

Welcome to 79th episode of Urbcast, in which we will talk about: Bicycle Urbanism—what comes first: infrastructure or culture? Probably even if you are not living in Copenhagen, you have heard that it is one of the best cities to bike in. Denmark's capital city is a great example of bicycle urbanism that changed the way that people move around. But how can the other cities learn from Copenhagen and its bike friendly approach? Why should we talk about it? Because even Copenhagen was not a bike friendly city a couple of decades ago. What happened then, that it became one? Let's talk about the key importance of the bicycle urbanism. But is it infrastructure or culture that determines it? Why is it worth listening to? Because James has a vast experience in bicycle urbanism consultancy for city mayors from all over the world. Copenhagenize brings knowledge from decades of bike oriented planning from Copenhagen and shares it with other cities who are willing to become more bike friendly. About the guest: James Thoem - is an urbanist and Director at Copenhagenize Design Co. - the multi-disciplinary "go-to team" for cities in all matters relating to bicycle culture, planning, traffic and communications. Topics that we talked about: Copenhagenize - what is it and what is the history behind it? Why Copenhagen is such a bike friendly city? What is exactly the Bicycle Culture 2.0 about? Should we ‘copenhagenize' our cities? How can we avoid copying and pasting ideas from Copenhagen into other cities? What is the best tip for the cities that are early adopters of bicycle urbanism? You get to know more about James & Copenhagenize: www: https://copenhagenize.eu instagram: http://instagram.com/copenhagenizers linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/copenhagenize/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-thoem-41904165/ You can listen to the episode at: urbcast.pl/en/episode79 You will find more information at: https://linktr.ee/urbcast or urbcast.pl/en Music: spear_oh

There is something a lot of people seem to have missed in that climate announcement yesterday where James Shaw pledged to dramatically reduce our net emissions by 2030.And that is how much this is gonna cost us. It's gonna cost us up to $1.5 billion a year.That is not money that we are spending in our own economy — that's money that we're sending straight offshore every single year because we are using that money to pay other countries to plant trees so that we can use their trees to deduct some emissions from what we are putting out every year.That is essentially you and I buying some positive PR for Jacinda and James before James heads off to the climate change conference which has just kicked off in Glasgow in the last few hours.I'll tell you what, you and I both know that they need some good PR, right?Because James was, as we well know, headed there with nothing to show but a whole bunch of bad headlines.Because he has a really bad record of delaying the big climate announcements and policies.They delayed the plan for how to implement the Climate Change Commission's recommendations, they delayed the ute tax, they've given the farmers a really big discount in the ETS, so yesterday was basically just trying to cover up the fact that they've done nothing close to what they needed to do if climate change was actually the big nuclear-free moment of our generation.Now, I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong. All I'm saying is this is an expensive fix at the last minute for having done very little in the last four years.Reading between the lines, it looks a lot like it's cutting it out because of pressure from possibly the UK to bring something to the table to make their climate change conference a success.So the question is now: do you think that this is actually going to happen in 2030? Probably not.Labour and the Greens are probably not going to be in government in 2030 to actually have to do this to follow through on their promise.So basically, I think we can put them in the same category as Russia and China and other countries like that at the moment.Countries making big promises that you have to be naive to believe, just buying themselves some really good PR ahead of the meeting.

Mark 10:35-45James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and to be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” They answered him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism with which I have been baptized. But to sit at my right hand or my left is not mine to decide. It is for those for whom it has been prepared.”When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they regard as their rulers lord it over them; and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. For whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve; and to give his life a ransom for many.”I often feel like Jesus regrets some of the things he says sometimes. Like that time he said, “Ask, and it will be given to you…” Or when he said, “everyone who asks receives...” Or, that time he promised, “I will do whatever you ask in my name…”Because James and John, the Sons of Zebedee, really take him up on that kind of thing this morning, don't they? They sound like a couple of the most spoiled-rotten kids you ever met, in this Gospel, right? They are selfish and entitled and not even trying to hide it. They're the kind of entitled that has no shame. They don't even know they should try to hide it. And I want to be mad at them for that, like the other ten disciples were, but maybe I shouldn't blame them. Maybe they were just taking Jesus up on his offer, holding him to his word when they ask, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” There's no hemming and hawing… there's no beating around the bush… there's no bargaining, even, as far as we can tell. “Teacher, we want you to do for us … whatever we ask of you.”And we can't tell it from here, but I imagine Jesus must be a little exasperated by it. “What is it you want me to do for you?” he asks them back. And when they request the best seats in the kingdom – when they tell him they want to be front and center on the other side of God's heaven – Jesus tells them they don't understand what it is they're talking about; that they really have no idea what they're asking for.See, when Jesus says they will “drink the cup” that he drinks, and “be baptized with the baptism with which he's been baptized,” he's not talking only about the cup of wine they'll share at the table of the Last Supper sometime soon – as if they could have known that was even coming. No, the cup he's really talking about is the one he prays about in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and crucifixion. (“Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me.”) It was a cup full of suffering and struggle he wasn't sure even he could drink, in all its fullness.And the baptism he's talking about isn't just that holy moment in the river with his cousin, John the Baptist, when he came up from the water, when the dove descended, and when the voice from heaven declared him to be God's beloved Son. All of that was and would be part of it. But James and John didn't know, they couldn't imagine – or had forgotten about – the temptation that followed the beauty of that moment in the river and, of course, the promised suffering and death that were to come along with that baptism, too. Just like James and John, none of this is what we always want to hear. None of this is how the world operates. All of this is summed up in the promise we heard last week, in the scripture just before this one, when Jesus tells the disciples that “many who are first will be last and the last will be first.” Because a front row seat in God's kingdom means becoming a servant. Glory is achieved by becoming a slave. It means heading to the end of the line. It means giving more than you take; sharing more than you ask for yourself; not being served, but serving. Those sitting at the right and at the left of Jesus, “in his glory,” remember, were a couple of criminals – convicted, crucified, and condemned to die, just like he did, on the cross at Calvary. Maximilian Kolbe I just recently read about a man named Maximilian Kolbe who was born in Poland in 1894, and who, after experiencing a vision of the Virgin Mary at the age of 12, signed up for a life of humility, purity, holiness, and martyrdom. (What were you doing when you were 12?)Anyway, Kolbe eventually became a Franciscan friar, earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy, and built monasteries in Japan and India. And when the Nazis invaded Poland, Kolbe was told he could earn enhanced rights and social privileges – that he could get a better seat, move to the front of the line, you might say – in exchange for signing a document that acknowledged his German heritage, which he refused to do. He also refused to stop publishing religious texts, books, and essays, which were critical of Hitler and the Nazis and their evil, oppressive regime.Eventually, he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Auschwitz, where he continued to live out his calling to purity, love, compassion, and all the rest – for which he suffered mightily.In July, 1941, ten prisoners escaped from Auschwitz and, in order to deter more of that in the future, ten other prisoners were chosen to be deliberately starved to death in an underground bunker. When one of those ten protested that he had a wife and children, Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to take his place – and to receive his punishment, instead.According to witnesses, Maximilian Kolbe led the condemned men in regular prayer throughout their punishment, starvation, and demise in that bunker. And Kolbe, himself, lasted for two weeks of that torture and was the last of the condemned men to die, requiring, ultimately, a lethal injection which – again, according to witnesses – he accepted peaceably with courage and grace.We want to be first, but we think that means being the fastest. We want to know peace and comfort, but we think that means having more power and money and stuff. We want to walk more closely with Jesus but we're not always willing to follow where he leads. We want to be successful, but we use all the wrong measuring sticks to determine what that means for ourselves.What Jesus shows us, and what people like Maximilian Kolbe lived, is what it looks like to serve rather than to be served; to choose others over and above ourselves; to give instead of take; to find victory in loss; to become a slave, a suffering servant like we heard about from the prophet Isaiah a minute ago.What Jesus shows us, and what Maximilian Kolbe learned and lived in ways I can't fathom, is that to sit at the right hand of Jesus isn't just a position to which we will be promoted someday. To sit at the right hand of Jesus is a position to which each and every one of us is called to experience, somehow, right where we live, on this side of heaven. This is where we are called to drink the cup. Here is where we're invited to live out the calling of our baptism.And as hard as that is sometimes. As much courage and faith and generosity and sacrifice as that may invite us to at times, we are blessed with this God – in Jesus – who never calls us to something God hasn't already done, first, for our sake: to give generously … to sacrifice … to suffer … to die, even.And that's Jesus invitation to James and John – and to each of us, too – as we live in the strange pull between the Kingdom of God and this world that surrounds us. And there are a million ways we can practice answering the call of our baptism that don't look anything like starvation and martyrdom in a Nazi death-camp, thanks be to God.I think it means giving away our money. I think it means helping refugees. I think it means building homes in Haiti, helping the Sonrise Bible Study, serving as a Stephen Minister. I think it means saying “I'm sorry,” and proving it. I think it means saying “I forgive you,” and meaning it. I think it means cleaning the bathrooms at church, mowing the lawn at church, and doing yard work around the church. I think it means working in the nursery and teaching Sunday School at church, too. I think it means sitting with the lonely kid in the cafeteria or picking the last kid, first, on the playground some of the time, too.Because we are called to be servants. We are called not to ask “what can I get?”, but “what can I give?,” instead, and “how much?” and, “to whom?” … like Jesus did when he climbed onto a cross and out of a tomb and into our hearts so that we would share the grace of God in as many ways as we can manage – and so that, through sharing it – humbly, selflessly, generously, without hope for worldly gain, recognition, or reward – we might experience God's kind of glory most fully ourselves – and for the benefit and blessing of somebody else, in Jesus' name.Amen

Faith is a tremendous challenge. Because James 2.20, ‘Faith without works is dead!” In other words, if your faith is not something that is operational and practical, something by which you are living, something you are going to DO SOMETHING ABOUT, that faith is NOT faith! Faith is only evidenced by what you do, by how you live! I cannot myself find stronger words than James uses here, faith without the work to accomplish it is dead! Dead! There are so many whose faith is dead. Simply because it only exists in theory, but never in practice.

Most Christian scholars refer to The Book of James in the Holy Bible as ‘A Letter to the Church.' Why? Because James, a brother of Jesus, sent letters to Jewish believers throughout the Roman empire. And those letters included some of his best teachings.  In other words, the believers of that time respected him. In addition, they appreciated his advice and his wise decision-making skills.  Although the title of this episode is 'A Letter to the Church,' everyone will benefit from the wisdom of James.  Love your neighbor as yourself  Now, the focus of this post is James 2:1-9. So, let's look at it in the New Internation Version. It reads as follows:  “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.   3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here's a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?  5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?  7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong? 8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.”  Conclusion  As you can see, James was clear about how the church was to treat themselves and others. Thus, Christians should not be judgmental, angry, hateful, or discriminating towards anybody.  Henceforth, don't give opportunity for others to judge Jesus based upon a negative interaction with you. Instead, when people leave your presence, they should have experienced nothing less than the love of God.   In closing, go ahead and use the player at the top of this blog post. Or subscribe and listen via your preferred podcast platform. Then join Lady V and me in our discussion – A Letter to the Church.  Scriptures Referenced in Episode Discussion  James 2:1-9 1 John 4:7-8 Colossians 3:14 John 3:16 Ephesians 4:7   Listen to We R S.H.E.Talks Podcast  Use web player above blog post to listen or subscribe and listen via your favorite podcast platform.   Bible Study Resources  Holy Bible [NKJV, NLT, Amplified, TPT, MEV, ESV] Get the Bible App by YouVersion NLT Chronological Life Application Study Bible  Christ-Centered Grace Ministries  Check out the following grace-based teaching from a Christ-centered perspective:  Dr. Creflo Dollar - creflodollarministries.org Pastor Gregory Dickow - gregorydickow.com Pastor Joseph Prince - josephprince.org  Helpful Information  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  The Coronavirus (COVID-19)  Let's do our part:  Wear a mask or cloth face covering Wait six feet or more apart Wash hands frequently Pray about getting vaccinated  We R S.H.E.Talks Podcast episodes you may enjoy  Let It Go and Receive God's Best – S2E20  A Safe Place to Lay Your Heart – S2E18  Eternity Awaits – S2E17  Identity Crisis–Do You Know Who You Are? S2E10  Set Free from Abuse – S2E3  Christianity Misunderstood--Understanding Grace - S1E9  Ask your questions or share your feedback  Comment on the episode [share your experience or testimony] Email feedback Follow and like us on Social Media Take our quick Audience Survey  Check out these links  spreadinghopeeverywheretalks.com  Devotionals and Prayer by Lady V  Get Merch with Positive Messaging  Credits 

Welcome to the Manor!  It's the perfect episode to light your pipe and pour yourself a nice pint of bitter.  James reads a couple selections of pub poetry and Jody reads Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn."   Why?  Because James has been reading pub history/folklore/culture all summer and wanted to and Jody picked a poem he very much enjoys.  Mmmmm... pub things... Next week's episode is the continuation of Monty Python series 2. Get in touch with us at Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-4pksr-a17e1a Or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twinterrorsmacabremanormeadmetalmayhe/ Or on twitter: @Terrors_Manor You can also find our podcast on iTunes and Spotify and I Heart Radio and wherever fine (and our) podcasts are aired. Image courtesy of: James  

James and Christopher discuss Loki on Disney+ and question if one should have sympathy for the devil. Then James goes off the rails by correcting the MCU's representation of the multiple universe theory. Because James is tedious and dull. - Is Owen Wilson any good? - Are the Infinity Stones the most powerful force in the universe or not? - Who would win in a fight, Loki or Rick? - Can Christopher have sympathy for a psycho killer? For the (alleged) answers to these questions and many more, listen to our podcast! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Welcome back to the Manor!  Today, we're talking about another manor, that most wonderful of hunting lodges / fortified manors, Traquair House!    Why?  Because James fouled up a couple things in a previous episode and wanted to correct himself, the process of which created an entire episode on the history of Traquair, some history and context of Scotland, and the brewing that occurs at their manor.     So join us at our manor as we talk about the longest inhabited manor in Scotland.     Next week's episode is on author Ray Bradbury to celebrate his 100th birthday.     Get in touch with us at Podbean:  https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-4pksr-a17e1a   Or on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/twinterrorsmacabremanormeadmetalmayhe/   Image courtesy of Wiki Commons.   Or on twitter: @Terrors_Manor  

Was the resurrection of Jesus an historical event? Do we have legitimate reasons to believe Jesus actually rose from the dead? I believe the answer to both of those questions is yes. We can be confident Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion. We also see the disciples of Jesus fully persuaded that they witnessed Jesus risen from the dead.One of the more compelling facts associated with the reported resurrection of Jesus is the change we see in James, the skeptical brother of Jesus. James transformed from an early critic of his older brother to one of his greatest disciples.Why? Because James was convinced he saw his brother risen from the dead.

Welcome to the first of our episodes on cryptids!  Those gorgeous, yet shy, creatures that cryptozoologists go nuts over.  For our inaugural, we're talking about South Bay Bessie, that playful lake monster from Lake Erie (USA and Canada).  Why?  Because James thought of it while drinking a beer called Lake Erie Monster. James was so excited, he even made a map and put X markers at the locations where she's (they?) been sighted.  If you can't see it here, go to the Podbean page and you'll be able to see the episode image. Sit back with your beer of choice, but of course if you can get your hands on Great Lakes Brewing brews, try a Lake Erie Monster!  (We really should get some breweries to sponsor us, heh heh heh...) Get in touch with us at Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-4pksr-a17e1a Or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twinterrorsmacabremanormeadmetalmayhe/ Or on twitter: @Terrors_Manor 

James:  Hey audience, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Podcast. Today, we have Coach, Trevor McGregor from Vancouver, British Columbia. But you know, he's been seen all over in the US, in a lot of conferences giving keynote speeches. So Trevor is a real estate coach, a consultant, a keynote speaker and many other things. Trevor, why not you tell the audience what do you do and what are the things that I missed out?   Trevor: Oh, well, thank you very much, James. Great to be on your show. I love your show. And yeah, you know, predominantly, my background is in business. I worked in the Fortune, you know, Fortune 500 company; it wasn't a Fortune 500 company itself, but I worked in corporate. It felt like a Fortune 500 company because I did a little bit of everything as the director of operations. I was involved in everything from marketing to finance, HR, site selection; you name it, I did it. And at the same time, as I was working in corporate, I also became a real estate investor. So I started investing in condos, townhouses, duplexes, fourplexes, single family homes. And at the same time, I also really got into personal growth. I was studying the likes of Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn, a little bit of Napoleon Hill. And so, I had this trifecta going of corporate, of real estate, and a personal growth that eventually morphed into me doing a little bit of coaching in corporate and in real estate and in personal growth. I went on to start working with Tony Robbins. For those of you that know Tony Robbins, he's a business strategist and he loved that I had a background in business, a background in real estate and that I was big into personal growth. And so at some point in my career, I decided to just leave the corporate world and just end up doing coaching, consulting, keynote speaking and full-time real estate investing. And that's really what I do today. James: Very interesting. So I believe that success in anything that we do is 80% psychology mindset and personal growth, internally, right? So tell us about the steps that any real estate investor needs to achieve his dream or his or her dream to become a really successful real estate investor. I mean, you have coached a lot of people, so why not we go through the list of what are the most important things that any real estate investors should look at?   Trevor: Absolutely. I'll be happy to. And I guess it all starts with understanding that there are two things. So I'll share two things before we get to the list, James, because I'm telling you, I've coached real estate investors all over this beautiful blue planet. You know, the majority of them have been in the United States, some in Canada, some in Europe, some in Australia, New Zealand, even as far away as Asia. And after doing over 20,000 coaching calls, that's an actual statistic, I found that it really boils down to just two things. You know, the first thing is to really have what I call a high-performance mindset. You've got to get what's right between the ears before you can even go out there and do the second thing, which is modeling; modeling best practices. You know, learning from people like you, learning from reading great books, attending conferences. Because if you can show up with a powerful mindset and you can model best practices, you can really take your real estate portfolio through the roof. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's go to more things in how the journey can be started, right?   Trevor: Yeah. Well, absolutely. And I call it the seven simple steps to extraordinary real estate success. Because again, I've identified that if you do these seven things, you're going to be wildly successful in real estate. And if you miss one of these seven things, it can take you a long time to get to your ultimate outcome. So the very first thing that I always talk about, and it's always number one with people, whether you are new to real estate investing, maybe you are an expert at it, is that there's always something going on where we need to confirm with your mindset. Because we all have limiting beliefs, we all have doubts, we all have fears, we all have anxiety. And oftentimes we'll say things like, you know, it's tough to find great deals, right? Or maybe you've heard all the good deals are gone, or that it's hard to raise money nowadays because there's so much competition Or what if the market crashes?  And so those are all questions that if you don't get your head around those things, they can literally paralyze someone and stop them in their tracks. So what I come in is I come in as a coach and I take a look at things like, well, what are your beliefs? What are your values? What are your rules? How were you answering those questions? Because I'm telling you that there's a new way of thinking and behaving that you've got to really latch onto. Because if you don't, those limiting beliefs are going to hold you back. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah, that makes sense. But where do you think people get the limiting belief? I mean, it seems to be everybody having it, right? And how can they cure that limiting belief?   Trevor: Well, limiting beliefs come from what we perceive as being true, right? So if someone says, "Oh, it's hard to raise capital."  You've got to ask, "Is that really true?"  And the answer for some is, "Yeah, it is hard to raise capital."  And from others you go, "Well, other people have seemed to raise capital so I might just investigate how they're doing it."  Let's take James Kandasamy if we take a look at how much money you've raised in your time, I mean, there was a time where you had raised $0 and now you've gone on to raise tens of millions of dollars. So I always say to ask the question, is that really true? Is it hard to raise capital or do you maybe need to find a mentor or a coach like James or take James's program to really find out how other people are doing it? And that's the one thing that you've got to remember is for every problem that you've got or that you're facing, somebody does have the solution. But you can't sit there and think that it can't be solved. I mean, it's imperative that you really understand. That's why coaching and mentoring exists. And that's what I love about you, James, is you do all of this in your own real estate deals and you're an expert at it.   James: Yeah. It's very tricky, right? So there are so many reasons that even I was giving, sometimes I have self-talk and would say, Oh, that's no deal. Well, I really have to force myself to think that, okay, I need to be finding different ways to find deals. That's not like there are no deals, you just have to think differently and ask different questions.   Trevor: It's really true because today alone, I mean, if we take a look at today, somebody that owns an apartment building somewhere today is going to be diagnosed with heart disease or cancer, right? And they're gonna want to sell their property. Tomorrow, somebody's going to be getting divorced and they're going to need to sell their property. Tomorrow or the next day, someone's going to be going, man, it's too hot to live in Texas. My wife and I are ready to move to Florida and live on the coast where it's a little bit cooler. So you've got to believe that as the Baby Boomers age, and as people come up with real-life conditions like heart disease, cancer, divorce, moving, there's going to be more and more apartments for sale every day because that's what's happening to these apartment owners. So again, you've got to condition the belief system to believe that every day there are new great deals about to come online. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah. It's all about belief systems and I think it will appear, right? And I think you always have to think about how can you do things differently from everybody else. And a lot of times people are just want to be handholding. They want someone to hold their hand and show them...basically, they want to be fed by the spoon. Everything you want to be given just like that. It's not how it works. I mean, for example, when I started in multifamily in 2015, it was hard to find deals. Everybody say it's pricey. I used to buy deals, the deals and my market used to be like 55 a door and that was like expensive and I had to find different ways to buy deals at 35 a door. But the thing is it has been pricey since 2015. If you think the market is hot right now in 2019, I tell you it was really hot, even in 2013, 2014. It has always been hard. There was no such thing as it was easy last time. So, you know, it's going to be always difficult. You just have to find some different value proposition and do things differently from everybody else to get ahead. And that's what I did even in 2015. I used to start looking for direct to seller marketing, which nobody else was doing. I did find deals and that's how I penetrated the market. Otherwise, I would have been complaining and talking the same thing all over again.   Trevor: Well that's it. And people don't know what they don't know until they know. And I'll say that again: People don't know what they don't know until they know. And you have to absolutely start out by putting one foot in front of the other and starting to get some traction. Starting to look at, well, what are the different areas I could get a deal, find a deal, talk to a broker, go direct to seller? I mean for the committed, there's always a way; would you agree?   James: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for the committed and people who want to really, really be successful. A lot of people out there, like to be successful or they want to be, but there is no requirement for them to be successful. It's not like do or die. So it's not like breathing for air when you're underwater. When your head is pushed underwater, you want that air. That's how you should feel it when you want to be successful. So if you have that feeling then you will be successful. But if you want to be like, yeah, I mean, you know, if you are taking it lightly and if you want to be or you like to be successful, then, of course, you're not going to be successful.    Trevor: That's it.    James: Yeah, absolutely. So let's go for the second step after the mindset. What do you think is the next one that is very critical? Trevor: Well, I'll tell you, this is a big one too, James. And it really is what I call a lack of a strategic plan. And that means, as real estate investors, we've got to start with the end in mind. We've got to start with our outcome, we've got to get crystal clear on what it looks like. Are we going to invest in state or out of state? Are we going to invest with a partner or by ourselves? Are we going to look for properties that are in B class or C class? Are we going to look for things under a hundred doors or over a hundred doors? And so, I always remind people to sit down with a pen and a paper and get clarity on what their ultimate outcome looks like. And then from that place, we can reverse engineer it and start building the steps to move in that direction. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah. Yeah. Correct. And I think it also helps the person when they communicate with other people. So let's say when they're very, very specific with their goal, it helps them a lot. Like when they talk to a broker, if they say, I need a hundred unit in a C location with a C minus a property or B and a C location and I want this kind of expense ratio. Then that's definitely going to be very, very helpful for the broker to really, really give you the deal that you want. So what do you think?   Trevor: No, you're spot on. And again, you're going to start to really understand that the 80/20 rule applies; where 80% of people are just phoning up a broker and saying, what have you got for me? Whereas 20% of the people are going into that call with the broker with a lot of specificity like you would do: here's what I want, where I want it, what my budget is, here's my team. We've got capital ready to deploy and we're ready to take down a deal. Because let's face it, the world has sped up so fast and there's so much competition out there that if you can't speak intelligently to a broker and tell them what you really want and where you really want it, he's going to go give it to someone else who is specific. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen brokers where I started talking to them for the first time, they call me immediately because even though they do not know who am I, but they said, well, your sentences tells me that you know what you're doing and you know exactly what you want, which is very important. Alright then, I want to buy a multifamily deal. I want to buy an apartment. So that's so high level.  But how do you think they should sentence it? I'm trying to think through this question here, how do you think a newbie or a new person who is trying to get into this business should phrase the requirement?   Trevor: Absolutely. So, it's a great question, James. And I think that today you can do it solo, but it's a lot easier to do it with a partner. Somebody like you where they might be able to say that my partners and I are looking for X, Y, Z. Because the first thing out of a broker's mouth is, do you have experience? Have you done a multiunit apartment deal before? And instead of saying, this is my first time and the broker going, Oh God, here we go again. It's literally, yes, my partners and I have done three deals or my partners and I have done seven deals or we currently own X number of doors. Even though the partner may own the doors and it's your first time kind of hanging onto the coattails of the partner, it's still credibility.  So you never want to lie to them but you do want to really take a look at, well, if I was to partner with someone who's already done what it is I'm trying to do, could I go faster? Because at the end of the day, and even as a master platinum coach, and again doing 20,000 coaching calls with real estate investors, I know that the whole goal is to turn decades into days. And it could take you years to break through with the broker on your own, where you partner with the right team and you can turn decades into days and really start putting yourself out there in a great way. Does that resonate?   James: Yeah, that resonated. So I'm trying to get your thoughts. Why do you think it's important to get a mentor rather than trying on your own?   Trevor: Well, again, I think that it's really, really intelligent to read books, listen to podcasts like yours, go to real estate events and really understand that if you could really turn those decades in today's, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to have a coach or a mentor or an accountability partner or somebody in your tribe that has already done what it is you're trying to do? Because my mentor and coach, Mr. Tony Robbins says, "Success leaves clues."  And again, if we take a look at your success and Shante success, I mean, you've gone on to do, you know, I don't even know what you're currently sitting at, James, you'll have to tell me.   James: I've got like 1300 units.    Trevor: Yeah. That's a lot of units, not to mention, you're also a coach, you're also a speaker, you're also an author. You've got great training programs. So if I could learn from a guy like James Kandasamy or not, I mean the choice is obvious. I want to absolutely take a sneak peek behind your curtain and see what you've learned so I can turn those decades into days.   James: Yeah. It's crazy. I've met people who are really, really smart and I've talked to them about coaching, but somehow, some people just do not want to do coaching. I don't know why they think it's a bad thing. Because I had a lot of coaches, a lot of mentors. And a lot of times these people want to try to come into the business and do the business on their own, but they're not very, very successful until now. Because they can do auxiliary work, they can do the ecosystem work, but they can't be the primary keepers. I mean, coaching itself takes a lot of time. I can teach you 'A', I can teach you G but I can't teach you A to Z unless you go through the entire program. And A to Z will take you to become a true person who knows everything. We're on the top of the food chain, that's what I would say as an operator.  So sometimes people learn how to raise money or sometimes people learn how to do asset management or how to underwrite, but nobody really learns everything. So a coach would be able to tell you what's the fastest way to go from A to Z and don't make the mistakes. I think they can avoid a lot of mistakes and in the commercial real estate industry, it's just multimillion-dollar business. You know, you're handling investor's money if you're doing syndication, it's very, very key that you get someone that you can trust and have gone through that path and can tell you what are the traps to avoid. So I think that's very important. Trevor: Yeah, well, that's the main thing. I mean you talk about people really having three different modalities. Some people want to go out there and be the guy that finds the deal or the gal that finds the deal. Some are underwriters and the real numbers people and they want to work with the numbers and make sure it's all the numbers jive. The third type of person who wants to run and manage the asset. Maybe the fourth type of person wants to raise capital.  So again, at the end of the day you've got all of these core modalities, but there's all these submodalities like contracts and due diligence and really legal and financial analysis. Like at the core, where you're really protecting your earnest money or protecting time. Because I think time and money are the two greatest commodities in this game we're playing, called multifamily real estate. So when you think of checklists, when you think of really understanding and appreciating where do people succeed and also where do people fall down, I think it's like absolutely paramount to you being able to go further faster. Would you agree?   James: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Let's go to number three. What do you think is number three?   Trevor: Yeah, number three. I know it's the following in, it's called systems for support. Yes. Systems for support. Because you can't just go out there and freestyle today, you've got to create systems.Systems that might include a team. Systems that might include who's responsible for what. Systems that might include technology. Systems that remind you, when are you supposed to reach out to that broker again? When are you supposed to drive neighborhoods? When are you supposed to go to meetups? I mean, most people get up on Monday morning and go, gosh, what should I do to move my real estate business forward this week? And James, I call that hopium. You know, that's hoping you're going to find a deal, hoping you're going to find an investor. And if you want to play in the upper echelon of real estate, you've got to have tried and true systems where all that stuff's laid out well in advanced Monday morning. And when Monday morning comes, you start working on the urgent and important activities. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah. Yeah. It's very important. I mean, I think when I was starting up, I'm just sharing my experience because you brought up things that bring back memories. So when I started up, I was doing Excel sheet, everything. I even invested in management and all that. But as I grew bigger, I knew time was very important. You don't want to waste a lot of time and some things you can use for you to scale. Like even like all my investment management right now, there's a tool that I use right now. So no more doing Excel. So yeah, I mean even in the past six months, I put in a lot of time into creating systems and processes and procedures on my vertically integrated company so that we can scale. So, yeah, absolutely agree. Are there any tools that you recommend to create this kind of system?   Trevor: Well, it can be simple tools. It could be Excel. For somebody who's starting out, there are other underwriting programs. If you want to be a little bit more sophisticated, you might need CRMs to keep track of your investors because you're not just reaching out to two or three people. I mean, oftentimes we say that going out there and raising capital is a lot like flipping over a card from a deck of cards. And James, I know you've heard this cause we worked together, but you might go out there to an investor group or you might go to a meetup or you might go to a conference and you might literally share a unique opportunity with somebody and see if they want to put some money in. And every time you ask someone whether they want to come in on a deal, I call it, it's almost like you're flipping over a card. And sometimes you're going to flip over that card and you're going to get a two or three and they're not going to invest. Then you get somebody that might be an eight or a nine and they were close to investing, but they don't want to come in. And you keep flipping over cards and keep flipping over cards until you find an ACE. And an ACE is where you get an investor that literally comes in and puts 50 or a hundred or 250 candy or deal. And then you got to keep going out there and flipping cards. But if you don't know when your next conference is, if you don't know when the next meetup is, if you don't know who you're going to be getting in front of in the local community or maybe other parents of your children's, you know, maybe your children's have friends who have parents or professionals or doctors or whatever, I'm telling you, you're really running a risk of finding a great deal and then not being able to fund it. And that would be a tragedy today. So, people will always say to you, would you rather find the deal and then the investor or find the investors and then the deal? And it's almost a chicken and an egg. I always say I'd love to have a pool of people that are ready to invest so that when I know I've got that deal that I can move quickly on it. How would you speak to that, James?   James: Yeah, so I think yeah, I did the same as well. I mean, I tried to add value to a lot of investors and get them wanting to be in my list. Because they get so much value, they want to know what's happening. They want to know like how does the tax benefit comes in? How does asset protection come in? So I do a lot of webinars. So I give a lot of values and build that database with my investors. And it's also building a trust system because a lot of times, I think investors really want to work with someone they already know. They know, like and trust. And I've seen many, many times people come and ask me out of the blue, you want to invest with me? I said I do not know you man so how am I going to invest? It's just so difficult. So, yeah, I would agree with you, you need to have a group of investors first, then you go and find the deal. At least give them hope that you're looking and always give value to the investors so that they know that you are really caring for them.   Trevor: That's it. It's really all about adding value, adding massive value, adding more value than your competitor adds. And I'm telling you that that's really what makes the world go round. We're all here for nothing more than to grow and to contribute. And if you want to grow, you've got to be ready to contribute. And if you want to grow, you also have to be ready to have others contribute.  And that really does lead to number four, which is what I call having pillars for support. And pillars for support or where you start assembling your team. Do you have the person that can sign on the deal? Do you have the lender? Do you have the investors? Do you have the appraisers? Do you have the underwriters? Do you have the property managers? Do you have the general contractors, the roofers, the plumbers, the landscapers? You know, the same thing with a really good attorney. Same thing with a really good CPA, who knows all the tax advantages of real estate. I mean, if you're not assembling your pillars of support, you're really gonna miss out on optimizing and maximizing the performance. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I would add more to that. It's like when you have pillars of support, if you have a mentor, the mentor can tell you exactly who you want. I mean, you can get a PPM lawyer, but who's the best out there? The mentor can tell you because they've already gone through that phases of trial and error. Same thing with lenders as well, who's the best lender to work with you? And that's a lot of nuances in each of these, which can change your deal dramatically. If you don't underwrite properly, it can change your deal. If you don't have the right lender, it can change your deal. It also gives you an edge in terms of a buying deal in this market. If you know somebody that other people do not know or there are some things in that one person, you know that no one else knows, it gives you an edge in terms of winning deals. And there are so many nuances and everybody has their own style and it's not written in any book. I probably need to write a book one day. There's just so much of a value proposition on specific lenders, specific lawyers, specific underwriting techniques that people have gone through this and would know that not many people know. So yeah, I would agree to get in all the team establish, but at the same time, if you have a mentor, you will absolutely know who's the best team out there for you.   Trevor: That's it. And that's a huge part of real estate today. And it's paramount. It's an absolute must and not a should. Otherwise, you face a lot of challenges and then those challenges end up costing you money and those challenges end up costing you time. And not just your money but again, if you're using OPM or other people's money, the last thing you want to do is have to go back and explain that you didn't hire the best of the best for capital preservation or to make sure they redline anything in the deal that doesn't work or whatever. So it's a huge, huge part of what people really need to consider when they go out there and start doing this in a major way.   James: Got it. Let's go to number five.   Trevor: You got it. Number five is my favorite category and it kind of speaks to the last two, but it's officially called poor time management. Because James, here's the truth. I can tell the quality of an investor's outcomes by where they spend their time. And I'm going to be just completely honest with you that we all have the same amount of time. We've got something called, The Rule of 168 and what does that mean? Well, it means we all have 168 hours a week. Now, wee sleep for a bunch of those. We eat, we pay the bills, we spend time with the wife, the kids, the husband, the kids. But what are you doing with the rest of your time? Because you've got to make sure that you're not just doing lower-value activities, but you're doing higher-value activities. Things that can get you deals, things that can get you to meet different apartment owners, things that could get you in front of more brokers, things that can help you turn in more LOI, things that can help you really find a unique tribe of other investors. Where you're not just going out there and spending your time looking at individual investors but maybe you tap into someone who got a really nice big Rolodex so we can optimize and maximize our time.  Because at the end of the day, most people fall down here and they're not doing the things that they should be doing. They're doing busy work. For a lot of people, they think they're being productive but in an eight hour day, if you look at the statistics in America alone, people are only productive for about three hours of every eight hour day. And I'm certainly not saying that to you or me because I know how hard you work and you know how hard I work. But really, I would ask the listeners to really get crystal clear on, where am I spending my time and is there an opportunity to take it to a new level? Does that resonate? James: Yeah, it resonated very well. But let me give you some experience from time management. I used to work in one large company, the largest semiconductor company. And you know, after a few years I realize everybody's busy for nothing. There's so much of meetings and we are busy with meetings and when we're having meetings we are doing another work. So everybody in the meeting is on the laptop doing something else and the is still running. And there was another meeting to tackle too many meetings. There was a meeting, task force to reduce meeting. And the meeting task forces meeting too many times and at the end of the day, they got killed. So I mean, I left the company, I went to another much more smaller company, which is much higher efficiency and they don't have...they have half an hour meeting, nobody does work during the meeting, it's so much efficient. And I realized, wow, I missed so much of my time, you know, many, many years working in the first company and it's just ridiculous. You're a W2 employee, you are working on this big corporate bureaucratic company and you realize, half of your life is gone in meetings. You get paid and all that but what's the point? I mean, you are losing time throughout your life. And it's just so much of difference between a large company and small company, which runs much more efficiently. And yeah, time is something that is like a bank account where you deposit 24 hours everyday, but you're losing every day as well. You're losing all the money. You can't take it back. So imagine that kind of every day you start back early morning, you put back 24 hours and you can't really take it out again because it disappears at the end of the day. So either you use that whole 24 hours or it disappears at the end of the day.   Trevor: I think that's it. And really what I would say to the listener there, James is really, check-in with yourself, whether you're being outcome-focused or whether you're being task-focused because there's a big difference. If you're outcome-focused, you're really going, okay, what is the outcome for this meeting I'm about to go into? What do I need to achieve? Or if you're picking up the phone, you've got to start with, what's the outcome of me making this call? What am I really trying to get? Or what's the outcome of going to this meetup? Or what's the outcome of sending in this LOI? Or what's the outcome?  Whereas task-based people are just busy working off of a to-do list. They're just trying to get things done rather than really focus on, does this really help me go further faster? So I encourage everybody to get crystal clear on becoming an outcome-based thinker rather than a task-based thinker. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah, that makes sense. So can you give some example? Let's say if someone go to a conference, what are the outcomes that they can plan to get from the conference?   Trevor: I think that's a great question. Maybe you want to come out of there with 10 new contacts, 10 high-level contacts. Maybe you want to learn the next greatest thing about what's going on in the market. Maybe there's someone from Marcus and Millichap who's presenting there that puts up all these graphs and you start to see where millennials are not moving into and places where millennials are moving into. Maybe it's something about cap rates. Maybe it's something about legal or financial analysis or my favorite one, how to keep more money out of Uncle Sam's hand and put it into yours. Because I think real estate is the greatest wealth vehicle on the planet and there's so many tax advantages. But if you don't go a conference going, I'm going to come home with one or two new things about how to really optimize my taxes, you could be missing out. Versus just going to a conference to go to a conference and thinking, well, I'll just soak up whatever I can soak up here and that's it. Does that make sense?   James: Yeah. Yeah. I'm guilty of that. Sometimes I go somewhere and I don't really think about what outcome do I want. So I need to improve on that too. But that's really good advice because I think, as you said, time is very limited. You want to make sure you get outcomes for any action that you spend time on. Especially when you are getting away from your family.   Trevor: Especially if you're on a weekend conference or you going to fly to a different city or if you're spending a lot of money. I mean, the money's important, but you can always make more money, James, you can't get your time back as you alluded to.   James: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to ask you a dangerous question. You have been to many, many conferences for real estate. So without naming names, I mean, what kind of real estate conference that you think is the most beneficial for a newbie to start up in this syndication?   Trevor: Oh, that's a great question. I think you want to find somebody who has got, what I would say as a heart-centered tribe and what do I mean by that? Well, it's somebody that isn't just putting on a conference to make money, but somebody who's putting on a conference to really teach, to really coach, to really train, to really mentor, to really facilitate. And it's not where the speakers stand on stage and just pound you with information, information, information, information. Because I like those events where the newbie can go and do a lot of networking; have lunch, have dinner, ride in an Uber with somebody else because it's really, first of all, the human experience. And I think real estate is really not about being in the real estate business, it's about being in the relationship business. But secondly, I find that the events where you can go and have some networking time or break into small groups or do some focus groups or really have panels that talk about best practices, those are the types of events where I see newbies going into and coming out of there going, Oh my God, that was worth it  and more. Because it's not just the information they got, it's the transformation that they see in other people who have already started to do what it is they want to do. And they get inspired, they get engaged, they get enrolled, they get compelled and say, well, if they could do it, is it possible that I could do it? And those are the best types of events for people to go to.   James: Got it. Got it. Awesome. Okay, let's go to number six.   Trevor: You bet. Number six is all about leverage. It's all about outsourcing. It's all about that old model being broken of try to be everything to everyone. So what do I mean by that? Well, if my passion is going out there and finding great deals, and that's what I'm really good at and that's what I love spending my time doing, then that's what I should do. And that means I might give the outsourcing to someone else. That means I might give the underwriting to someone else. That means I might give the asset management to someone that's maybe really good at managing the asset.  So I'm a big believer that if you try to do every single thing yourself...I think it's good to understand it and have a taste of it but at the end of the day, what are you really good at and what do you love doing? And then are you able to outsource or delegate some things to other people who are passionate about what they do? What do you think of that?   James: Yeah. I mean, I was doing a lot of things on my own and actually we got really, really busy. I mean managing almost a hundred million dollars in assets and what I've learned for the past one year, I think well maybe one and a half years I've started outsourcing. I have like three VA's right now helping me all the way all over the world and they're really good. It takes time to train them, but once they're trained, they are really, really helpful. And I'm trying to focus a lot more on the most important stuff that can play to my strength and that's really good advice. Got it. So let's go to number seven.   Trevor: Yeah. The final one, number seven, is really all about taking massive action. It's where the rubber meets the road. Because you can get rid of limiting beliefs and you can create a plan and you can create systems for support and you can literally figure out what you're going to do with your time, you can leverage things to other people. But if you're not out there driving neighborhoods, talking to brokers, go into conferences, hiring a coach, learning the tax advantages, you're really fooling yourself.  Because when I say take massive action, notice I'm throwing in the word 'massive', right? It's not like, do a little bit and then stop and then do a little bit and then stop. I believe that momentum breeds momentum and the more you get excited about it and fired up about it and you go out there and do it, it's amazing to see how  investors, whether they're new, intermediate, or even veterans can really put the ball in the hoop and really find some great deals out there. The other thing that's kind of an extension of that is to have some sort of accountability. Whether that is a partner, whether that is a coach, whether that's a mentor. I mean, most people find that they get excited for a little while and then the going gets tough, James and then the path of least resistance kicks in and they find themselves watching Netflix every night instead of going out there and going to the meetups, going out there and driving neighborhoods. So you've gotta be very, very careful that it takes massive action, course-correct as you go. And then make sure you've got some system of accountability so that you stay on track.   James: Yeah. That's why I like a grant Cardone's 10 X, right? Because it's just a representation of taking massive action. Why are you looking at 1X or 2X 3X and that drives a lot of action, a lot of effort from your side. So I think that's what it means. A 10 X is not really, you know, he's asking you to really hit 10 X. Because it's not like not realistic. Of course, it's possible but I think the thing is, your thought process and the amount of work that you put in to go to that 10X, represent massive action. And I think that's important. I think mentors and coaches are very important because they hold them accountable. When someone is holding you accountable, you are like answerable to someone.  If you're on your own, you are like, okay, I can do whatever I want. So that's what happened. Even when I was doing my single-family, because single-family, you own everything. And sometimes we don't even look at financials, money come in, sometimes we lose money in cashflow. We don't really care. But when you have passive investors with you in multifamily, we are like looking at finances every day because now we feel very accountable to everybody. Because we are syndicating and holding passive investors and people trusting you. So that accountability factor is very, very key to have in yourself to be successful.   Trevor: That's it. That's it. And if you follow these seven simple steps and you really maybe go back and rate yourself on a scale of one to 10, where are you with your beliefs? Where are you with knowing your outcome? Where are you as systems for support and on and on and on. If you rate that out of 70, it's going to give you a score and then you're going to be able to start to take a look at how to close that gap. Because we're all humans and we all want more. We want more deals, we want more money, we want more fun, we want more love, we want more experience and travel. And I really do believe that you can have it all in real estate, but you're gonna need to really own those seven simple steps. And not just that one time, you've got to check in with them at least once a week or once a month. And then keep moving forward with what it is that you want to achieve.   James: Awesome. Awesome. That's absolutely a lot of value, Trevor. So why not tell our audience how to get hold of you?   Trevor: Absolutely. Thank you. It's really simple to reach out. There are two ways you can do it. You can simply go to my website, which is trevormcgregor.com. Or if you ever want to have a call and you're somebody who is serious about scaling your real estate and taking it through the roof. And right now, James, my clients collectively that I have in front of me right now, own $1 billion worth of real estate. So they're really serious about growing their portfolio and having a big impact. Anyone who's interested in playing at the next level and needs a high-level coach to help support that, you can simply go to www.coachwithtrevor.com. You can fill in your details, click the send button and we can set up a complimentary 45-minute call where I can hear more about what's working for you, what's not working for you, and we'll show you how to close that gap. And at that time, if you want to hear more about my coaching, I'd be happy to share it with you. But my main intention is to give you massive value on that call.   James: Awesome. Awesome. All right, Trevor, thanks for coming in on the show. I'm sure you added a lot of value to our listeners and audience and happy to have you here. Thank you.   Trevor: Thank you for having me on, James. And the final thing I'll say is, you know what? Have passion and have hunger. Because if you're passionate about real estate and you're hungry to go to the next level, that's where possibility lives. So thanks for having me on.    James: Awesome. Thank you.

Proverbs 11:11 By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown. Taming the Untamable Beast Daniel Castor Let’s start today’s devotion off with a riddle. I can come as soft as a whisper or as loud as a shout. And You better think twice before you let me slip out . I have the power to bless and the power to destroy. I can make quite a mess or bring peace and joy. What am I? The answer of course is, “Our words” This proverb reminds us of the power of the tongue. Not only can it do damage or bless on a small level, in one on one conversation. A husband using hurtful words to tear down his wife or a father speaking words of encouragement to his children... It can also Be used to bless or destroys on a large scale. Even entire cities can rise and fall by the words of those who reside in them. Less you think this is too far fetched The book of James compares the tongue to a flame of fire, a rudder of a ship and an untamable beast. This is no joke. Our words have an affect on the direction of our lives. Our mouth can shoot forth words that are as destructive as fire. Sharp little cutting words can send wild fires of pain and sorrow into the ears of those who ear them. And this is something we all struggle with... Because James also reminds us that the Tongue is like a beast that no one can tame. I don’t know about you but I have a lot of work to do in this Area. May God give us what we need to think before we speak. May God give us grace to tame the untamable and use our words to bless and build up rather than cut down and destroy

Introduction Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Rob is not on this episode of AIB. Through some misalignment of the stars, Jeremy is actually present, however, and so the show must go on. Rob’s absence must have flustered the group, because they skipped the witty banter about what happened in their week that usually opens an episode. I guess you’ll have to just skip to the next section and miss my snarky remarks about their introduction. The Show Today our hosts discuss what it takes to create wow experiences for customers. Maybe they should have started with something like, “How to create wow experiences for podcast listeners,” because they definitely haven’t figured that one out yet. Without Rob’s dulcet tones elucidating the audience with a story, James, Jeremy, and Kevin get the point rather quickly. I don’t know how to feel about the lack of Rob-story. The thought that I actually missed them on this episode makes me think that I’m suffering from some kind of Stockholm syndrome. If you’re out there, reading this, send help. Regardless of the business that you’re running, the hosts suggest, you can create positive experiences for your customers that can help them become rabid fans. They point to examples like Google and Apple, who tend to put time into the little things, like the product packaging, as well as the product itself. Jeremy relates a story, although not as well as Rob would have, about how Delta picked him up in a Porsche to help him make his connecting flight. That felt more like a humble brag than advice for how to create raving fans. Kevin suggests that the most remarkable customer service experiences he’s had are when businesses pay attention to the small details. TL:DR - Thoughtfulness is all it takes to create wow moments for your customers. Make use of small opportunities, especially those opportunities that aren’t very costly, like sending a handwritten note. Our Recommendations Last time, Kevin recommended a website to learn development called CodeCademy.com. Today he follows up that with a recommendation for another learning resource called Udemy.com. We get it. You want people to learn development. Sheesh. Can you come up with something original already? Do you believe in magic? Because James does. He clarifies that he doesn’t believe in voodoo magic, or spells, but sleight of hand and various mundane tricks. As he’s gotten back into learning new sleight of hand techniques and card tricks, James has realised that he can apply things to his businesses. For example, magicians don’t use the word distraction. Instead, they talk about attention management. I want to make fun of James for all this, but it kind of takes care of itself. Jeremy likes to have lots of cars at once. He especially likes new cars, and his recommendation is for a subscription that lets him get new cars more often. Volvo recently rolled out a program that allows you to lease a car for one to two years. The payment includes insurance, and you can trade the car in for a new one at the end of the term; think of it like a cell phone plan for cars.

Well, lets open our Bibles up this morning to James 5. Can you believe that we are finishing this series that we have been on for weeks, months, and were finally coming to an end of this Book? I hope that this is not the end of your study of James. I hope that you will continue studying it, and then when you do refer back to it, it will mean more to you than it ever did before we started this series. When I was a new believer, I was 17 years old, in our newly-formed church in Rockford, I had a Sunday School teacher named Roger. He had come out of the hippie movement. He had been a drug addict and had had a dramatic conversion to the Lord. He was one of those cool guys, cool teachers. Some of the teachers could be kind of dry and boring, but not Roger. He was hip; he was cool. He could speak our lingo, so we really enjoyed our class. We really learned a lot from Roger. In fact, because we had mutual friends, I would spend some time with Roger from time to time. I really enjoyed his company. One particular day, there was a church service going on in the house across the street from my sister, and it was really loud. It was a hyper-Pentecostal kind of a church; so he was like, Lets go check it out. I was like, No, no, no. Im not going in there. He said, Come on! Lets go check it out. Ill go with you. So we went in there, and it was like nothing Id ever seen before. They called people forward for prayer for the sick. Apparently everybody was sick because if you were in the room, you were coming forward for prayer; so everybody lined the walls and had to come around. The pastor occasionally would start hopping across the stage on one leg with his tambourine. His face was red, and he was shouting and screaming. People were on the floor convulsing and shaking. Im thinking, What is this? What is this? Next thing you know, Im in line, and Im like, I dont want to do that. I really dont. You brought me here, but I want to leave. So we came to an exit near a side wall, and right when we got to that exit, we cut out. We left the building. We got outside, and it was like, Oh, man! That was crazy. He said, You know, thats just another expression of the Body of Christ. Theres nothing wrong with what they did. Its just that we all worship God in different ways, and thats how they choose to worship the Lord, so I got a nice lesson on how the church operates. But we walked out of the church, and that was very symbolic because shortly after that, Roger walked away from Christ. He went back to a life of drugs. Years later, from what I knew, he was not serving Christ, not serving the Lord. How does that happen? The Bible talks about the fact that sometimes within the Body of Christ, there are believers who we think are believers, but theyre really not. They have confessed to Christ, but they dont possess Christ. Their conversion experience for whatever reason really wasnt real, really wasnt true. They really didnt have the Holy Spirit inside of them empowering them to live a Godly life. The Bible talks about this. Jesus says in the Parable, The Wheat and the Tares, in Matthew 13, Sometimes within the church, there are wheat and tares. A tare looks just like wheat, and it grows with the wheat. Its not separated until harvest time. Jesus explained the Parable later on, and He said, Thats the way it is. The tares grow amongst the wheat, and then at harvest time, God will separate the real from the fake, the true from the counterfeit. In fact, at the judgment, Jesus once said to people who professed Him and called Him Lord, And Lord, in Your name, did we not do miracles? In Your name, did we not cast out demons? He said, Depart from Me, I never knew you, not I knew you at one time and dont anymore, but I never at any point knew you. Never at any point did you belong to Me as a follower, as a child of God. Counterfeit Christians, theyre amongst us today. There are tares here today. They come to church every Sunday. They look like us; they talk like us, but there has not been-and God knows this-a true bringing to faith. They do not have the Holy Spirit residing within. If they did, they would stay in the church. They would stay with the believers, but the faith is not a true faith. John talks about this in 1 John 2:19 (page 1208 of pew Bibles). Id like for us to read that together. The Apostle John is talking about people who went apostate. They were in the church, and then they left the church. He said, They went out from us... Theyre not worshipping with us anymore. …they did not really belong to us. For if they had really belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. The fact that they went AWOL and they were not living for Christ is proof and evidence of the fact that they really didnt belong to us. They were simply going through the motions. How many of you know of people who once professed Christ and no longer do? Maybe they went to church with you and no longer do. Let me see your hands. All around this room, weve known people like that. Thats what James is going to talk about. Really, these are controversial verses, but they shouldnt be. Once you understand the target audience-who James is writing to-theyre not difficult to understand. In fact, this whole Book has been about a test of faith, hasnt it? You say, Heres the test: if you are a true believer, this is how you respond to trials. If you are a true believer, heres how you respond to temptations. If you are a true believer, here are the words you speak out of your mouth. If you are a true believer, here is how you react to a promise. In fact, in Chapter 4, he gives an appeal to conversion. He says, Repent. Come to Christ. Remember that Passage. He challenges them to come to Christ. Why? Because James knew that some of the people he was writing to did not know the Lord. They may have professed they knew the Lord or seemed to know the Lord, but they really didnt truly know Christ. James says, I know youre there, and Im telling you right now, Come to Christ. Repent of your sins. Belong to Him. Now hes not going to talk to the tares. Hes not going to be talking to those who are not truly believers. Hes going to talk to believers. This is what he says in Verse 19 (page 1199), My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. Now when you first read that in Verse 19, he says, My brothers, if one of you should wander… So right away we think-and heres where the misunderstanding comes in-that hes talking about backsliding Christians, apostate Christians; but hes not. We know that from the words he uses in Verse 20, and there are many of them. First of all, he says, Whoever turns… This is the word that means convert. You dont convert the converted. You dont turn those who are already followers of Christ. This word is always used in Scripture-every single time-as a reference to people who dont believe in Christ coming to Christ. It used by the Lord when He talks to Paul on the road to Damascus. He said, You are to turn the people from darkness to light, from the kingdom of Satan to God. The word turn is used there. It means to change your direction. Secondly, he uses the word sinner. The word sinner is never used of professing believers. Now we are sinners; its true. We do sin; thats true, but every time you look up the word sinner, this word in the Bible, While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, it always refers to people who dont know the Lord, who dont truly know the Lord. They may know about the Lord, but they dont truly know the Lord. Thirdly is the word save. You dont save those who are already saved. He said, Were going to save them, and we know were not talking about a deliverance from physical death, but deliverance from spiritual death because he says the word soul here. Deliver their soul from death. In the Greek, the word soul is present; so what are we talking about? Were talking about spiritual death. Were talking about salvation, and that is for the loss. That is for people who are apart from God. Then he talks about the fact that it covers a multitude of sins. That simply means that God is going to forgive their sins. Gods grace covers their sins, so theres no sin that cannot be forgiven. There is no quantity of sin that cannot be atoned for. His grace will cover their sin, so what were talking about is those within the church. Maybe there has been a tare amongst you. All of the sudden they have now departed from the church. Theyre not coming anymore. The hopes are that theyll come and get it. Theyll finally get it. Theyll catch on to the program and realize that they need to serve and follow Christ. He says, Youre to go after them. Youre to pursue them. Youre to bring them back to the way of the Truth. I was careless this week. I was carrying a heavy box of books down to the basement. Rather than turn on the light switch, I thought the ambient light coming in from the surrounding areas was going to be sufficient to see the stairs. I was too lazy to put the box down and flip the switch, and I paid the price. I got to the bottom of the steps; I tripped on the last step and fell forward onto the concrete basement floor. Writhing in pain, Oh, did that hurt! I landed on my knee and hurt my neck. I was down there a little bit in shock and was trying to figure out what was wrong. I thought Id really damaged my knee. I was down there just moaning, groaning, and writhing in pain. My dog, Penny, came to see what the commotion was about. She came to the top of the steps. She wasnt coming down. I dont know if she was afraid of me or was trying to figure out what the new game was that Dad was trying to play. She was looking at me from a distance; from the top of the steps, she was looking down at me in agony. She was studying me; her ears were up, and her head was tilted like, Whats going on? Why are you doing that? I was like, Oh, Penny! Im hurt! I dont know what I was expecting, but I can tell you this: there is no St. Bernard in my dog. I thought, You know, shes at least going to come down and give me a courtesy lick on the face to say, Listen, Id like to help ya, but Im a dog. I cant do anything for ya. I love ya. Im sorry youre in this condition. Im pulling for you to make it, and do your best. Thats what that would have demonstrated to me. Just come down and check on me, make sure Im okay. Give me the courtesy lick on the forehead and then Im good. Rather than doing that, my dog simply turns-while Im in pain, writhing in agony-and leaves and goes back to the couch! Nothing more I can do here. Hope you make it, big guy. Good luck to you. Im out of here. I have squirrels to watch, so off Penny went. I lay there for a long time, assessing my damage. I finally got up, went upstairs, and there she was just watching birds and squirrels out the bay window. When we think about these folks who have fallen-we think about these folks who are no longer living for the Lord and are in darkness-I wonder when you raised your hand and thought about that person, did you go after that person? Did you pursue them? Did you dare take a step down into the darkness with them and find out what was going on? Now, dont lick them on the head. Im not asking you to do that like my dog, but did you find out, Whats going on with you? How did you get here? Do you want to stay here? Why are you here? Can I give you a hand? Can I help you out of this darkness? Can I help you up? Can we go back up to where you were before? Thats what James is telling us to do. Hes saying, Go into the darkness. Find them. Reach down to them. Love on them. Dont lecture them! Dont yell at them! Whats wrong with you?!? Lift them up and say, Im here for you. Lets talk about how you ended up here. Lets talk about how we bring you back to where you used to be. That's what James is saying. James is saying, Take responsibility to bring that person who has wondered away from the church and finally, finally help them to cross the line of faith for real, and really give their life to Christ, really become a true believer and a true follower of Jesus Christ. Thats what hes saying, My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone… Who? Someone. Are you a someone today? He doesnt say, And the Apostles will bring him back to faith, or the elders will, or the pastors will bring him back to the faith. He says, Someone, anyone, if you love that person, realize what is at stake. Youre going to save their soul from death. The stakes are as high as they can possibly be. If you truly love somebody, you wont simply look at them in that fallen condition in the darkness and go, Tis, tis, too bad. Well, I have to get back to what Im supposed to do. Maybe Im afraid. I remember not talking to Roger, truthfully, when I was 17 when I heard that news because I was afraid. He was a tough guy before he became a Christian. Maybe he is that tough guy again. Maybe he wont like me. Besides, Im a kid. What am I going to do? What am I going to say to an adult? I was afraid. Probably my dog didnt come down those steps because she was afraid because I was acting funny. I was making a lot of strange noises, and she didnt know what was going on. James says, Take that risk. Make that walk. Descend to where theyre at. Help them up. Now there are two ways that we stray. I want to talk about both of them. The first way we can stray is doctrinally. If you stray doctrinally, probably morally/ethically, youre still going to be living an upright life. In fact, thats one of the reasons why we cant identify them because theyre fine citizens, right? Theyre good people, but they stray doctrinally. Theyve received some wrong information that caused them to depart from the truth of the Gospel. This happened time and time again. In fact, much of the New Testament is written to combat error. Paul would write or John would write, and they would correct wrong thinking, wrong information. Remember Paul said, Earnestly contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. Gods Word, His revelation, is done. Its complete. You cant add to it or take away from it, but there are people who will twist and distort it. That happened in the First Century Church, and it happens today. Were to go after them and give them the right information. I went to go visit one of our members named Kilcha. Some of you know Kilcha. Shes Korean. She usually comes to the 11 oclock service and sits over here. Kilcha had a headache, and her friend encouraged her to go to the hospital. It turned out it was a brain aneurism. They caught it just in time. She had brain surgery that Sunday I found out about it. I preached the sermon first, and then I took off to try to find Kilcha at 11 oclock. She was at the UW Hospital in Madison recovering from brain surgery by the time I made it there. UW Madison is a big place, so I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly where my car was parked and exactly how to find her room. It worked out with my memory device because she was in the K Wing, and her name is Kilcha. So I went, This is a piece of cake. Im in the K Wing. Ill be able to find this, no problem. So I was given directions to the room, K423. You take the K elevator, and you go up to the fourth floor. No problem. I walked to the K elevator and went up to the fourth floor. I got up there, and it was a ghost town. There were no people, no patients, no doctors or nurses-nobody. There was nobody around. I was walking around thinking, Well, these are more administrative offices and laboratories. There are no patients here. She must be in another K Wing, so I went to another K Wing. I couldnt find it. I was walking around for 20 minutes up and down the same hallways going, Well, it says K. This has to be it. This is it. This is the only place the elevator would take me. Finally, I see a young man in blue jeans and a T-shirt walking around. I didnt know if he was the custodian or what his role was there. I said, Sir, could you help me? Im trying to find this. He said, Okay. Hmm, thats strange. Well, lets look. So we walked around for another 15 minutes in the same corroders. I wanted to tell him, You know, I can tell you right now this isnt going to do any good. Finally he started asking questions. He said, Hmm, I wonder if this is the correct information. Can you tell me what she had done? I said, Well, she had brain surgery done. Then he goes, Oh, yeah. I used to do that. Okay, so what did… He said it just like that, just kind of casually. It turned out before he came to UW Madison, he was a brain surgeon in California. I said, Whyd you stop? He said, I got tired of working 110-hour weeks. Now I only work 80-hour weeks. He said it just like that, Oh, I used to do that. You and I would be like, I have a Honda. I used to drive one of those. She had brain surgery. I used to do that. Okay, now lets look… We couldnt find her. When he couldnt find the room, I wanted to say so badly, Doctor, this isnt brain surgery… (Congregation laughing). But I thought, Im not going to do that. As soon as he found out it was brain surgery, he said, Were in the wrong place. We walked over to the elevator, and he said, Heres where they usually recover from brain surgery, so lets go to that floor and that wing even though its different from whats on the paper. He took me there. He got on the elevator; he walked me to that unit, and we found Kilcha. I was like, Wow, Doc, that was really nice of you. You took all that time. You got on the elevator with me. You took me to the unit. You figured it out. Thats awesome. Thanks. Thats what James is telling us to do. There are people who get wrong information, doctrinally-wrong information. They are wandering. Theyre lost. Theyre no longer in contact with the truth as it was delivered to the saints-the Gospel, the pure Gospel, theyve departed from that. Maybe theyre denying the deity of Christ. Maybe theyre denying the work on the cross or His Resurrection. It could happen to anybody. A friend of mine who was a pastor in Rockford started teaching in the 80s what was called the JDS or the Jesus Died Spiritually Doctrine. Have you heard of that? The way it goes is Christ died on the cross and then His Spirit descended into hell where he was tormented by Satan and demons for three days. He became a sinner in Hell. He took on all of our sin, and then finally He Himself had to be born again; and thats why Colossians said He is the first born of the dead. Then He was resurrected. He was teaching this, and I said, Thats heresy. Oh, but Pastor so-and-so says that its in this book, and hes really famous. I said, Thats heresy. Youre teaching that when Jesus says, It was finished, it wasnt finished. Youre teaching that the cross was not enough, that His blood was not sufficient to atone for my sins. He had to further descent into Hell and further experience more torment and be born again just like a man. Im telling you thats heresy. Around and around we went. I dont know if hes still teaching that today or not, but I do know that hes a friend. I care for him. I care for the people who are going to hear what he is teaching, so I challenged that. Remember when we shared about a pastor who came to Janesville, a Universalist pastor? He used to be one of the most dynamic pastors Id ever listened to in my life. Hes now traveling around the country. I showed you a picture of his mug months ago-a literal mug, not his face-a coffee mug. It had the Ten Commandments with a slash through it. Do you remember that? He was teaching, You dont need to worry about the Ten Commandments. You live any way you want to live because every single person on this planet is going to be saved and go to Heaven. It didnt matter what kind of life you lived. You could be a mass murderer and die shaking your fists at God, and you would go to Heaven. Thats what he taught. I wonder-I dont know that guy personally-but I wondered if anybody confronted him. Did anybody take him to the Scriptures and say, Listen to what youre teaching. Listen to how youre leading people astray. Paul would do that. Even Paul once went astray, and Paul confronted Peter. Friends, there are a lot of people with the wrong information. If thats the case, James says, We go to them and say, Listen, youve departed from the truth. Paul did this with the Galatians when he said, You are following a different Gospel. This is not the Gospel I taught you. This is not the true Gospel. Paul said, If I were to come back and teach a different Gospel or an angel from Heaven were to come to you and preach a different Gospel from the one youve heard, let him be accursed. Sometimes people will err doctrinally. The second way they err is morally. They wander away from the faith morally. Theyre living a lifestyle that no longer honors God. Im not talking about our sin, our struggle with sin. We all struggle with sin. Were all sinners. Youre being taught this morning by a sinner. I hope you understand that. We are all sinners in this place in need of grace, in need of a Savior. Were all in the same boat. Im talking about a person who in defiance-in defiance-is living a lifestyle that he or she knows does not honor and please God. They know its contrary to the Word of God, and theyre there. Thats a false believer. James says, You go after that person and try to be used of God to make them become a true believer. I was driving home after an adventurous week, I guess. I dropped my son off at UW-Milwaukee, and I was heading home on the interstate. I was going 65 MPH, the speed limit. There was really nobody in front of me. There was a gap where there were no cars in front of me, and there were some cars behind me. A deer came out of the woods. Id never hit a deer before, but Ive heard many stories about what its like. Immediately, my anxiety level went up. He walked to the edge of the interstate and stood there. I was like, Oh, please, just go back in the woods. Go back where its safe. Dont come this way. Then he slowly started to walk on the interstate. He was on the right lane-actually physically standing on the interstate. I went into the left lane. I couldnt stop-you understand that-because there were cars behind me coming 70 MPH. I had to move forward, so I went into the left lane, and when I got close, I sped up because I was trying to get around him. That speeding up may have saved my life. I think the slower you go, if you hit your brakes, the more apt they are to roll right into your car through the windshield. If you can drive through them, which I didnt want to do and you dont want to do, but if your lifes on the line, you do what you have to. If you go through them, then its less likely for that to happen; so I hit the gas, and as soon as I did that, this deer ran right in front of the car. I hit that deer full on, a full-on collision. I propelled it like 30 feet off into the meridians. I knew there was no way [it would live]. It was probably instant death for that deer. My car was in bad shape. I could tell. I drove really slowly, and as it got dark, I had a really good view of the treetops on my left with my headlights. It wasnt such a good view of the road. I knew I was leaking fluids, and I had no heat. Finally, I made it home. If you remember seeing me in a Toyota Prius, you wont see me in that Prius anymore. Thats gone. I had to call my sister and say, Can I have my Lincoln Town Car back? I went from a Prius to a Lincoln. Its a 2001, so now Im driving that again. What a contrast of cars. Ill now get 15 miles to the gallon when I used to get 45. The car is gone. There are sometimes when people we know leave the safe area. Theyre in the church; but theyre not truly following Christ, but theyre in the church. Thats a good place to be, and they wander away. They head to that danger zone. They head where life is not safe. They wander away from the Commandments of God. They put themselves in harms way. How long do they do that before we intervene? Is it as they start walking out of the woods and toward that direction? Is it when they get on the highway, or is it when they start to come into traffic and put themselves in harms way where their lives could literally be on the line? I had a friend who I thought was a moral guy, a good guy. He occasionally went to church and seemed to profess Christ; but at a certain point, he just completely walked away from what hed been taught. He was living a destructive lifestyle, so I and a couple of other friends went to him and said, You have to change. You need the Lord. You need Christ. He wouldnt listen. He got angry at us instead. We went there in love and said, We love you. Were afraid for you. He lost his car; he lost his girlfriend; he lost his job; he lost his house and became addicted to cocaine and created other problems in his life. He was totally living an un-Godly life. Im so happy to say that God has worked in his life, and today he has a job. Hes a productive member of society again. He seems to be doing really well with his life, but we did an intervention with him. Maybe there are some folks that you need to do an intervention for. In fact, that's one of my goals this morning is that we can be catalysts. If you know somebody who used to live an upright life and has totally turned their backs on the things of God, how far do you let them wander before you say, You know what? I love you. I care about you. Im concerned for the way youre living your life. Im concerned that your life is going to end up destroyed because of the decisions that youre making. If you truly love somebody, you wouldnt let them walk onto the interstate, would you-if it was in your power to grab them, stop them and pull them back, and say, Go back to the place of safety. Go back where youre loved and supported? Would you not do that? Yet, sometimes there are people that we know, and we simply allow them to go under harms way without lifting a finger to try to stop them. James makes an appeal to those who are true believers. He says, If somebody wanders from your faith, doctrinally, morally, you have a responsibility to pursue them. They may not listen to you. They may become angry with you, but what if they dont? What if they listen? What if God uses you to bring them to repentance? James says, Youll know that God has used you to save their souls-cover a multitude of sins. Lets pray together. Father, we want to pray right now for the message that we have heard. Lord, in our minds eye, some of us can see people. We know who they are. We know their situation. We want to pray for those who have departed from the faith doctrinally and morally, with wrong information. Theyre lost. Theyre meandering and wandering away from the Truth. There are some who have morally turned their backs on what Your Word says. Theyre living on dangerous ground because theyre operating and living a lifestyle that is contrary to what the Creator, the Designer, has said. Its only a matter of time before they reap what they have sown. We who love them should be concerned about them, so I want to pray for them. I want you, in your minds eye right now, to think about that person. Name their name. Say, Father, I pray for… and name their name. Pray that they will come to faith in Christ. Pray that they will repent and change directions. Pray that they can be saved. Pray that they can know that You love them, that Christ died for them. Pray that they could truly enter in to a genuine experience where they put their hope and trust in Jesus Christ. I pray this morning-if youre here this morning and youre listening to this, and youre thinking, Im not sure Ive truly given my life to Christ, I pray this morning youll say, Lord Jesus, I give You my heart and life. Forgive my sins. I ask Your Holy Spirit to come inside of me, to empower me, to cleanse me and make me a new person. Lord, I want to live for You all the days of my life. Because of Your Resurrection, I have the hope of eternal life because I belong to You. Receive me as Your son, as Your daughter this morning. I pray that youd pray that pray in sincerity of heart. I pray that youd go through the motions and become a true follower of Christ. Father, I pray that those we identify, that we will actually go after them. Well make some phone calls. Well knock on some doors. Well send some emails and say, Can we get together? Can we talk? I pray we will have the courage and the insight to tell them we love them and help them to go down to the darkness, pick them up, and bring them the restoration. I pray we bring them the right information in place of wrong. Father, equip us for that, empower us for that. I pray in Jesus name, Amen.

[Congregation just finished watching drama.] I think if we took a show of hands this morning, many hands would go up if we asked the question, How many of you have felt like the couple in our skit this morning? Maybe it wasnt specifically with the issue of infertility. Maybe it was an illness or was just at a general time of trouble or hardship that youve been through. I think the point is that we can all identify. We can all sense their frustration. We can all hear the hurt and the pain in their voices. We recognize that weve been there too, and weve prayed that God would bring relief, that He would bring an end to the time of trouble in our lives; and sometimes those times continue on. This morning as we continue and actually begin to wrap up our series in James, were talking about When You Pray. We remember that James writes this Passage in the greater context of his letter. At the time, he probably sat down and wrote it in one sitting. Those that heard the letter would have heard it read together in one sitting, so they would remember the subjects and the topics that weve already talked about as James gets to the section on prayer. We know that James has had some pretty strong words for the church. We know that the church has been through difficult times. Theyve been through times of suffering and trials. Some of them had to relocate because of the persecution they had been under. Now, after facing struggle from outside the church, as they gather together in their faith family, theyre experiencing turmoil, trouble, and suffering even inside the church. When we get to our section on prayer today, James is trying to change the tone. Like I said, he has given some strong warnings. Hes given some strong exhortations, and now he wants to give the community of faith a vision for how the church should be living together, should be operating together. What he does is he uses the topic of prayer to reinforce this idea of unity and community. Were going to read our section from James this morning. Its from James 5, and well pick it up in Verse 13 (page 1199 of pew Bibles). Were going to just read through our Passage this morning and then go back and talk about some of the different parts that James talks about. Picking up with Verse 13, James says, Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. The first question that James answers for us is the question of when do we pray. He makes some very simple statements. Really, the answer to the question is you pray in all circumstances. It sounds very much like when Paul was writing in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. He said, Pray continuously. We can understand that. Its a very simple instruction. James goes through a few different scenarios though to reinforce the point, and he says, Is any of you in trouble? Trouble being a very general term-it doesnt apply to a specific kind of trouble, a specific time of persecution or trial. Its just a general time of difficulty. James knows that when we go through times of trouble, sort of like our couple in the skit this morning, it raises questions in our hearts. We ask, Is God aware of what Im going through? Does God care what Im going through? Even if He does, does God have any power to affect change in the situation Im going through? Those questions so often lead us to a time of praying less. James says, In those times, its just the opposite. You need to pray more. In times of trouble, you need to pray. Thats the exact time to pray. Then he addresses the other side of the spectrum. He said, If any of you are happy, rejoicing, or celebrating… Again, a general term-it can apply to many different types of situations of peace, content, and joy. James knows that sometimes when things are going well, what happens to us? We get complacent in our prayer life. When we dont have that sense of urgency to come before God, sometimes we pray less. James says, No, no, no. In times of happiness, thats the time to pray more. Sing songs of praise. Address God. Be grateful for the good things in your lives. Be thankful. Let Him know how much you appreciate this time. Then he goes into a third example. He asks, Is anyone sick? Because James knows that when we get sick, we feel discouraged. When we get sick, we feel weak. We feel helpless. That helplessness sometimes can lead to a sense of hopelessness. James is telling us, Helplessness does not equal hopelessness. In fact, sometimes our helplessness is our best prayer because when we realize that we need God, when we depend on Him every day, thats the attitude with which God loves us to come to Him-how much we need Him. The answer to our first question this morning is very simple. When do we pray? All the time. We pray in every circumstance. We address our Creator. We pour our hearts out to Him. We focus our minds on Him. Next James goes into some phrases that tell us how we should pray. He gives us some instruction, some guidelines, and the first thing he says is you should call the elders of the church to pray over you. Just that expression of calling the elders, thats an expression of faith; and were going to talk about faith a little bit more in a little bit, so Im not going to really get into that now except for just to mention that at the beginning of James-when James was talking about someone praying for wisdom-he mentions faith as a necessary condition of our prayers. Calling is an expression of faith, and the fact that James says to call the elders reinforces his point that the family of faith, the community of faith, is supposed to be just that-a community. Its within the context of our community that we share our struggles with each other-he specifically mentions the elders, teachers. Some churches might call them deacons-those people that have been given special trust for the spiritual interest and spiritual guidance shepherding the church. James point is make your requests known because what happens so many times when were going through a struggle is we hesitate to let people know. We hesitate to let them know of the difficulties that were facing. We try and cover it up. We try to put on that happy face so that people think that everythings going well. James says, Uh-ah. Thats not how the family of faith is supposed to operate. Were supposed to let each other know when were going through times of trouble. I think a significant point here is that James makes no mention of the specific spiritual gift of healing. Paul mentions that in his letters. He includes the gift of healing as a specific spiritual gift, but what James has in mind here is a power through prayer thats available to all of the church as members submit their lives to God. Come together in humility and weakness and pray for each others struggles. He says, Make your requests known. I want to use this as an opportunity to remind you that we have a ministry whose whole focus is on praying for the needs of people in our church. Its called, The Branch of the Lord Ministry. This is a group of people who are committed to praying for all kinds of situations, for praying and giving praise to God in all of those types of situations we just mentioned. Were trying to figure out ways to make their ministry more accessible to you specifically so that you can turn in requests, and then they can be praying for you as well. Make your requests known. Call the elders; be a family of faith together. The second instruction James gives us is he says, You need to pray in the name of the Lord. I know a lot of us use that as a phrase at the end of our prayer, but maybe we seldom give it much thought. What does that mean to pray in the name of the Lord? We kind of act as if thats just a tagline that we add on; if we really want our prayer to be effective, then we are sure to pray in the name of the Lord. Then somehow God is obligated to fulfill that. Really, when we do that, were reflecting attitude that prayer is really more like a wish. Can you imagine if prayers were wishes- if we could just pray for anything and say, In the name of the Lord, it would happen? I know one thing that would happen (Pastor Jesse shows a picture of a sign at a gas station with an error on it. It had the price of $0.009 on it). I have it here on the screen. This is the actual gas station down from my house. I saw that sign and I thought, Whoa! I took a picture. For some reason though, they wouldnt fulfill that obligation when I went in and said, $0.009, thats a good deal. They said, No, that's just a mistake. Sorry. The point is that praying in the name of the Lord reflects an attitude that we have. It means that we pray in union with Christ. It means that we pray by the authority or direction of the Lord or as an act in accordance with His Will and something that will meet His approval. Jesus gave us this model when He gave us the model of prayer. When we talk about the Lords Prayer, in the beginning of His prayer-not at the end, He said, Lord, Your Kingdom come. Your Will be done. That's an example of the attitude were to have in prayer when we pray in the name of the Lord. Along with this phrase just before it, you have the phrase to anoint the person with oil. Honestly, you can do a lot of reading because there is a lot of discussion about what exactly does James mean here? Is he referring to some exercise of that spiritual gift of healing where anointing someone with oil is often used? There are examples of the Disciples doing that. You can look in Mark 16. You can see the Disciples doing that. In the ancient east and even now today, oil had medical and therapeutic uses; and it was very common for people to use oil to treat ailments and to be therapeutic. An example of that would be in the Verses where Jesus was speaking about the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 (page 1028 in pew Bibles). It says, When the Samaritan came upon the man who was beaten and bruised and left for dead, he had pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He was giving him first aid. Were not necessarily going to settle the debate about exactly what James means because his main point in this Passage isnt on the power of the oil, but its on the power of praying in the name of the Lord. The oil doesnt contain the power; the power comes from Christ Himself as we pray in submission to His Will and as we call on His authority. Jesus gave His Disciples that specific instruction-that they should pray in His name. Now you can read it. Ill give you a little homework this morning. You can read John 14-16 (starting on page 1067). Jesus makes remarkable statements about what the Disciples would be able to accomplish as they prayed with this attitude, as they prayed in the name of the Lord. Number three, it says the prayer should be offered in faith, so we are to pray in faith. What does that mean? Remember we said this was read as a letter, as a whole, so the people who heard the letter would have remembered in the beginning (in Chapter 1) when James was talking about if anybody lacks wisdom, what should he do? He should pray. In James 1:6 (page 1196), James says, But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. I think sometimes we put extra strain and unnecessary stress on ourselves because when difficult times come and when we question Gods purpose-when we cry out in sincere frustration and just [have] a sense of not knowing what God is doing, wondering if this is really a good plan-those questions are raised in our souls. James is not talking about the fact that we have those types of questions. Weve heard in the last few weeks of examples of Prophets and of Job who expressed freely their emotion before God. Thats not what it means when it says that he should not doubt. He calls him a double-minded man, and we could better understand that if we just changed one word and said a double-souled person, someone who at their heart level hasnt yet decided whether or not theyre going to submit their life, whether they believe in the God of the universe, that He loves them and Hes paid the price for their sin, and that theyre going to give Him control of their lives. Thats the tension that James is talking about, and if we pray with the absence of that faith in God-that God exists, that He loves us, that Hes paid the ultimate price for us, that we find forgiveness and strength through Him-James says our prayers will be ineffective; so were to pray with that understanding and that faith that comes from believing in God. Fourthly, James gets into that area of confession, and he says, Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other. At the end of Verse 15 in our Passage, James mentions the possibility that sin has an impact on the persons wellbeing. It said, If the person has sinned, he will be forgiven. What that means is that there is a connection between sin and illness and that its possible there may be sin, but its not necessary in every case. When there is sin, that prevents God from hearing our prayers. God first wants us to acknowledge whether or not we are living obediently to Him because if were not willing to trust Him completely and live obediently to Him, then why would we be coming and asking for Him to work on our behalf; so James mentions the possibility of sin, and he does it in the context of community. He wants us to understand that healing-both physical and spiritual-is available when we enter into this type of relationship with each other. He says, Confess your sins to each other, and pray for each other that you may be healed. We talked about the fact that James is writing to a group of people who had been through a time of persecution, a time of trouble and struggles and what happens to our relationships when we go through very stressful times. Oftentimes our relationships are put under great strain as well. James knows that the people hes writing to have struggled first in their relationship with God. Theyve questioned Gods authority. Theyve been tempted to not be obedient to God and seek their own means of protection. Hes calling them back to a stance of faith through confession. Hes also acknowledging that their relationships with each other have suffered. If you were to look back at Chapter 2, he talks to them about playing favorites with each other in the church. In Chapter 3, he talks about them verbally attacking each other in the church. In Chapter 4, he talks about them fighting with each other, slandering each other, and judging each other in the church. He says, Brothers and sisters, this is not how the church is supposed to operate. We all must come to God from the same standpoint, and that is that we need Gods forgiveness. He is the one who offers us forgiveness, so together, lets confess our sins to each other. Lets be honest and humble with each other and pray for each other so that through those prayers, through those confessions, God can raise us up and can strengthen us-not only strengthen our relationship with Him, but as we share each others burdens, as we lovingly intercede for each other in prayer, our relationships in this community of faith will be strengthened and will grow deeper as well. What James is saying is that instead of judging, confess to each other. Instead of heaping guilt on each other, he wants us to forgive each other. Instead of moving to criticize, he says intercede for each other. So James is casting a vision before the early church saying, Your church has had some trouble. Its had infighting; its had conflict; and that does not demonstrate the type of unity [God desires]. You are interfering with the power that God wants to release in your worship time. Instead, hes painting a picture, and he said, Imagine what church would be like. Imagine what your meetings would be like as leaders gather together leading with the authority of Christ in worship. As Christians were praising joyfully for the good things in their lives. Also, as they were confessing their sins openly and praying for each other lovingly, the church together would experience healing in every aspect-physical, relational, spiritual healing. He said, This is what the church should be like, and its within Gods power to accomplish this in your church, in our church, as we live out these instructions on prayer. James goes on to answer the question about why we should pray. I was kind of presented with what I thought was a pretty good illustration of why we should pray this week. Towards the end of the week, Joy brought these two bamboos-are they plants or are they trees? Thats outside of my expertise. Weve had these for about four years. We got them at the same time, and you can see when we bought them-heres the top of both plants-they were the same size when we got them. I guarantee over the last four years, they have received the same amount of attention. They have received the same amount of water, but there has been one significant difference. This bamboo plant has been sitting in a place where for a good share of the day it receives direct sunlight; and this plant has been sitting somewhere where it receives no direct sunlight. Dont judge; were not that great with plants sometimes (congregation laughing). The point that God really was helping me understand is these two plants are pictures of believers in how their prayer life is reflected. This plant reflects a believer who is spending regular time in Gods presence, and thats what prayer is: its relationship. Its talking; its listening; its crying out; its laughing with the Creator. As this person has spent time praying and going through difficult times, but taking those thoughts and those cries to God, God has brought growth, health and vitality. This person hasnt been as regular in their prayer. They havent spent that time in Gods presence, and because of that, their growth has been minimal. Theyre not healthy; theyre not growing vitally. Theyre struggling. Thats a picture of prayer. So why do we pray? James says we pray because God promises to work through His prayers. He turns our prayers from something thats a cry from our heart or words from our mouth and He turns them into a powerful force through which He accomplishes incredible things in our lives. Just think about the claims that James is making in this Passage. He says that their prayers will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise Him up, restore his strength. He said, Forgiveness will happen between you and God and also between brothers and sisters in Christ. That forgiveness will bring unity and a sense of community and a vision, an excitement, and a passion within the church; you will be healed. Thats what James says. Then he shares a verse, the end of Verse 16, that powerful verse that says, The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. I am not a Greek scholar, so I rely on those who are. As I read different commentaries about picking apart the words of this sentence, its just amazing to see the amount of energy and the amount of expectation that is expressed with these five simple Greek words. What James is saying is that God dynamically acts through the prayers of His children. Dont get hung up on that word righteous. Sometimes when we read that word righteous, we think, Well, I struggle. Im weak. I make mistakes. Someday I hope to attain that. Remember in the beginning of Verse 16, James has laid out the process of becoming righteous. He said, Confess your sin. When were right with God, when we have asked God to reveal those things in our hearts that dont honor Him and we say, God, Im through with that. Give me the strength to live for You, thats what it means to be righteous. Were putting our full faith and trust in God. Were right with God. James says, The prayers of His children who are right with Him are powerful and effective. We could sum up what weve read so far or restate it to say something like this: In your trials, you dont need the power gained by money, favoritism, selfishness, fighting, or swearing big and boisterous promises. Instead rely on God through prayer for which you need only to be right with Him. Commit yourself to doing what is right without compromise. Then you may rely on God in prayer for all of your needs. Then James gives us an example, and he uses the Prophet Elijah for a couple reasons. One of them is Elijah was like one of the super Prophets of the Old Testament. People were familiar with the acts of faith that Elijah prayed for and the divine answers to those prayers that he saw. He saw food miraculously multiply as they used each day what they thought was their last portion of food. God renewed that provision. The widow he had been staying with, her son had died, and Elijah prayed in faith that God would raise him from the dead; and God raised her son from the dead. The climax of the account was when Elijah faced off against the 450 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel because Baal worship had become so prevalent in the land at that time. Elijah told them, You go ahead. You pick your bull. You get your idol set up. They were praying, chanting and doing everything. Elijah sat back, and he just started trash talking to them. He said, Oh, Im sure Baals a god, but maybe hes busy now. Maybe hes asleep. Maybe hes on vacation. Pray louder! Call louder! The prophets got themselves all worked up into a fervor, and nothing happened. Elijah prayed a simple prayer of faith. Fire from Heaven fell, and even though his altar had been doused with water several times, God consumed the altar, consumed the bull, and consumed the water. In an instant it was gone. Then the miracle specifically that James referenced here that kind of serves as a bookend to these accounts is when God asked Elijah to pray that the rain would stop, and it stopped. After this account on Mt. Carmel, God reminded Elijah that it was time to pray for the rain to come, and the rain came. One of the reasons James uses Elijah is because it draws to peoples minds these things that happened that were unarguably outside of the realm of human possibility-that only God could accomplish these things. Another reason-and this is what James specifically mentions in Verse 17-is when he says Elijah was a man just like us. You see, James doesnt want us to think that God answers the prayers of Elijah because he was like Super Prophet. He was like the man. What was also well known about Elijah, right after this tremendous victory on Mt. Carmel, he just saw God work in this amazing way-destroying the prophets of Baal-he got scared for his own life and took off. He fled. During that time, he got depressed. He became worn down. He questioned Gods purpose. He questioned God allowing certain things, and people knew that about Elijah; so James reminds them, Elijah wasnt perfect. He was like us, but he believed in a perfect God, and he was willing to pray prayers of faith based on what God had revealed to him and had encouraged him to do. Before I was preparing for this message because I knew that this weekend was coming, I looked ahead to the section of Scripture that I would cover and saw it was on the idea of healing prayer. I kind of shook my head and said, Well, God this fits into what our friend, Pastor Gary, who has come and taught different times, calls God is a hoot theology. I thought, God, Im the guy on staff who has a chronic illness. I have Crohns disease. Ive had it for about 15 years, and Ive prayed that it would go away; and it hasnt. Now you want me to talk about healing prayer. Okay. Its not that I havent experienced Gods healing in my experience. I have. There have been a number of times Ive experienced God really reaching down and just changing things in an instant. I can share different examples, but one of them I think shows the point best. One of the things that can happen with Crohns disease is you get abscesses that develop in the core of your abdomen. An abscess is just a collection of fluid, and they can be big or small; but whether big or small, theyre painful. They can become very dangerous because they can leak into your blood stream, and they can give you blood poisoning. There was a period in my life where I had about five or six of these abscesses that Id collected in about a three month period, so a short amount of time. The solution for the abscesses when they got to that point and didnt respond to medication was they had to be aspirated. Doesnt that sound like a nice polite word-aspiration? Aspire, but no, its not a nice word. To aspirate, that means they stink a big honking needle into your abdomen, into the abscess, as youre lying on basically a CAT Scan table so they can see where theyre going, and its a very painful process. They dont put you out for that kind of thing because they call it a procedure. I would like to argue what the definition of a procedure should be, I think, because its painful. Like I mentioned, I already had five or six of these things in the last two or three months; and it was to the point where I just couldnt take anymore. When the doctor told me that as I sat in his office, inside I just felt a sense of turmoil, anxiety, and fear. I just said, God, I cant do this again. Its too much. I cant do it. As we left the doctors office, God just spoke to my spirit, and he said, You know what, Jesse? I want you to pray that this abscess goes away, and I said, Oh, thank You! Good, I will pray, and I believe it will happen. God said, And I want you to tell some people that thats what were going to pray for. I thought, Oh, God, cant this just be our little secret? Cant I just pray that You just do it, and then itll be good? God said, No, I want you to tell somebody, so I told my family, and I told some close friends. We prayed for the week that God would heal that. The time came, and I got all gowned up in the hospital. I lay back on the CAT Scan table, and they sent me through. They sent me through and took the first initial scans, and I could see the doctor and the techs in the other room through the window. I could see them kind of looking at the screen and calling the other people over. They would look at it, and then theyd look out at me like, Who are you? I was like, Whats going on? I dont know. Pretty soon the doctor came walking back out, and he came up as I was lying on the CAT Scan table. He looked down and said, Well, I dont know how this happened, but the abscess is gone, so were not going to have to do anything. You can go home now, (congregation clapping). Yeah, and thats basically the reaction that I had except for it wasnt quite as manly because all that anxiety and all that energy had been building up inside my heart. When the doctor said that, it was like a release of that emotion. It all just happened to come through my vocal chords at the same time, and I sounded like a ten year old girl giggling uncontrollably. The doctor just kind of looked at me like, Okay…go home now. I have experienced Gods healing, but Ive also prayed that God would take away Crohns all together, and He hasnt done that. Why? Maybe youve prayed about something in your life-a hardship, a struggle-maybe its been an illness or disease, and God hasnt taken that away. The million dollar question this morning is, is James guaranteeing that as we pray for the sick, a prayer of faith, that He will bring healing? The answer to that, I think, keeping in mind everything I just shared with you, is it qualified? Yes. Gods desire is to bring good things into our lives. God delights when Hes able to remove obstacles and remove suffering from our life; and we give Him the glory. He enjoys that; He loves that. He doesnt enjoy our pain. He doesnt enjoy our suffering, so why then does He not always act as we pray and take away the time of suffering? Keeping verses like this in context with the rest of Scripture is very important as we study this. Scripture gives us answers to the question why. Although in specific cases-in my specific case and maybe in your specific case-perhaps the specific reason God is allowing this is a mystery that is contained within the heart and mind of God alone; but Scripture does give us some ways to understand why He doesnt always bring healing and health. James has already mentioned one. Remember he talked about the connection that there may be sin in a persons life. We said that was a possibility but not a necessity in every case, so when were going through a difficult time, we search our hearts. We search our minds, and we ask God, Is there a choice that Im making thats dishonoring to You? Are you trying to get my attention, and if so, God, show me what it is. God is not one who likes to hide things like that from us. He will show you what it is so that you can confess and receive the healing that James has talked about, so there may be sin involved in a persons heart; but thats not the only reason. I think we can find another reason as we look into the account of Elijah in 1 Kings 18:41-45. Right after that big amazing showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, Elijah knows that God is going to bring this time of drought to an end, Elijah said to Ahab, Go eat and drink for there is the sound of a heavy rain. There was no sound at that point. Elijah was speaking in faith, so Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Mt. Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees. That is a prayer posture, and Elijah prayed; though were not explicitly told that, we know thats what he did. Go and look toward the sea, he told his servant, and he went out and looked. There is nothing there, he said. Seven times Elijah said, Go back. The seventh time, the servant reported, A cloud as small as a mans hand is rising from the sea. So Elijah said, Go and tell Ahab, Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you. Seven times Elijah prayed. Why didnt God answer the first time? What about the second time? Youd think maybe the third time, surely, if that was something God wanted to do, He would have answered. Were told Elijah prayed seven times. Why? Really only God knows the reason, but what we can learn from that is that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth time, it wasnt the right time. Elijah knew God had told him the rain would come when he asked, so he continued. He persevered in prayer. He waited for the answer that God had already promised him would come. Maybe in our lives when we pray that God would remove the suffering, maybe its not the right time. Dont lose heart. Dont give up. Continue to come before God in faith. Theres a third reason though. Maybe initially if you find yourself in the midst of a difficult situation right now, an illness or some other hardship, maybe initially this doesnt sound very comforting, but as you meditate on this-as you let this truth sink into your heart, and I can say in my own life and experience this principle has brought tremendous encouragement to me, even joy in the midst of suffering-its this: God sometimes doesnt bring an end to our difficulty because theres a greater work that He wants to do for His Kingdom. Theres a greater work He wants to do in our lives, something greater than even the healing itself would be. I know when youre in the middle of pain, when youre suffering, when youre sick, your mind tells you that there would be nothing greater than if God would just take this pain away from you. I know that; Ive felt that. The truth is that if God allows a difficult situation to continue, its because theres a greater glory that He will bring about through it. Thats what Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. Were not going to read that whole part, but theres an amazing Passage of encouragement that someone gave me when Id been in the hospital for what ended up being about three months at a time. When he gave me the Passage, honestly at first, I didnt like it because in that Passage, Paul said, For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. I thought, This is not light. This is not momentary. This feels like its going to last forever, and it feels very intense. Paul, in that Passage, is not denying the intensity of our suffering, but what hes saying is when you compare it to the glory, to the work that God will bring because of this experience in your life, if you were to put those two things on a scale, even as immense and difficult as your experience with this is, what God will do as a result of it is far greater than this. That gives me encouragement because if what Ive gone through doesnt even compare to the scale of glory that God will bring from that experience, then I can endure it with His help, and I can give Him glory for it. Another example I want to bring out to you this morning in the few moments we have left is Jesus Himself. In Hebrews 5:7, it tells us that during the days of Jesus life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. I like Marks accounting of it in the Gospels, in Mark 14:33-36, Jesus prays in the Garden. What does He pray? He said, Abba, Father, You can do all things. Would You make this day pass? Would you take this cup of suffering from Me? Thats what He prayed. Then He said, Not My will, Lord, but Yours be done. He prayed that prayer three times. Now Hebrews tells us that Jesus prayer was answered. Did God remove that suffering that Jesus was looking ahead to-dying on the cross for our sin? No, He didnt. Why not? Because there was something greater that God was accomplishing through that suffering. Its amazing when you look at it. Jesus, one moment, is so overcome with grief. Hes so overcome with sorrow; Hes so distressed that He falls to the ground. Hes sweating drops of blood, and Hes asking, God, take this away. If theres a way, take this suffering away from Me. Yet after He prays and after we read in Lukes account that same time period, it said, God sends angels to comfort and minister to Jesus. Just a few minutes later, He walks out to greet the crowd of people that are coming to arrest Him-soldiers armed to the tee. Jesus speaks with such confidence and such authority that when He says His name, the soldiers fall back in fear. Think about that amazing change that happened. Jesus distressed crying out in sorrow, grief, and distress, and then after praying and after being ministered to by the angels, Jesus speaks with such authority, and it causes those around Him to fall in fear. You say, Yeah, but, Jesse, thats Jesus, and were not Jesus. I would agree with you-were not Jesus, but doesnt that sound like the promise that God offers us in Philippians 4:6-7 (page 1163)? It says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. You see, sometimes Gods answer in the midst of our prayer for healing and relief isnt to lighten our load, but its to strengthen our hearts-to give us the encouragement and the power to endure the hardship that were going through for His glory and for His namesake. You see, our prayers dont obligate God. Our prayers are an opportunity that we ask God to do a work in our lives, and through our prayers, He guides us, He directs us, and He reveals His Will; and should He let a difficult situation continue, its because He has a greater work in mind than what removing it would be. God, through His Word, gives us those promises like in Romans 8:28, That in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him who are called according to His purpose. So in those times of trouble when weve prayed, we know that our hearts are right with Him, weve confessed, and God chooses to allow something to remain, we fall back to these promises of faith. We say, Okay, God, I can go through this with Your strength, and I look forward to what youre going to do because of this experience for Your Kingdom and in my life. Would you pray with me this morning? Father God, we thank You so much that You give us such encouraging words knowing that we face such difficult times. As we focus on the idea of healing this morning, God, I pray that You would help us to remember that our hope ultimately is not in physically being restored only to one day again pass away; but God, we want a complete healing of our souls, of our spirits, of our emotions, so that we can give You glory. Lord, I pray that You would help my brothers and sisters this morning to learn what You have taught me-that though I have Crohns disease, Crohns disease does not have me. You are more powerful, and You can continue to work in my life even through this difficult experience. God, I pray that You would just let that nugget of truth grow deeply in our hearts and bring great fruit forth as we walk with You. In Your name, we pray, Amen.

The Condemnation of a Righteous Man: John Wycliffe Now, those of you who've been following along, we've been traveling through the Book of Romans, and this morning we're going to continue to some degree in Romans, but I want you to look also with me this morning at the Book of James. So if you would, open to Romans chapter 4, and perhaps put something in it and then look over at James chapter 2. This morning we're going to be looking at these two different texts and we're going to be seeing the issue of whether God, in His word, speaks two different words through both James and Paul on the issue of justification. Do James and Paul understand justification the same way? Or do they contradict one another? And as we begin our journey, I'm going to start back in the year of 1422. From that year, Roman Catholic authorities condemned an Englishman for heresy and they ordered that his body be burned and the ashes scattered over the Swift River in England. His name was John Wycliffe and his crime was simple. He had the temerity, the boldness to translate the scriptures into the common language of the people. Catholic bishops said this about Wycliffe's crime. This is a quote, "That pestilent and most wretched John Wycliffe of damnable memory, a child of the old devil and himself a child or a pupil of anti-Christ who while he lived walking in the vanity of his mind, crowned his wickedness by translating the scriptures into the mother tongue." That was his crime. Well, the sentence was indeed carried out. Wycliffe's body was burned and his ashes were spread over the Swift River. The most amazing aspect about this, though, is that he had been dead for 44 years. They dug his bones up and they burned his bones and scattered the ashes over the Swift River. Now, why did they do that? Because of their opposition to his practice of translating the scripture into the common language. Now, exactly 100 years later, 1522, Martin Luther published his edition of the New Testament in the German language, the language of the common people. The Catholic church hadn't changed much in a hundred years, Roman Catholics condemned his effort, they condemned his work and ordered that his bible be burned wherever it could be found. And any booksellers that sold the German bible would also be subject and liable to penalties and to persecution. Now, why did the Catholics dig up a dead man, may have been dead for 44 years, and burned his bones, and why did they order that the pages of holy scripture be burned? Because they were convinced that the bible was so complicated that people like you and me could not understand it, we'd just get into trouble with it, and so we needed to leave that to the priests and to the clerics who would explain it all for us. And so they forbid that the scripture be translated into the common language. Now, these days, we probably have over 20 good solid translations in English. The problem has been solved. The Reformation solved it. And we have the English bible. It's hard for us to understand just the issues at stake there and what was struggled over and what was fought over. Now, Martin Luther, when he translated the New Testament into German and published the New Testament in the common language, understood that there were complexities in scripture that could not easily be explained, and so he published an introduction to each book of the New Testament so that people reading it would understand its message. I. Martin Luther’s Struggle with James He gave special attention to one book of the Bible, and that's the Book of James. For when he came to the Book of James, he struggles. I would say he stumbles. Because of his discovery of the doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works, he could not understand James chapter 2. Now, we've been studying in Romans and we've seen what it is that Paul's been saying in Romans and how Paul seeks to expound the gospel. That gospel is the only message of salvation for a sinful world. Any of us who are in this room today, who expect to stand before God, blameless and holy on Judgment Day will do so on the basis of the gospel that Paul wrote, as shown clearly in the Book of Romans. We will stand before God holy and blameless because of faith in Christ and what He accomplished on the cross alone. And in Romans 1:17, Luther's great freedom verse, for Luther was not a free man before he understood this message. Luther was a medieval Catholic trying to work out his salvation through prayer, through fasting, through alms-giving, through good deeds, and he could never do enough to satisfy his conscience. What is enough? What is enough before the holiness of the throne of God? What is enough? There was no answer. He could never be free. Until he came to Romans 1:17 and there it says, in Romans 1:16 it says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, for the Jew first then for the Gentile." Verse 17, "For in the gospel, the righteousness from God is revealed. A righteousness that is from faith to faith just as it is written. The righteous will live by faith." And then the gates of heaven opened up for him. And he saw it was by faith alone that he could be just. It was a righteousness which God gave as a gift. And so when he came, as we saw in Romans 3:28, which we read in the NIV, "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law." He inserted a single word. He inserted the word "alone." "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith alone apart from works of the law." I believe his doctrine was right. I believe his example was wrong. We should never add a single word to the scripture. But his doctrine was right. We are justified by faith alone apart from works of the law. And Luther speaking of those works and he knew well about those works. In a treatise he wrote in 1520 on the freedom of a Christian man, he wrote this. Speaking of good works, he said, "Unless a man is already a believer and a Christian, his works have no value at all. They are foolish, idle, damnable sins. Because when good works are brought forward as a ground for justification, they are no longer good." In other words, if you stand before God on Judgment Day with a handful of your best deeds, and hope because of them to be cleansed of all your sin, you will be lost. And it's good to know that now. It's good to know that now, so you empty your hands and then with empty hands of faith look up to Jesus alone for your righteousness. Luther discovered that, and he was right. Fasting and prayers and alms-giving, and all the good deeds you could muster will do nothing for you in terms of the payment of your sins, nothing at all. And he discovered that correctly. And so there was a key Reformation slogan, "justification by faith alone, apart from works." But that little error, that little attitude that Luther had to add a single word in the translation came to full flower when he addressed the Book of James. And in the introduction in the New Testament, in the Book of James, he called it an epistle of straw. And he gets it out of 1 Corinthians 3, which says that on Judgment Day, there'll be a pile of works, and there'll be wood and there'll be hay, and there'll be straw, and then gold, silver, costly stones. He said it's going to burn up on Judgment Day. What a tragedy, because James is the inspired word of God, and Heaven and Earth will disappear, but God's word will never disappear. And that includes the Book of James, he just didn't understand it properly. Now, in order to explain to you the basis of the controversy, you kind of have to look at specific verses. Look at Romans 4:1. In Romans 4:1, Paul in his argument gets to this point where Abraham's going to be an example of faith, and it says, "What then shall we say, that Abraham, our forefather discovered in this matter," verse 2, "If in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God." So here, he's clearly repudiating justification by works. Now, look over at James 2:24. And after a development, which we're going to get into, James 2:24, it says, "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." Well, there it is. There is a contradiction in the Bible. Or is there? And that's the purpose of my sermon today, that we may understand justification, and along with that, that we may understand the perfection of scripture. There is no contradiction in the Bible. And there's never going to be a contradiction in the Bible, but we still need to understand these things. Is there a disagreement between Paul and James on the issue of justification? This is not a minor question, is it? Isn't the doctrine of justification a thing we're clinging to on whether we're going to get to Heaven or go to Hell? Isn't this the very thing? What about my sins? How can I be forgiven? The issue of justification is huge. And so if there's a disagreement between Paul and James on this, the whole Bible falls apart, we don't have anything. We have nothing to stand on. And so, therefore, we need to return to our doctrine of scripture. And the doctrine of scripture teaches very plainly that every word of scripture's from the mouth of God. II. The Nature and Purpose of Scripture The church itself is built, it says in Ephesians chapter 2:19-20, on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. What does that mean, built on the foundation of apostles and prophets? Well, what is your access to the apostles and prophets? Here it is. Apostles: New Testament. Prophets: Old Testament. Here's the scripture. Scripture provides a solid foundation for the church with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. And Jesus Himself said, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, He said, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a man who built his house on the rock. Rains came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house. But it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock." What's the difference between rock and sand? Permanence. Permanence stands firm. The doctrine of scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is God breathed." I like to think of it as exhaled by God. All scripture comes from His heart, and it's exhaled. And it goes into the mind of the prophet, and the prophet just writes, according to the wind of the spirit. He's just led by it. 2 Peter 1:21, "Prophesy never had its origin in the will of man." A man never got up and said, "I'm going to write this prophesy today. It's a good day for writing prophesy. I'm going to write prophesy today." No, but the Holy Spirit came into him and he wrote words from God as directed by the Holy Spirit. It's the doctrine of scripture. And so Saint Augustine put it this way, "What scripture says, God says." Can you say it any better than that? What scripture says, God says. The scriptures are perfect. They're unbreakable, and they are permanent. They are perfect. Psalm 12:6 says, "The words of the Lord are flawless, like silver, refined in a fire, purified seven times over." There's nothing on Earth that you can find that's perfect, so the Psalmist chooses the silver that's been gone over seven times. But even that's not as perfect as the scripture. Absolutely perfect. The scripture's unbreakable. Jesus said so in John 10:35. He said, "The word of God cannot be broken." The scripture cannot be broken. And so it still remains, two millennia later, and it will remain when all of us are dead and gone, if the Lord doesn't tarry. For the scriptures are permanent, and Jesus said it this way, "Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words, my words will never pass away." Not just "my word," a sense of God's communication vaguely. No, "my words," the record of which we have right here in the scripture. My words will never pass away. You'll still be reading them a thousand years from now if the Word doesn't return. Still here and they will be here, that He will make sure that they're here. Now, what is the purpose of scripture? Why is the scripture here, this book that we've all kind of stumbled upon in our lives? We've moved along and then here it is. Why is it here? 2 Timothy 3:15 tells us that all scripture is given to make us "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." It's given to lead us to salvation in Christ and it testifies to that. And therefore, the scripture cannot contradict itself. You remember in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Let your yes be yes and your no no." Don't contradict yourself. Don't say one thing and do something else. Well, in 2 Corinthians 1:18, Paul writes this, "As surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not yes and no." Do you know what he is saying there? God never says yes and no to the same thing. It's a principle of non-contradiction. He does not contradict Himself. We contradict ourselves all the time because we're of a divided mind, but God's not like us. And so He never speaks yes and no to us. III. The Challenge of Language For God is one and speaks one message to us. The fascinating thing, though, about the scripture is that God has taken the messages of salvation and encoded it. Put it into verbs, nouns, adjectives, sentences, paragraphs, which must be read and understood. And that's when you get into difficulties. Words are tough things, aren't they? Any of you who are married, have you ever had words with your spouse? And when you're having words with one another, have you ever noticed that there's a kind of a problem with the words? A person is saying something, the other person doesn't understand what you mean, back and forth. Just missing one another. And the problem is this slippery things called words. I looked up in the Webster Unabridged Dictionary, and I knew there was a certain word I was looking for and I found it. It's the word "set." Do you know that there's 114 different uses or definitions of the word "set" in the English language? That is a tricky word. You have to look in context all the time to try to understand what it means. 114 different uses, 57 of them are verbs, 16 of them are adjectives, the rest are nouns. And then we get a bunch of idioms, like "set out" or "set apart," or "set back," just for the word "set." And then this one, I was looking for this, and I didn't have to work too hard to find it. This is a contest from Pepperidge Farm, I don't know if any of you saw this in the Sunday morning paper… You enter to win prize packages and all that, what is all this stuff alongside? See this little stuff here? Does it look little to you? It looks little to me. If it looks little to me, it must look little to you. 1,295 words describing the rules of the contest. The lawyers got hold of it. And when the lawyers get hold of it, you've got 1,295 words to try to describe a simple thing like a contest. And what is it they say? Well, I chose one sentence, a representative sentence here. This is one sentence now, "Neither sponsor, Pepperidge Farm, their respective parent companies, management companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, nor their respective officers, directors, shareholders, employees, or agents, nor any telephone network, service providers are responsible for any incorrect or inaccurate transcription of entry information or for any interruption, deletion, defect, line failures of any telephone network or problems relating to computer equipment, hardware or software, inability to access any website or online service or any other human or technical or printing error or malfunction or for lost, late, illegible, misdirected, mutilated, stolen or postage due entries or mail." What are they saying? They're saying, "If you don't get it in on time, it's your fault, not ours. So don't come and bother us." But they to say it will all these words. That's just the nature of words. But God was willing to do this. He entrusted the message of our salvation to words. He's the first one that did it. You remember, He inscribed the ten commandments with His own finger and gave it to Moses. He started the writing thing. Moses picked it up and started writing the first five books of the Bible, and on we go. He put the words, His words in Jeremiah's mouth and then commanded him, that he write them down on a scroll. And so He bequeathed words to us, and we have to read them and we have to understand them and work with them. And it's not easy, is it? In the new covenant, praise God, He gave us the indwelling Holy Spirit to illuminate his Words, so that the words, which were dead words on a page, come alive for us. They come alive for us. Praise God for the indwelling Holy Spirit to teach us and to guide us into all truth. But we know that even that Luther understood that we could give the scripture to the common man and woman, and they would read it and they would get the basic message. Does that mean that they would understand everything in scripture? No. There is still need for teaching and the reason is that there are two different kinds of truths in scripture. There are milk truths and there are meat truths. The milk truths are so simple. The child, children at VBS can understand them. God is, exists, He is big and powerful. He created all things. He loves us. He provides for us and gives us food. Our mommies and daddies are part of God's provision for us. People do bad things. God sent His Son. These are basic milk truths. But not everything in scripture is like that. Some things are, some things are high and lofty, as the heavens are higher than the earth. So are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. And Paul says in Romans 11, "O, the depth of the riches, the wisdom, and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?" See, the scripture is high as the heavens or high above the earth and it's deeper than the deepest ocean. This is the nature of scripture. IV. The Central Issue in Paul: How can a Sinner Be Right with God? And so it shouldn't surprise us when we come to something like this in scripture where we've got something in Romans and something in James and there seems to be a contradiction, but we have to dig a little deeper to find out what's going on. But God's message to us is not and never will be yes and no. Now, Paul's central message, as Luther understood, is that we cannot stand before God on the basis of our works. We are not justified by works. God is not going to look at your works and assess them and declare you to be righteous on the basis of how good your works were. No, we're waiting for a righteousness that comes from God by faith through Jesus Christ, and that alone, and we look to that by faith. Simple faith, childlike faith. We just trust in Jesus. V. The Central Issue in James: What Kind of Faith Justifies? And James comes along and says, "I agree. I agree, Paul, we're justified by faith, but what kind of faith is it that justifies?" And that's the issue that he's dealing with. Look down. Look with me at James chapter 2. In verse 14, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds, can such a faith save him?" So he's dealing with the issue of salvation, isn't he? Can such a faith save him? When he uses the phrase "such a faith" he's talking about what kind of faith saves. So he's dealing with the issue of what kind of faith is it that justifies us. In this case, there's a man who claims to have faith but has no deeds that come from the faith. And James asked the pointed question, "Can that kind of faith save him?" The answer is clearly no. So we're dealing with the claim of faith. There's an underlying problem here, a discrepancy between life. The life and the claim. There's a claim of faith in Christ but the life doesn't live up to the claim. This is a significant issue. Jesus again addressed this in the Sermon on the Mount, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven but only he who does the will of my Father in Heaven." Boil it down, not those who say, but those who do. Not those who say, but those who do. Isn't that what James is getting at? If you understand that, you understand James too. It's not those who say but those who do, that comes from true, saving faith. Well, this is a problem for the church today, isn't it? We have lots of these claims without the doing. Lots of claims without the doing. So many issues the church is just like the world, on entertainment, how we spend our money, spend our time, issues of marriage and divorce, how we raise our children, no different whatsoever from the world, so the statistics say. So we have this claim problem without the deeds backing it up. And so James, we need to hear James, James is important for us today. Because James is asking, going right to the heart of the matter, saying, "What kind of faith is it that saves? What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds." Now, James gives us a negative answer in terms of faith. We're talking about what kind of faith is it that truly will save us. And he says negatively, "It is not dead faith, it is not demon faith, and it is not useless faith." Those three things. So in this sense he's holding up the counterfeits so that you can look at the counterfeits. Now, Paul does the opposite thing. In Romans 4 we're going to bring up Abraham and he's going to hold up the true thing, the genuine article, so that we get to know what true, saving faith is like. Abraham received a promise from God, believed it and then acted on it based on his faith. Abraham looked at the obstacles, he saw that his body was as good as 100, dead, since he was about 100 years old. Sara's womb was also dead, but he believed that God would give him a child. And it didn't matter the obstacles because God can keep His promises. That's true faith. Then God tested that faith. He called sometime later after Isaac was born. He said, "Now that you've got your son, the child that I promised, I want you to bring him to a certain mountain." Genesis 22, "And I want you to sacrifice him. Will you obey me?" And he did. And he brought Isaac up to that mountain, bound him up like a sacrifice, took that knife, just about to stick it into his son, in obedience to the command of God. Trusting by faith that God would raise him from the dead, he knew He would, that's what enabled him to obey. Just about to do it and God said, "Stop. Now I know that you fear God." Now, what does that mean, "Now I know"? "God, didn't you know me before? Oh, I knew it but I want to see it lived out. I want to see it in life." Now I know that you believe in Christ because you have done these things." That's what James is getting at. And so, Paul holds up that genuine article, does the same thing in Galatians 5:6. He says, "Neither circumcision or uncircumcision means anything, counts for anything. What counts is faith working through love." Isn't that the message of James? Faith which works through love is genuine faith, and that's what counts. That's James chapter 2. Alright, let's look at these counterfeits. Faith Counterfeit # 1: Dead Faith First is dead faith, verses 15-17. Look at what he says, "Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food? If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by deeds is dead." Nothing comes out of it. It's dead faith. It's a hypocritical faith, it's the kind of thing that says, "Oh, go, I wish you well, I hope everything's fine for you." It's all words; word, words, words. But there's no action, there's no life behind it. It's dead. Dead faith. Paul had just said in Galatians 5:6, "What counts is faith that works through love." When you see a brother or sister in need, love just wells up inside you, and you say, "I want to meet that need. I just want to love him, I want to care for him." That's genuine faith. A faith which never moves into an outward show, into works is dead. Faith Counterfeit # 2: Demon Faith The second thing he says in verse 19 is demon faith. You believe that there is one God? Good, even the demons believe that and they shudder, they shudder. Oh, they've got the spiritual facts right, those demons. As a matter of fact, demons, which perhaps surround us all the time, just like the angels, they may be more orthodox in terms of doctrinal facts than many of the people sitting in this room today. They've got the facts straight. You remember that Satan quoted scripture from memory to Jesus in the desert? Psalm 91. He knows the scripture, got the facts right. Good evidence of this was in Luke 4:33-34. "In the synagogue, it says there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. And he cried out at the top of his voice, 'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. The holy one of God.'" That's orthodox. He called him Jesus of Nazareth, fully man, and he says, "I know who you are. The holy one of God." He's fully God. He's got it right. But he shudders. "Have you come here to torture me before the appointed time?" So what is demon faith? Having the orthodox, right answers on a test, but there's no love for God. There's no yearning to please God. It's demon faith. Faith Counterfeit # 3: Useless Faith And the final is useless faith. Verse 20, "You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did or justified for what he did when he offered his son, Isaac, on the altar. You see that his faith and his actions were working together and his faith was made complete by what he did." You see, useless faith is the opposite of Abraham's faith. True, saving faith is effective. It produces an effect. In this case it produces obedience. There is an obedience that comes from faith. And so God testified about Abraham's faith, said it's genuine, "Now I know that you fear God because your faith has led you to obey me." As I look at this issue, as I look at the relationship between James and Paul on justification, I get an image of the Empire State Building. I don't know if any of you have been there, but there's an observation, at least there used to be an observation platform on the top of the Empire State Building. And if you were to walk in one direction as far as you could go on that platform, you would meet with a fence. And the fence is there for your protection, or perhaps the protection of the people walking down below. But they're thinking first of you. And the fence prevents you from going too far in that direction. And Paul erects a fence and he says, "Don't believe for a minute that your energetic obedience to your reading of scripture will pay for your sins because it won't." What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And so he puts up that fence. Now, you turn and you walk the other direction on the Empire State Building, as far as you can go, and you get a different view and it's beautiful, and it's majestic, and you meet with another fence, and the fence is there also for your protection. And this is James, and he says, "Don't think for a minute that you can kick back and be lazy and self-indulgent in your Christian life and think that your works mean nothing in your salvation, because your works are evidence that your faith is genuine." You see the protection that God has put up in James and in Paul so that we understand justification properly? The faith which justifies always produces good fruit. God is going to bring you back in salvation to the spiritual law that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and you will love your neighbor as yourself. True faith works itself out through love. VI. Luther’s Take Let's let Martin Luther finish up for us today. Luther resolved this with this phrase, "We are truly justified by faith alone, apart from works, but the faith which justifies is never alone, it always results in works." Well, how do we apply the scripture to ourselves? We're about to come to the Lord's Supper, and Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 13:5, a verse that I would like all of you to take into your hearts now as we prepare. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says that we should examine ourselves before we go to the Lord's Supper, we should test ourselves. He says the same thing in 2 Corinthians 13:5. This is what the verse says, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Don't you know that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course, you fail the test." Modern evangelicalism hates this verse. They say that we should never ask this kind of question, that we should never look inward and say, "Is there fruit coming from my faith? Is something coming out of it? Is there obedience, is there love, is there a change in me?" We should do that and we should do it now.