PURE

Friday, July 28, 2023

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure.  It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others.  It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds.  It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.  And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.  James 3:17-18

You know some people James describes.  Remember them right now…faces that evoke good memories, calm moments, full of reason and safety.  You know the things they’ve done for you, or someone else who didn’t deserve mercy.  You understand the strength of someone who doesn’t show favoritism, always to be counted upon for sincerity and truth.  You know a peacemaker or two…several if you’re favored with eyes to see.

James issues this descriptive love affair with wisdom, drawing on sweet memories of his older half-brother, Jesus.  James didn’t always recognize it, this wisdom.  Along with his siblings and mother he thought Jesus was a little crazy, what with all this radical preaching about new wine, loving your enemies, and camels squeezing through the eye of a needle.  But there were those other telltale signs of pure wisdom…good deeds, mercy, and gentleness.  Later, after the cross, burial, and resurrection, James began to understand what he’d witnessed.  The way his brother submitted to the powers that be, the nails, the spear in a lifeless side (which James couldn’t understand), these were all revealed to be the seeds of peace.  It was only when the great harvest of Pentecost appeared that James understood what his brother was doing; he finally saw wisdom in its holy purity.

I knew a man who walked like that, filled with wisdom that was gentle and led to peacemaking.  It was at a church I served as pastor many years ago.  He arrived at the church a few years after I got there.  I liked him the moment I saw him.  There was a gentleness about BobbyMac’s way of talking with a genuine unpretentious.  You felt calm next to him.  It wasn’t just me; others saw it too.

I can be deceived…easily.  I tend to trust people until they prove otherwise.  Some people come into your life for a reason.  Why Bobby Mac’s path crossed with mine became evident a few years after we met.  His gift of “peacemaking” in a church with a long history of contentiousness (particularly with firing preachers), was a welcome fresh breath of pure air.  The church was grateful for his presence and he was in leadership roles in no time.  Shortly after that his spiritual gift of sowing peace became necessary.  Some decisions I’d made as pastor stirred some memories of what former pastors had done, and a group within the church decided it was time to stir the pot of “pastor-change”.  It didn’t seem to matter what way I tried to reach out, to meet folks half-way….minds were made up, set in stone.  Enter the peacemaker…Bobby Mac.  Some of the words he used were exact duplicates of some of the things I’d said to try to fix the relationship of pastor and people.  But Bobby Mac said them differently; he sowed mercy with gentleness, and sincerely trusted the truth to plow through any favoritism from either the pastor-change group or my stubbornness.   

I cannot adequately describe just how Bobby did what he did without writing several books, but this one thing I can say:  God was all over that!  I felt like the Roman soldier who was staring at the way Jesus died on the cross:

“This man truly was the Son of God!”  Mark 15:39b

For You Today 

If you want the kind of wisdom that is pure, gentle, unbiased, peace-filled, and generating a harvest of peace-making, it’s available from the same One who is the Author of the peace that passes understanding:

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.  His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:6-7

Pray for peace that way…and you’ll bump into pure wisdom from above as gently and favorably as Bobby Mac.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

 

James the Just - Part 10 - Wisdom and Peace

[1]

Monday, August 26, 2019

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure.  It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others.  It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds.  It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.  And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.  James 3: 17-18

My friend, Charles, travelled some deep waters over the last several years supporting a longtime friend who recently lost the battle and gained heaven.  Charles, also a pastor, was doing pastoral care, up close and personal, and difficult.  He wrote Facebook posts to keep his friends and colleagues up on progress.  Listen to some of his thoughts:

Sometimes I wish life could return to normal! But then, I realize I have no idea what normal is anymore. Through all my Critical Incident Stress Management Training and Clinical Pastoral Care, we learn and teach folks that go through traumatic life experiences that life will never return to the normal that was. With each traumatic experience in life, we enter a “New Normal.” The problem most people have trying to cope, they are trying to find or live the normal that was, it is gone forever, we have to come to the realization that we are in a “New Normal” and learn to accept and embrace it. That is where our faith and trust in God shines through, because no matter what changes and “New Normals” we go through in life, God is always our constant, his love never changes and he will never leave or forsake us…So, I have to embrace what this “New Normal” is in the present and remember God is with us in and through it.^[2]

It would be normal to be angry and bitter when life gets intensely unfair.  And while most believers would agree that letting go of bitterness is good, the question really is, HOW?  How in the world do we let go of something that holds onto us like the plague? 

Listen to the promises in these two verses, and see if it makes sense…

Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.  Don’t worry about missing out.  You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.  Matthew 6:33(TMNT)

I’m leaving you well and whole.  That’s my parting gift to you.  Peace.  I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft.  So don’t be upset.  Don’t be distraught.  John 14:25(TMNT)

You let go by letting God – IN!  You surrender. 

So, you LET GO…and then look what happens when you…LET GOD:

According to James ^(1.5) when you let go of the world’s ways, and ask God for His way, the wisdom to make good choices in your life begins to come your way.  So, it’s wisdom seed which God plants within us when we Let Go, and wisdom begins to change us.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.  Proverbs 1:7

When God plants seeds of His wisdom in you because you open the ground of your life to Him, even in (and especially-in) the worst of times, that which develops is a person who has taken his stand publicly for Christ.  God helps you become a person of mercy and convictions, teaching you to be a person of integrity, convinced in the faith, living a life of loving the Lord…publicly and privately.

That sounds like quite a crop, doesn’t it?  Yet, that is only the showy tassel above the corn.  The real kernel – the real fruit of what grows from God’s seeds planted in your life, is what’s underneath all that…peace!

For You Today

Peace comes in an atmosphere of the Kingdom life, filled with wisdom.  When you chase it, demand it, or try to imitate it…it will slip through your fingers like a greased pig. 

But when you go about seeking the kingdom of God, He plants seeds of peace in your life.  The crop that follows is that condition of peace in you, around you, and as a gift for others who know you, which becomes a blessing to God, your family, your community, and it passes all understanding in you!

That’s worth letting-go, so you can let-God.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons     Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] Rev. Charles A. Lindquist, Jr. Facebook post, July 17, 2018 (used with permission)