BIBLE PROJECT VIDEO THE BOOK OF JAMES
https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/james/
JAMES 1:5 AND JOSEPH SMITH
“During a religious meeting he was pointed to the scripture that changed the way he read the Bible. He was looking for the method to forgiveness in the Bible. He was hoping for clear directions.
After reading James 1:5, he realized that the Bible is not an archive of all the answers to every question. It is a book about people who asked God for wisdom and received. It is a book that shows how to seek and receive answers from God. And when he gets that it changes everything.
Northing is more consistent and more poignant in Joseph’s first vision narrative than the epiphany of James 1:5. He comes back to that all the time. That first revelation that he could read the Bible differently and go to God himself was a huge shift in his thinking. It was not coming out of his culture. He had to get that from God and the Bible on his own.”
Steven Harper, The First Vision: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast, Episode 2
WISDOM
2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
Various Authors. Zondervan NIV Study Bible: Updated Edition (Kindle Locations 94011-94019). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
“In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity for happiness. The presence of such pain serves the larger purposes of God’s master plan, which is to maximize the human capacity for joy, or in other words, ‘to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.’ He can no more foster those ends in the absence of suffering and evil than one could find the traction to run or the breath to sing in the vacuum of space. God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. God’s power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.”
Givens, Terryl; Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life . Deseret Book Company. Kindle Edition
Life is hard. Trials and hardships are paradoxical gifts which can produce endurance and shape our character.
God can do amazing work inside our suffering and help us become perfect.
He wants us to live an integrated life. Most of us live fractured lives and are more compromised than we want to admit.
God’s mission is to make us whole and begins with the gift of wisdom which is the ability to see hardships through a new perspective.
When we realize our humble and frail place before God we are forced to chose between anxiety and trust.
True wisdom is choosing to believe that God is good despite circumstances.
TRANSFORMATIVE STRUGGLE
“The worst thing is to live life in a way that requires no transformative struggle from ourselves and that makes no difference for good in the lives of others.”
Melissa Inouye, Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance
A LOST SHEEP by Melissa Inouye
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