Reach Church - Everett

God didn’t give us the law so we could beat it over the heads of our neighbor. He gave us the law so we could stay close to him by doing what it says. So that, in turn, we would express and reveal his love to others as his ambassadors, not as his security guards.

As we dive into chapter 4 of James together, we learn to live at peace with God, others, and ourselves.

We need Godly wisdom to navigate this complex world.

Words wield incredible power and say a lot about the condition of our hearts. Our proximity to Jesus will be revealed by the nature of our conversation.

It is not simply enough to have the right ideas about God. Those right ideas should always translate into right living.

As we jump into chapter 2 of James, we learn about the sin of favoritism. There are a lot of different types of people in the world, but James reminds us that we are called to love them all.

The genuine disciple of Jesus will live a life marked by controlled speech, compassion for the least, and cleanliness from the ways of the world.

It's one thing to listen to good advice, it's another thing to act on it. James calls his audience to not only "hear" the Word, but to also do what it says. Much like Jesus makes clear in the Sermon on the Mount, those who hear the Good News and yet don't act on it are only fooling themselves into thinking they are spiritually mature. The invitation in this sermon is to reflect upon your own life, allowing God room to challenge you and call you upward into a life of greater faithfulness. Will you accept the challenge?

When we face trials, we have the tendency to think, we are going through trials because God is distant. Or when we are facing trials we think — not only is God distant, but we must not be God’s people if we are facing hardships. This isn’t true. We have all faced trials and it’s easy to wonder if God is near. He is near and He does care and will use your trials for His redemptive purposes in your life. We count it as joy because we are already loved by Him — already a part of God’s family.

There's a difference between knowing something and having wisdom for how to apply what you know. Knowledge is about obtaining information, but wisdom knows how to use it. This week, Pastor Sean unpacks James 1:5-8 and talks us through how we can seek wisdom and find it in God.

Why do we count trials as joy? Because it makes us more complete; it makes us more like Jesus! Whether God allowed it to happen, put it in your path, or is simply with you in the midst of it - we can take heart in knowing that THROUGH the hard times, we have an opportunity to grow and mature.

The Christian faith is best experienced when it’s lived out, not just when it’s considered.

One of the greatest threats to you fulfilling your calling as a disciple is comparing your journey to someone else’s.

Jesus repurposes our brokenness for good and redeploys it to help us live out a better story. A story not defined by our past, but defined by him.

What happens when something no longer fits inside the belief system you use to make sense of world? You doubt. For followers of Jesus, doubt is what occurs when we have experiences that don't intuitively align with what we think we know about God. So where do we go from there?

This Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus together! We took a look at John 20, where we see the progression of what the earliest followers of Jesus experienced as they engaged the tomb - from confusion to clarity to commissioning.

Everything changes if Jesus is really King. Many have chosen avoidance, mockery, or hatred, but what would happen if we really believe this to be truth - if He really is on the throne?

Prone to trade Jesus for the disordered desires of our hearts, we often make bargains for the things we ultimately crave. But the good news is this; he willingly accepted the exchange, dying a rebel's death for our rebellion.