Fix Your Heart, James 5:7-11

Good morning. Good to see you survive the week. Good to see if you're a guest with us. We're really glad you're here. And I want to say, especially to those of you who, if you are searching for answers, you know, about things spiritually, especially struggling to find, you know, some footing in that, we're glad you're here as well.

You're amongst fellow strugglers. Just want you to be reminded of that today. And if you are going through, like, significant pain in your life at this moment, we want you to know our hearts go out to you and glad you made your way in here, even though you're hurting. We're looking at the book of James, and we're at the end of the book, we're in the last chapter, and James circles back to a topic that is what is a really a critical theme for him. Because James is talking about faith that lasts, faith that makes it all the way to the end.

And if you have had faith for any length of time, then you know that holding on to faith is not a simple thing. It is not a given. And James knows that. And so he's trying to encourage. Because in James's mind, the worst thing you can lose is your faith.

And it's sort of interesting to consider that you're going to lose everything else no matter how hard you try to hold on to it. With or without faith, you're losing everything you have. That's a very hard reality. And so James is like, don't let your faith go. It's one thing you can hold onto.

So anyway, James, I think, gives us what I think are the best resources for suffering and for dealing with pain.

Just so you know, and you can see in this text, sometimes we'll put the whole text up and it's not really designed for you to read. I just kind of want you to see the themes as they're laid out in it. And the yellow stands for the coming of the Lord, because there's a future and an end we're heading toward. This sort of pink color is the. Is the suffering.

And then this purple color has to do with the patience and the steadfastness, as James uses two different words for what we need in this process. So we sort of drew this little diagram last time, so we. James is talking about this suffering, but we got to. We got to last all the way to the end. So we need a faith that's going to make it all the way to the end.

And you got to have some sort of an end in mind. If you're going to have meaning to whatever it is you're processing or dealing with, you can suffer without any sort of future picture or anything like that. But that's kind of a hopeless thing. And so James is saying, no, there's a very, very clear, personal and accountable end. And.

And in the meantime, he says you're going to need patience to make it all the way through to the end. That's a key quality right there that he's going to develop and that we need to look at today a little bit. So that's sort of the scheme and the layout of what's happening here.

And it's important for us to be reminded that James is thinking to himself, and what he is arguing in this book is that there's something so valuable about you that God is willing to put you through difficulty, to turn you into what he wants you to be. So if you have a picture of the end that, at least in our faith is, you become. You're becoming something. And then in the end, where you end up is because of who you've become and you carry that into eternity with you, well, that's important in Christianity. And so that means whatever happens to you along the way is sort of developing that in you and God sort of overseeing that process.

And I do think that sometimes we're less concerned about what we're becoming and more concerned about what we have and what we're dealing with. We're less concerned about that. And James is trying to get us to be more concerned about that. That's why he brings up Job, which I think, yeah, who's blessed? In the end?

At the end of this text, he will say, who's blessed? Well, it's the guy who's remained steadfast. He's lasted all the way to the end. And then he says, you've heard of Job, haven't you? And he becomes the sort of the illustration, this powerful, positive picture of the end.

You've heard of Job? Yeah, we know what Job went through, but we also know what ended up happening in Job's life. And we're going to look at that when we get down there, that there were purposes we could not grasp and that God ended up being much more compassionate and merciful and loving than we could have ever imagined. Well, we're going to have to process that, but we got to work our way to this text. But this is what James is saying.

We're going to. We, we all are going to turn in, at some level, a job. And so it might be worthy to consider, just for a second, you know, it makes me consider it. What if you're not blessed? And what if you're not Job?

What. What are you? And what do you have that. That's. That's what you have to face.

So Christianity is offering a blessing. It's offering a way forward. It's offering you becoming, being transformed. It's saying God has a purpose for things that are. That you will, you know, very likely not like Job, not understand, but at the end of the day, you'll find God to be loving and compassionate.

Is that possible? Can you have all that? And I think it's worthy to ask some of these questions. Does this all work? And these are questions we'll answer as we move down here.

I just want them in your head as we go because I want you to know I'm thinking about them even though we're not talking about them immediately. Can you have a loving God who judges?

Let me ask you, do you want a God who doesn't judge?

Because that would impact all the ideas of justice and vindication in your life.

We're going to talk about that. I want to look at it really closely with you. What happens if you have a God who doesn't judge? And I just read a book by Rainn Wilson and he has a God who doesn't judge.

And I will tell you, what he ends up with is nothing like something that works for my heart.

Because, you know, how do you deal with sin and wrongdoing? Who's going to deal with that?

And is there ultimate justice? Are things going to be made right? That's going to require a judge? And I haven't met anyone on this earth capable of doing it. So we're going to need somebody to do it.

And that boils down to the question, does it matter what you do? Does it matter? Most of us instinctively know what we do matters. And I'll tell you where you really know it's when it's done to you, it really matters. Okay.

You're like, what I do, I can get away, I can let it off, I can let myself off the hook. But when somebody does it to you, not so easy. And so this is how James starts the book. If you think about the all of what I'm trying to do, God is saying, James is going to say something very, very profound here. And I think it's a different message than anything, any other religious message.

When James says, you can count it, joy when you go through hell, because you know that the testing of your Faith is going to produce steadfastness. You know that there is a goal and a meaning and a purpose.

And James says so you let that steadfastness have its full effect. Let it come to pass. And here's the reason, and here's what the goal is. Here's what the goal is. You could be a Buddhist and the goal is to just disappear.

It's to just. Nothing ultimately matters and you just disappear. Or, or you can have Christianity. It's a radically different message. You become something different that's lacking nothing, as opposed to just step into nothingness.

You pick the end you want. This is what Christianity is offering.

You don't have to step out of the reality of your pain or make it meaningless.

You can be transformed into something that's the message. And there's a certain quality that's absolutely necessary. James brings it up at the front end of his book. The first things he says is, you're going to need some kind of patience and steadfastness to make it to the end. You got to last.

You got to last. And so you need patience and you need endurance. This is how he circles back to this text. So when we look at the whole text again, I want you to notice there's patience, I think, like three times here, and then at the end, it turns into something else. It's the same idea.

And that's the steadfastness. Just make it. Make, make it to the end. But you sort of need this patience, you know, to make it to the end. Now, this is a quality that obviously we need desperately or, you know, there's judgment at the end if we don't.

And our souls obviously turn into something that isn't healthy if. And I mean eternally healthy. And so this is. This is the framework we have to grapple with. This is how James starts out his passage, when we start now, to just look at this text and unfold it.

And I think James is going to give us a way to look at life, which we're going to look at that today. And then what happens when you're. When people. How do you deal with life? How do you deal with people?

How do you deal with suffering in circumstances? At the end, you'll suffer if you obey God, and sometimes you'll just suffer because God's in your life. And that's what's at the end here. That's job.

So those are the issues we have to face. And the one we're going to look at today is the life, life, just life itself. What do we need to know about life at least the way God sees it, as it helps us with this whole idea of suffering and difficulty? And here's what he says. Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.

See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also be patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. And we sort of drew this picture here because here's what the text says twice in this verse. Be patient. Then it says it again, and then it tells you, until the coming of the Lord.

And this idea of until the coming of the Lord has the idea, not just temporally. In other words, it's coming someday, but it's also a goal. It's also the goal. There's something awaiting the end that's better than you can imagine, if you last, if you endure. And so in between, this picture is the picture of a farmer.

And the farmer is going to help us understand a little bit about how life works, a little bit about how God works, a little bit of something about ourselves. It's a phenomenal picture for us to grasp. But I will tell you, some of us are so disconnected from the idea of farming, we don't even know what in the world is going on here. You're like, farmer. Could you have picked an older profession?

Could you have. I don't think so. So this just feels old and uncool as it can get. And I understand that. So we have to tease out what he's saying.

And I find this subject very, very fascinating. So we'll see how much you like it. We'll see how much you like it.

Now we'll deal with the coming a little bit more as later. I said a few things last week, but the coming is the moment where everything gets made. It's a time that we're looking for. We're all waiting for a time for things to be made right. All right?

And that's what he's coming to do. That's something we get to look forward to. Now, the farmer. This is a really important image. So notice the farmer is.

He waits. As soon as I say farmer, you know, I already mean hard work. That's work and waiting. And then there's an end. There's the end Picture the fruit of the earth and what he has to be able to do.

And the focus here is to be patient until he receives the early and the late rains. Now, what's going on there? Well, you know, the culture There or the climate there is. I mean, it's extremely dry. And so the farmers, the farmers had a moment at a time when they planted and they had a time when they harvested.

And the way God worked was with his people then was he would provide a spring rain, it's the early rain. And then he would provide a, you know, rain right before the summer, right before the.

Right before harvest. So in this really dry come out of the summer and it's really, really dry, you wait for a rain and then you plant it. So you had to wait for the rain to do that first plant, and then you had to wait for that next rain for the harvest. So that rain would water that harvest one more time before it came up. So you got the full benefit of that harvest.

And it was very tempting for a farmer, very tempting to be watching the days and seeing it hadn't rained yet, hasn't rained yet. And that's the farmer's life. He's waiting for the first rain, then he's waiting for the second rain. And I guess it would be very possible for the farmer to rush that. I think we need to go ahead and plant, otherwise we're not going to have anything at all.

So he's hoping that we're not going to have much, but at least we'll have something. So he'll do that or he'll harvest too soon and he won't get the full benefit of that. And so what the early and the late phrase, this language here is used in the Old Testament, all over the place. And it is a picture wherever it's used. And I went through all the texts, I'm not going through all of them with you, but almost every one of them refers to.

That's the faithfulness of God coming through in, in these moments of this farmer's journey from beginning to end.

So all the references are the faithful to the Lord. Now, if you move too fast or if you got desperate, then, then you lost out a lot. If you lost your patience, you screwed up this whole agricultural picture and what was at stake was life. This is how these people live. That's why the farming illustration is so important, is because of the issue of food and survival here, talking about what you need to survive.

That's why the farming illustration is so important.

So what the image is suggesting is the farmer had to look all the way to this, all the way to the end. He always had to keep his mind on the summer and the harvest, otherwise he'd make really foolish mistakes leading up to that. That's why you got to keep the coming of the Lord in your mind all the time otherwise. And this had to do with purpose. Waking up with purpose every day and hope and fulfillment.

Everything about the end is what mattered. And then the image also tells you how life works. That's the real important picture of the agricultural image here. This is just how life works. You wait for a lot of things.

A lot of things take a lot of hard work. Then you sit around and wait and you look forward to the thing as it comes. That's pretty much how life works. And there are seasons. You have dry seasons, you have harvesting seasons, you have planting seasons.

There's different seasons in your life. That's what James is trying to get across to us. It's also a very much of a picture of your heart and its development.

And the same thing that's happening in life is happening to you. And God's doing the same thing. He's looking at your life and says, going to take a lot of hard work to deal with you.

I'm going to have to be patient and I'm going to have to provide reins. But one of these days you'll be just what I've created you to be. And I've told you, and I don't want you to not keep this in the back of your mind. It would be real nice if you and I were what we ought to be, wouldn't it? Hey, come to grips with that reality so that you understand why God's, you know, like in this business, humans are not what they should be.

And the. In the process of making them what they ought to be. It's not easy and it takes time. I was out at. I think it was last Saturday.

Winella's parents had us out to their place. I don't. I think it's Rome somewhere out there. And so we drove out there and we had a brunch with a bunch of folks at their place. And we had never been out there.

And he's got land back behind him and it runs up against the Trinity River. And he took me out to his favorite thing about the. Not the yard. Wayne took me out there that they love and is this garden. And so I'm standing out there with him and he's showing me how this garden.

And I'm looking at this. It's a pretty big space that they use for gardening. And I'm looking at it right now. And right now it looks like there's never been a thing grown in there. And you're ever in life and it doesn't look like anything ever will grow in there, ever.

You ever look like that? Because I looked at that thing and I said, well, good luck, Charlie Brown. I'm going to Walmart for a little bit.

And he said, we talked about a number of things and hopefully over this I'll be able to pull a few things out for you. He said, there's nothing in the world like doing this process and watching how the whole thing works and how God. How God has created the world to work this way. And it was just, I don't know, we had a great conversation about it. There's a.

And so I just say, yeah, farming will give us a picture in the way God, who he is and how he works in our lives better than anything else. So I want to talk about this agricultural image a little bit more because I think it relates to this patience thing. We're not farmers, most of us. And most of us have an approach to life in this technological world that we live in. The digital world that we live in has everything to do with speed, and farming has nothing to do with speed.

And that's why waiting is so important. And so if you're a fast pacer, you're going to really struggle with this. In fact, there's literally nothing in our culture that's helping us with this characteristic that we need so desperately. In fact, everything is militating against the patience you need to survive to the end. And some of us aren't making it to the end just because we've weenied out, because it just didn't happen fast enough for us.

And James is saying, don't do that. And so lots of people in our culture today are bailing on the faith.

And so food is a survival issue when we talk about agriculture. So this is what I guess I wanted to talk about. We talked about process because that's what farming is. And then the food that you need to survive. Now, keep this picture in mind.

I want to try to develop it a little bit for you. So we're talking about the process and food and processed food.

Now just keep it in mind. This is, you know, it's just, just a pet topic of mine that I really enjoy personally, because James is trying to show you here you have a processed life. There is a process to the life that I deal with people. That's what God is saying. I have a process for you.

It's a process. And you can't speed that up without screwing it up. Just like you can't do it with food. You Speed up food and you screw it up. Amen.

That's a fact. You don't have to. You don't have. I don't care what you eat. This is not about telling you what to eat.

I'm just telling you if you try to change the process for food, you mess it up. That's a fact of life. Now here's the question, I think James get what process do you adhere to for life?

And the. And the whole process of food is a great illustration for you to consider.

What is valuable takes time and rhythms and seasons and process. And we have tinkered with the farming process in our day. Why it's not fast enough. We have literally taken a real life process for survival and sped it up. Because we're like, yeah, we're done with the farming thing.

We want food when we want it, where we want it, how we want it. We don't care if it's supposed to be growing now or not supposed to be growing now. What can we do to mess with this system to make it faster? That's how we live our life and that's how we expect God to treat us and relate to us. And God just say, that's just not going to happen.

It obviously creates all kind of one of the. I was mentioning a few books that I really have enjoyed reading this summer. One of them, great joy in reading was you are what you eat. Wonderful little book. It's a subtitle, the slow food Manifesto.

And she basically contrasts a fast food culture and a slow food culture. And she says right at the beginning of the book, how we eat is how we live. And that is, like it or not, that is exactly what James is saying. How you eat is exactly how I'm gonna work with you and it's how you're gonna live. And if you don't live like that, and if you don't eat like that, well, then you're gonna have.

Then you're in a whole different system than the one I'm working with is basically what God is saying. So she says that a fast food culture and a slow food culture each have their own set of values. She's absolutely right. And whether you like it or not, you have digested its values, not just the food, its values. And they change you.

And here's what she writes. Those values become a part of you, just like the food.

And once those values are a part of you, they change you. You begin to have a different outlook on things. You begin to have different cravings, different standards and different expectations. Now your desires and your hungers are being programmed by the fast food culture, which is very obvious. This is all very true.

And you may not even realize it, it's very subconscious. But nonetheless, your world starts to reflect the values that you've ingested.

You begin to accept those values as truths that everything should be available to us all the time. That more is always better. That food should look and taste the same, no matter the season. Wherever we are in the world, time is money and speed should be cherished above everything else. And that our choices, food related and otherwise, have no consequences.

That's basically a fast food culture. And those values have seeped into our lives and they affect us spiritually. And we get mad or disappointed or frustrated with God to the degree we that he operates with the new S. We want to screw with his farming system. That's essentially the picture.

I read a great article just to see. You see what a struggle this is. Just this past weekend, I've read a couple of great articles. One guy's trying to get rid of food altogether. He just has this little drink he thinks you ought to drink.

And he's making lots of money right now. It's a little Soylent Green. Remember that? They want you to drink this thing. And he's doing it now.

And this way here you don't have to deal with food at all anymore.

Unreal. You'll never get off the dinner treadmill. Is the one I just read. It's a lament on having to deal with dinner every night. It's a lament on dinner.

Now why would you. And it is. It is a mom who's got to come home and cook dinner for kids. And she laments for four paid pages and pages of lamenting for dinner, breakfast, anything. You could throw plastic at a kid and they'll eat it for breakfast and then lunch, whatever.

But when dinner comes, oh no, it's supposed to be this big old thing and you got to eat healthy or not. And she gives all these options and she is. It's just lamenting to her. She calls it the dinner problem. Dinner, dinner, dinner hanging over her head.

And let's see, basic issues. Time, Dinner resists optimization. All the different things you can do. All of us, we try our best to come up with a dinner option and she talks about all of them. She ends the book or this article.

Dinner resists optimization. None of us. It's just a grind. That's it. It's just a grind.

You will always have to think about it unless you have someone else to think about it, it's too much energy, too much time, too much money. And even in our technological age, she says dinner refuses to be solved. I'm like, oh my gosh, you should talk to James. She should have a conversation with James. So everything we're doing militates against this patience that we're supposed to have.

So. So we unravel when we lose something. We unravel when we don't get something we want. We unravel when we don't get it, when we want. And here's the thing, and I think the book you are what you eat does a really good job of talk, of helping you see the ways in which you've adopted the lifestyle of a fast food culture.

And I think it's interesting for us to consider, and this is what the book made me consider, is what am I not willing to put hard work in to have because the fast food culture has taught me that if I can't have it fast, then I don't want it. I think that is a really good thing for you to start thinking about right now. What am I unwilling to put up with, to deal with, to invest in? Because it's going to take too much time.

And by the way, you are one of those things. I'm not going to invest in myself takes too long. I'm not going to invest in other people too much work.

You think about all the things that you have to go through this process to get. You cannot have the fruit of it unless you do it.

Relationships, on and on.

Most of us think we're dying of stress and heart disease. People are killing you and you know it. People are killing you, right? And how many of you give up on relationships? You know why you don't have friends.

You just won't put in the hard work. You will not do it. And you know why? You won't get in small group again and get well. You used to be in a small group.

You used to have friends. You don't have them anymore. You won't put the effort in anymore. You know how long it's going to take to get somebody I can trust. I know how long it's going to take because that's what's.

Because it's valuable. It's going to take a while and you won't put the work in. There are certain skills you'd like to have. You won't put the work in. You don't get skill tomorrow.

Healing. I can't believe how many people want to heal faster than we ever have in our whole life. Aaron Rodgers wanted to be out on the field three weeks after he tore his Achilles.

And now we have another football player who tore his Achilles and tore it again because of. I think because he's hurrying health. If I see this one more time, I'm gonna throw up. The quickest way to get in shape.

I've been trying for 38 years, and I can't do it. 38 years of working and I cannot get in shape. And these people are. I just cannot stand the thought. And if you're a person who tries to work out or you try to even eat right, and somebody comes along and says that you're just ready for a fight, man, you're just ready for a fight.

But there's not a one of us in here who aren't looking for the fast way to do it. I mean, if they really come up with one, I'm in. Okay? I'm gonna tell you that right now. But there's just.

It's just not happening.

So we want to be healthy fast.

How about character? That takes time to develop.

Or certain accomplishments takes. That. Convictions take time to develop. Some of us want to be spiritual really fast.

And if it takes a little bit of work, like, don't tell me to fast. I'm not going to fast. I was going to. It hurts and it's going to take a while, and I don't know if it's really going to do anything. And da, da, da, da, da.

And so you don't even try that.

Nothing, nothing seems fast enough. And I think part of what is going on here is the same thing with God. He just doesn't move fast enough for me. And I got too many places to be and too many things I want done. And we don't even know how that's affected our lives.

And James is saying, I need you. I need you to settle in. So we use this image at the beginning of chapter five, because James talks about the last days. We live in the last days. And here we are.

Jesus has already come the first time. So once you've come the first time and he says he's coming back, well, that just puts so much more weight and confidence on the fact that he's going to come again. And so we're looking toward this second coming. And James says, and here you are in the middle of this with your eyes focused here, and you gotta make it, you know, you gotta get all the way to the end. And what you're wanting is you.

You've. You've Adopted this lifestyle where you want everything right now, but that's just not how God works. And so James is saying, I gotta figure out how to. How do. How do I help you settle in?

There's a sense in which you have to keep moving. There's also a sense in which you have to settle in to one of the cycles that you might be in. In life now, dealing with a parent who's 80. And I seem to encounter more older people who are just struggling with that stage of life.

Problems everywhere you turn, if you can turn, you know, and that's a big deal.

And so every stage of life has them. And if you don't settle in and figure out what you got to do in that stage, you can lament the loss of youth.

You got to figure out how to settle in. Not easy to do. But for people who are moving fast and live in a fast culture, God's not fast enough.

And James says, I need you to be able to settle in here. Now. Here's the phrase James uses.

Now. Let's see.

I know I have this verse up here.

So like the farmer, look at this. So you think about the farmer and you go, you be like the farmer. I want you to be thinking like a farmer. I don't want you to imagine it's harvest time if it's not harvest time. I don't want you to imagine that you should have the fruit now if I don't want you to have the fruit now.

And here's the words he uses.

Fix your heart, establish your heart, which is the same thing as this.

Let's see. Settle in, settle in.

I've been trying to figure out a picture for this. And here's a picture that I love that helps me. And it's a picture from a scene in a movie. And it's always been, since I saw it when I was young, I've always had this image at this moment in this sort of idea. And that is Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee.

The end of the movie, he's one on one with this bad guy. And they're in this bad guy's house in space. And there's mirrors and it's like a fun house. There's mirrors everywhere. And Bruce Lee is trying to find him, but there's mirrors.

And it's really, really complicated. And you don't always know where you're going, and you can't. And he's mastered this space. So Bruce Lee's just walking around in it, trying to find this bad guy. And he ends up walking into something that he didn't even know what it is.

And the doors close on him. I think I've given you this illustration before. The doors close in on him and. And immediately he turns behind him to the doors that just closed. And he grabs the doors and then he starts to look for how to get out.

And he realizes he's trapped. And he just steps back and he sits down, crosses his legs, puts his nunchucks around his neck and he just starts to breathe. And I remember thinking. I remember thinking, oh, my goodness, when the adrenaline is flowing like that, when the stakes are as high as they are, can I just calm my heart and sit down and wait until the door opens again? Because otherwise I'm just going to waste a lot of energy here.

That image is what I think, James. It comes to my mind. Fix your heart. Settle your heart. Now, the previous paragraph we had, James said something else.

Do you remember this?

You have fattened hearts.

In this text, he says, you have fattened hearts. And this one, he says, fix your hearts. This is the paragraph that comes before. This is the person that lives in luxury. This is.

This is the guy who is.

He's. He's tinkered with the farming process. He gets what he wants and he's after it. That's the fattened heart. He just can't help himself versus the fixed heart, sort of the settled heart.

And when I think about the fixed heart, I think of somebody who's like the farmer who's got to be dependent and trust. He's got to be content for this to be a laboring time and not a harvesting time. He's got to use, obviously, great wisdom. He's got to protect himself. When I was standing out in that little garden, that actually pretty good sized garden, a lot of work has gone into making this thing ready to be, you know, to be planted again.

And I have a fence around it. And he said, because one of the best crops I've had, I mean, the next day I went out there, I celebrated all these wonderful crops. And the next day every animal it seems like in the country was, was in my garden and ate it all, destroyed every single bit of it, left nothing. And so I've had to put a fence up. So you got to put fences up to protect it.

And then you look forward and you hope for the. For the meaning and the harvest at the end.

And there's. There's one of the things I think that God is saying here is the worst thing that can happen to you is not that you, that you've suffered.

That's not the worst thing, James whole message is the worst thing that can happen to you. You suffer without meaning and you suffer without hope and you suffer without faith. And here's God trying to give you meaning and purpose in all your pain and that it all going to be made right at the end. And that is really hopeful. And so this fixed heart is the ability, like the farmer, to say, I'm in a particular season in my life and I can and I'm okay there.

And I just learned to settle into that season and I wait for God's reigns.

And by the way, I think where this really comes home and where I see it the most now because I have little kids back in my life again as grandkids. And if you're parenting or have parented, then you know you are teaching your kids this all the time. How many times did you say in a parenting existence, not now? How many times did you say that not now? And you meant that either for this day, it could come later today, it could mean that you said something not now.

And it would be years before that would ever happen for a kid. I want to do that, daddy. Nah, it'll be years. And there were some things that said, daddy, I want to do this. And you said never, never.

Is that going to happen? Like dating? You're never going to have anybody. No, no, no. No significant others, nothing.

You think about that in your life. And this is all that. This is pretty much what James is trying to say. And what God's, that God's doing in our lives is essentially not now, later.

So one good question to ask yourself, practically speaking is, and this is not easy to do. I tried to do it and I don't think it's easy. Can you, can you, can you imagine the season that you're in? Because all of us could be. I mean, when it comes to life, you can be in multiple seasons.

It's the same time. And so that makes it a little bit difficult. But if you're in one of those seasons where it's very clear you can't find what it is you're looking for, you don't have what it is you want so desperately, you're not sure about what's coming up, you're not ready for what's next, or you just can't see ahead of you, that's a lot of human life. And so you might be in one, you might be desperately in one of those. And I just to close our time as we're processing the way life works and the way that God works.

This is how God works in you. He is doing things inside of you and you have to let him do his work and you'll see the fruit of that later.

And the problem of pain.

Yeah, and the problem of pain. You hear C.S. lewis say this. When we want to be something or have something other than the thing God wants us to be or have, we must be wanting what in fact will not ultimately make us happy.

That's hard to compute, but it's a really great thought.

And he says what God wants is for us to put on Christ and to become like God. To become like Christ. And that is whether we like it or not. What God intends to give us is. He says God intends to give us what we need and not what we think we want.

Once, once more, he says we should be embarrassed by the intolerable compliment of God loving us too much and not too little. Because that's loving you a lot. Same way you do with your kids. Not now.

That's coming from love.

Perhaps this view falls short of the truth. It's not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that he is our only good, which is a great thought. Rather, God is the only good of all creatures.

And by necessity each must find its good in that kind and degree of the fruition of God which is proper to its nature. The kind and degree may vary with the creature's nature, but that there ever could be any other good is an atheistic dream.

That you could ever have good beyond ultimately what God wants you to have. That's a dream.

And then he writes, and I've read this to you before. God gives what he has not what he has not. He gives the happiness that there is not happiness. That is not to be God. To be like God and to share his goodness in creaturely response is ultimately what God's going to do.

And he says and if you. And if we. And I love this line and I think it applies to this farming imagery. If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows because this is the farming pictures the way, the way life works in God's world. To learn to eat the food that the universe grows, the only food that any possible universe can ever grow, then we will starve eternally.

You've heard me say that to you before. Ultimately, goodness, can I get. Can I. Can I want what it is God wants me to have?

I don't know that there's any other. And to believe that God is loving enough to make sure that that happens in our lives, no matter what's going on in your world. Now, we're going to take communion. And so to contemplate this a little bit, I want you to think about something, and I'll invite those who are going to be serving us to go ahead and come down.

But I want you to think about this, because James says to be patient until he comes. Do you know that First Corinthians 11 tells us to take communion literally until he comes. It's almost. You just keep going back to that table. You keep going back to that table and you keep getting nourished, the thing that is the most nourishing to you.

And you remind yourself every week that we do it. You remind yourself that's why you dragged your behind in here, to remind yourself that there is a. There is a resource and a nourishment that is way beyond what this world is serving up or what I think is in my head, in my mind. And that's why we do it. That's why we come to the table every week as a reminder.

It's why we were told that come to the table. And so you come to that table until he comes, you just keep going to the table. So I would say to those of you who are really struggling to hold on, there's. We will answer more questions about suffering today and last week. Just some framework.

But you come to that table, that's part of endurance. You're going to get up and walk to a table, and you might do just like Job did. You might walk in there kicking and screaming. I'm not sure if this is really going to nourish me or not. I'm eating it, though, and that may be where your heart is.

I'm gonna choke it down. Some truths you choke down. No, you get in here and you choke it down. That's the endurance and the nourishment. And there's true for food in there.

And you're reminded of that, of what's ultimately satisfying. So as we go to the table, I want you to just think, keep in mind, you keep showing up to that table if you don't do anything else.

And the other thing I want you to remember as you get up with a crowd this size, and I want you to remember you are not walking to that table by yourself.

You are not alone. There's a community of people who believe just like you believe, are hoping to get exactly what you're hoping to get and are trusting the same God that you are to get to that end.

1. James 5:7-11. How does the metaphor of the farmer help us understand the process of spiritual growth?
2. Can you think of a recent experience where you had to wait for something important? How did that change your perspective on patience?
3. Where have you seen fast food culture operate in your heart and life?
4. How does the idea of Jesus coming again influence the way we handle suffering and challenges in our lives?