A Daily Devotional – James, the Epistle – Personal Meditation (4)

A Daily Devotional – James, the Epistle – Personal Meditation (4)

Comment: Position, have you ever tried to position yourself for the best seat, or to be first in line for some event? Most of us have at one time or another and in those moments the desire to do evil is present. The point! Evil is present with us at all times, it does not reveal its power in position only, but also in performance. Evil is present in our conversation, our manner of dress and in the way, we allow others to manipulate us. Proverbs 6:12-19 describes the wickedness in people. Could it be that if we read this list, we might find a few of these expressions in our heart? So we see that there is another side to the trials of life, the darker side called ‘temptation’! Temptation, most of it comes from within our own heart, not the devil; even to say that the devil made me do it is as evil as saying that we were tempted by God!

Devotional: We are called into fellowship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, our position is in Christ and our life is no longer our own. Thus we are responsible to God for our daily walk, our walk in the LORD for every child is to be one that ‘endures temptation’ without the excuse of blaming it on God, the devil or on people; failing to endure comes out of our own sinful enticement.

Daily, each of us are tempted and drawn away from the Spirit of God by the sinful nature we have. Each of us have variations of Proverbs 6:12-19 that our inner heart likes. Each of us are tempted to use the natural mindedness in our performance as we jockey positionally throughout the day. The point is not ‘if this happens’ but ‘when’, everyday this battle between the Spirit of God and our own human desire is fought.

James via the Spirit of God uses pregnancy to describe temptation in the heart, not as if it may come, but that it will come via enticement and desire. The desire to become pregnant with sin is always present, when we submit to the enticement of the inner presence of evil, sin is conceived and sin when given birth in our heart will bring about spiritual death, and in some cases as we will see later in James, physical death to.

Tomorrow, as we do not have the time this morning, we will look at the brighter part of this section of scripture. DO NOT BE DECIEVED MY BELOVED BRETHREN. I can hardly wait, God is Awesome and His reward to His children is equally awesome.