Today's Daily Bread James 5 ++

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

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James 5:1-20

1Listen, you rich men! Cry about the troubles that will come to you. 2Your riches are worth nothing. Your fine clothes are full of moth holes. 3Your gold and silver have rusted. Their rust will speak against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have saved riches for yourselves for the last days. 4See! The men working in your fields are crying against you because you have kept back part of their pay. Their cries have been heard by the Lord Who hears His people. 5You have had everything while you lived on the earth and have enjoyed its fun. You have made your hearts fat and are ready to be killed as an animal is killed. 6You have killed men who are right with God who were not making it hard for you.



The Lord Will Come Again
7Christian brothers, be willing to wait for the Lord to come again. Learn from the farmer. He waits for the good fruit from the earth until the early and late rains come. 8You must be willing to wait also. Be strong in your hearts because the Lord is coming again soon. 9Do not complain about each other, Christian brothers. Then you will not be judged. See! The Judge is standing at the door. 10See how the early preachers spoke for the Lord by their suffering and by being willing to wait. 11We think of those who stayed true to Him as happy even though they suffered. You have heard how long Job waited. You have seen what the Lord did for him in the end. The Lord is full of lovingkindness and pity.
12My Christian brothers, do not
swear. Do not use heaven or earth or anything else to swear by. If you mean yes, say yes. If you mean no, say no. You will be guilty for saying anything more.

The Power Of Prayer In Healing
13Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone happy? He should sing songs of thanks to God. 14Is anyone among you sick? He should send for the church leaders and they should pray for him. They should pour oil on him in the name of the Lord. 15The prayer given in faith will heal the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Tell your sins to each other. And pray for each other so you may be healed. The prayer from the heart of a man right with God has much power. 17Elijah was a man as we are. He prayed that it might not rain. It did not rain on the earth for three and one-half years. 18Then he prayed again that it would rain. It rained much and the fields of the earth gave fruit.

Bring Back Those Who Are Lost In Sin
19My Christian brothers, if any of you should be led away from the truth, let someone turn him back again. 20That person should know that if he turns a sinner from the wrong way, he will save the sinner's soul from death and many sins will be forgiven.


Copyright Statement: New Life BibleScripture quotations are from the New Life Bible, copyright © 1969 by Christian Literature International. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
~Lena’s Journalin’ Today~
I hear a lot of believers in this day saying they feel the Lord saying the same thing to them all, “Lighten the load”, “what are you living and working for?”, “forgo the baggage”, “disentangle”.
There is a journey of faith all of us were called by God to be on. On this journey there is a destination and check points along the way. It starts out to be a journey of change, the change of us into His image. As we submit to the change, we find there’s a lot more to the journey than the change of our image into His. He has something He’s set out for each of us to do. He’s got a whole lot He wants to do in the earth with the people of the earth and He can only use earth people to do it, but the earth’s people have to agree to it first. For some of us it has taken years to even realize that we’re not here just to live a good life for ourselves. Some of us thought when we met Jesus, life here would be so much better and more peaceful, and even though that is a nice thought, it’s not what this salvation is all about. The peace we gain when we are Born Again is of the eternal nature. Our spirits are made right with God and we are not doomed to hell’s fire any longer, that would sure make life a bit better, knowing your eternal destination, right? Once we are born again, we are engaged into God’s eternal purposes, we are marked and destined to live out His will. We find we may lose this initial sense of peace along the way, if we keep living out our own purposes or do what we think is right in our own eyes. We wonder why things have become harder. The stages of the growth of a believer come and present themselves to us as opportunities and offers to be changed and enter into His purposes, if we refuse the offers, we may find ourselves suffering a bit.
The thing is, our eternal purposes begin when the light of salvation turns on and we see Jesus for who He is/was and will be. Jesus and His Father God, Our Father God, has an eternal plan that has to be worked in the earth realm, it all begins and is worked out here. Life here is like the planting of many eternal seeds. Our eternal life is/will be a whole lot longer than our time here. So, why then are we here? Aren’t we here to enjoy life, have fun, make a name for ourselves, leave some money in the bank for our friends and family? Well, what kind of eternal plants will grow from those kinds of natural seeds?
Can we take money, riches, fame, possessions, fun, popularity or anything else with us when we leave earth, the place we’re planting eternal seeds in, the place were on assignment to for only a short while? NO, we cannot and will not take anything with us. But, we can take someone with us. The only thing we can take there with us is people, that’s it. They may not come when we go, but we can make a reservation for them and hope and pray they choose to show up when it’s time to.
So we work all day long, after work we get busy, busy with all of the stuff we have to do around the house and the shopping for more stuff, then we go have fun, because we work too hard and we’re tired and we need some me time. Then we crash out in bed. We wake up and clean up after the fun we had, or we get ready to work again, all day long. We don’t have any time to spend with people, because we’re too busy. We have to make a living, to pay our bills and have some fun. We go from project to project, to get some satisfaction in creating something for ourselves or for our kids. Our kids don’t even like us or want to be around us, for one thing they don’t know us, we’re never home. We do it in the name of providing for them. Every once in awhile we take them to church, because somewhere somehow someone told us it was a good thing to do, it looks like we are good people.
All of this busyness is encumbering. It is so off of the eternal point.
Jesus told the disciples that they were in but not of this world, but everyday the world tries to suck us into being just like them. Oh wow, the world has an image and it is trying to conform us into its temporary image rather than allow us to be changed into God’s eternal image. If and when we conform to the world’s plans rather than God’s plans while we are here, we lose out on the very purpose we are here for.
So, Jesus will return. What will He find? Busyness? Or a people who love Him enough to live everyday asking Him what they can do for His plan to come to pass while they have some time left on earth? They work to be in the world as an example to people, and because they are seeking first God’s kingdom they also have provision. They may not have a Mercedes or live in a mansion, but they know there’s quite possibly a hot car in heaven waiting to escort them to their home there.
Will He find people asleep, because they were so busy making the almighty dollar that they were worn out? Will they have worked so hard that they did not have any time to go to the church and become to living church to others, especially their own children or families?
Will they be sick, because in serving the world’s call they lost purpose and are so beaten down by its slavery, that they have no strength? Will sickness try to take them out early, because they are weak of toil, strain, stress, etc?
The scripture here says, is anyone sick? Let’s pray, ask God for forgiveness and watch God raise them up, into purpose again.
Some of us merely need forgiveness from serving ourselves and the world, and just not realizing and doing what we where placed here to do/be in Him and with His strength.
Let’s get ready for Him to return and show Him we did something with the salvation He gave us. Let’s make it a goal to bring as many people with us into eternity as we can, if we don’t have any bags of natural treasure to carry, we can carry a lot more people, and if they don’t have any bags to carry, they also can invite a whole lot more people too.
God’s eternal treasure is people saved and living in love with Him forever. He doesn’t care how much stuff we ever get, if we have people we have what he has desired all along.
I know that if we spent our whole lives working for stuff, even for our kids or family or friends to have more stuff, we will be horrified to find it was for nothing, if we are left alone, with no people. Sacrificing people for stuff is BAD. It’s all about loving God so much, that we love people too.

Daily Repetitive Verses:

Proverbs 27:17-19
17 You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another. 18 If you care for your orchard, you'll enjoy its fruit; if you honor your boss, you'll be honored.
19 Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.
Psalm 122:1
1 When they said, "Let's go to the house of God," my heart leaped for joy.