James 1:13-27 (The Message)

Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

Reading this passage has so many different meanings in my life.

I have been lately agitated by Organised Religion, in it not being real. It being people that goes to church on Sundays and pray to the Lord, and then when they walk out of the church service, they carry on with their lives, and not give anything to anybody.

I have a huge issue with this dualism in life. How can we, as believers, think that we can separate God from daily lives? How can we get onto the golf course and cuss like it is nothing, and the very next day, walk into church and make as if we are holier than thou?

I have been guilty of this for a very long time in my life, being the biggest two faced person I knew. I served in the worship team at church, but for the rest of the week, I would be worldly in every way possible.

I have been saved by grace, since then, and just realised yesterday, that satan doesn’t like this at all. He is pulling out all the stops to try and get me to turn off the road I am currently on, and to go back to my old ways. Thank the Lord for the fact that I know He loves me, and is standing by me, in every situation.

I do want to ask all of you however to pray for me, to stand strong in this journey of mine, and to go after my studies with fervour, and me seeking the Lord in all that I do.

I love all of you, and if there is anything that you need prayer for in your life, please let me know, and I will set up a specific time every day to pray for each and every one of you.