Trust and Thank your Father in Heaven for Promises and Gifts

 In James 1:12-18, James tells us:

• The one who endures trials for the love of God will receive the promised crown of life
• God is neither tempted nor tempter to sin
• The sinful nature of humans causes sinful desire, action and demise
• We could be tricked into thinking Father made us to sin or made us for sin
• Instead we must remember that Father only gives good and perfect gifts, infallibly
• The purpose of God's gifts is to give us life and bring us forth as new creatures

The promises of God are to be trusted and the gifts of God are to be received with gratitude. Then again, the promises of God are to be received with gratitude, and the gifts of God are things for which to trust God. The crown of life is a future gift, a promise. The good and perfect gifts are present tense; we are receiving them now. The bringing forth of us by the will of God and the word of truth is past tense. So we can interweave God's saving work with our past failures, God's gifts with our present needs, and God's promises with our anxieties about the future. Past failures, present needs and anxieties about the future leave us weak and vulnerable to temptation, which would lure and entice us to conceive sin. But it is the Grace of God, which we must rejoice in and trust, that strengthens us to resist the Flesh, the World and the Devil.

I've been learning that the Grace of God is not just a remedy for past or present sins, but it is spiritually nutritious. Receiving God's Grace brings us closer to Him, makes us love Him more, makes us treasure Him and rejoice in Him. It's not just like taking an ibuprofen. So the reason to avail ourselves of the means of Grace (Word, Prayer and Fellowship) is not just because scripture demands it, but because it satisfies our souls in ways sin claims to but never can. It heals the vulnerabilities that we have to sin by exposing us better things. Instead of Grace just enabling us to sin more, it makes sin look as foolish and empty as it really is. 

God's Grace takes us from the anxious, dull roar of sinful desires that can make us feel like a hard drug addict in withdrawal, to feeling like "a weaned child," quiet, peaceful, well-rested, humble and free. This state of healing and wholeness is how life should feel all the time. A sanctified, holy person isn't someone who has shut down all their desires and lives inside a bubble of careful control. It's someone who walks about freely, with strong, passionate desires to love and do good, and to whom evil thoughts never occur. To be able to sit in silence, and only think about what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, excellent and worthy of praise, without thinking about what you're thinking about, that's freedom. 

Without the Grace of God, the Christian life would depend on us being constantly conscientious about everything we desire, think about, say and do to an impossible extent because any of it could totally ruin us. But knowing that we are covered by the Mercy and Grace of God frees us from this anxious state, so that we can walk by the Spirit and let our patterns of life be changed in ways we could never accomplish with a moralistic, conscientious approach.

One great way to receive Grace from God is to meditate on James 1:12-18 and pray through it, taking some notes about it.