NCC Daily

Today’s deep dive can help us process through the things we do that we place at a higher importance than God and the Imago Dei. What overwhelms our minds during the day? Where do we spend our money? What algorithms show up in our social media feeds? So let’s think through that today, and reset to what God is asking of us. And we can do that because every day is a new day!

Today, let’s ask God how we can resolve the disputes and conflicts in our lives and begin to ask for the things that come from His true wisdom.

What counts is the godly life reflected in action resulting from genuine faith and wisdom. This kind of wisdom is not proud, self-serving, and contentious, but instead, pure, generous, peaceable, humble, and sincere. So today, let’s tap into the true wisdom that God has given us access to. Let’s be the people of peace.

James’ “wisdom from above” is not about how to “get ahead” in life or how to achieve worldly success. It’s about how we reflect the life of Christ, the one who identified himself as meek and lowly. Anything that generates jealousy or selfish ambition is a denial of the teaching of Jesus. James is saying that every ostensibly “good” thing that earthly wisdom produces is at best morally worthless.

It’s Brian and Kim Hill here to wrap up this week’s deep dive into James with a little practical application. A disclaimer before we begin, though: we do not have all this figured out, nor do we perfectly do what we know we should. We mess up—a lot. But, we continue to try and through that, we grow.

The tongue reveals its evil nature by manifesting a hypocritical double nature. The tongue can both praise God and curse people, who are made in God’s image. As James says: “this should not be.”

Words are powerful. In fact they may be the single most powerful medium in the world. They can be instruments of destruction or peace, chaos or calm. We all know this. The original audience of James’ letter knew it, too. And yet they needed to be reminded, just as we do today, of the power and responsibility that comes with speaking.

Faith in Christ will lead to love for, and service of, others, or it simply isn’t faith at all. James 2:14-26 is emphasizing the need for actions to prove a vital, viable, visible faith in God who didn’t just say He loves us, but entered into time and space and gave His Son so that we could know Him and be made righteous.

Today we’ll be focusing on James 2:14-17. I’ll be reading from The Passion Translation, which attempts to translate the essence of the Scripture into modern language.

We have already talked about how you can know your community, how you can understand the theology of your community, how to remember who you are, your proximity to orphans and widows, and avoiding partiality. Today we want to continue with that same topic and we want to talk about how you protect your community.

This week we have talked about knowing your community, understanding the theology of your community, and remembering who you are. Today we are going to look at avoiding partiality and having proximity.

This week we’ve been talking about the book of James. So far we have talked about knowing your community and understanding the theology of your community. For today let’s talk about our value and remembering who we are.

Today we will be diving deeper into the book of James. Yesterday we talked about knowing your community and today we want to talk about understanding the theology of your community.

Today, let’s talk about how do you know your community? James’ letter speaks to various people in different situations and he offers solutions. When we read this letter, do we take for granted that James had an understanding of this community and he had to be listening to what they were going through? This must have taken some time and required him to listen intently and to find out from this comm...

You are his prized possession, my friend. You are here by the power of his true word! Your identity is in him. Don’t allow your pain to define you. Pain has never told you the truth about who you are, it just informed you about what life looks like when we don’t put our complete trust in him.

With the age of social media, the individual has never been more central to their own story. I grow more surprised that people make themselves the main focus of life and invite others to do the same. So when negative things happen, they begin to look outwardly to find the culprit of their misfortune. James gives a word of caution to those who might want to make God the culprit of their issues.

Welcome back to NCC Daily. We are walking through the book of James as part of a next-level look alongside our sermon series Rule of Life. Today, let’s look at James 1:5-8.

Those of us who have had our hearts captured and arrested by Jesus, we desire to grow closer to him so that we think, speak, and behave as he did. At NCC, we call that discipleship. Studiers of the words of Jesus, imitators of the ways of Jesus, and partners in the mission of Jesus. As we embark on this journey, we ought to look more and more like Jesus. The pure reflection of Jesus should be seen...

Many if not most of us place joy and happiness in the same place. Happy things produce joy and vice versa, but this is not what James is saying. The first thing James wants to do with any of his readers is reframe what our greatest desire in life is supposed to be.

As I sing this song, “You Were On The Cross” my prayer is that we will once again come face to face with the suffering that Christ endured on behalf of us. What greater love has been poured out than by Jesus on the cross.

To fast is powerful in part because we are choosing to step into suffering. It’s counterintuitive and requires a death of ego, a death of self. To fast is to choose to suffer physical pain—however small. Fasting is an opportunity to enter into solidarity with Christ’s suffering, who was in solidarity with ours.

The Stations of the Cross is a traditional Lenten devotion where believers read Scripture and ponder scenes from the day of Jesus’s death. These stations, or scenes, help guide our prayers as we meditate on Christ’s sacrifice for us.

I invite you to lean back into the arms of The Father. Abba. Love of all. Yet lean in. Posture your heart. Your ear…

Today we reflect on John 12:20-36 and Psalm 71:1-8, 19-23

Join me in worship today with a song, “Son of David” by Hillsong Worship. A song about repentance and restoration that feels especially appropriate for this Lenten season.