A Faith that Works in Overcoming a Foolish View of Wealth

REFLECTION QUOTES

“Put God first.”

~Denzel Washington at the 2015 Dillard University commencement speech

“…man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun…”

~Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), noted American anthropologist

“There is…a remedy for all our fears. That remedy comes as a person, and the means through which He provides the comfort, along with the Holy Spirit, is through His Word. To fight our fears, we…look at God’s sovereignty and love and watch our fears dissipate as we apply God’s Word to our lives. The very thing we are holding on to (control) is, ironically, the thing we most need to let go of.”

~Trillia J. Newbell, Fear and Faith: Finding the Peace Your Heart Craves

“True freedom consists in liberating one’s essential nature into its best and proper end…. But the modern definition of freedom puts it emphasis more on the individual ability to choose regardless of the ends that he or she might choose.”

~David Bentley Hart, contemporary philosopher and cultural commentator

“Every success is until further notice. Every achievement is a temporary one, and not a guarantee that it will last for ever, not a guarantee that in the future you will be as successful as you have been so far. You have to constantly brace yourself for a new kind of challenge, unexperienced so far, unfamiliar, and you have to forget old habits as quickly as you learned the new ones.”

~Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) Polish-born sociologist and philosopher, on the “the liquidity of modern times”

“…God did not look past your faults, actually. He saw our faults, He saw that we were enemies of the cross, He saw that we rightly deserved His wrath because we turned from Him and we follow in the footsteps of our first father Adam, right? And so He saw our sins. He put our sins on Jesus. That’s what it means for Him to become that sin offering. … Then [Jesus] rose bodily as a brown-skinned, Palestinian, God-man and is enthroned as that right now.”

~Ekemini Uwan, speaker and writer

SERMO PASSAGE

James 5:1-8 (ESV)

James 4

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James 5

1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.