Now above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. Your “yes” must be “yes,” and your “no” must be “no,” so that you won’t fall under judgment. - James 5:12

Most of us have the one friend who is always late, they are so good a being late that when you plan to go with them in order to avoid their tarty-ness they make you late. Their ‘yes I will be there’ comes with a small disclaimer that states *the arrival time is subject to change. Maybe we don’t realize it, but we might be that friend.

I remember my dad telling me that the only thing a man really has is his word, I always held on to that and I’ve tried my best to live with my ‘yes’ being ‘yes’ and ‘no’, be ‘no’, especially in my work ethic. By my current ‘looking for work’ situation it has not paid off the way I hoped it would. But I have failed so many times with people, and when I think about my spiritual walk with the Lord and how many times my “yes” was followed by an “I swear” and I was not true to my word as I broke my promises to Him, just thinking about that saddens my heart. Then when I saw my dad not be true to his word, It hurt more than the friend being late ever could, but I need to remember I have done the same to others.

After a while with walking with the Lord you reach a point where He places a mirror in front of you and you have to repent and keep on walking, stop when you see the next mirror. Picture this: on the mirror God is holding in front of us we write “I swear I will never sin against God again!” …the next time we find ourselves in front of a mirror it has something written on it, it is our own handwriting that says “I swear I will never sin against God again!” …I never want to think of how helpless would we be without heaven’s Grace and Love!

Here in California people have a tendency to make plans for things they will never do! "oh we should get together and watch Bob’s Burgers session premier at our place!!" a week later you show up at their doorstep, popcorn in hand, cold pepsi, and they have no idea why you are there, they don’t even remember what they said, even less that tonight is the Bob’s Burgers Premier! So what would anger you most, that they forgot about you? or the truth that they don’t care about the show as much as you do?

"God if you do this, I will never sin again!" ...we make deals/oaths to God and break them, it is funny if you think about it, we are making an oath with God when he tell us not to! –God I swear to You that I will sin again! Did we forget that to swear is a sin? James tells us "Above all things...do not swear" so it must be very important for him to elevate it. When we swear it challenge God’s name and authority. "Above all things swear not, for how can you expect the name of God should be a strong tower to you in your distress if you profane it and play with it at other times?" – Baxter

Maybe we think that by swearing to something it will add weight to our words, it simply won’t. If I were to tell my wife --I swear to you that I love you! All my actions previous to that phrase should have been enough, enough that those words were never in need to be spoken. If I tell you that I love you, but my actions have been completely selfish, my words may speak the right thing, but my actions show who I truly love, me.

The reason we have to swear is because our “yes” is not good enough, and our “no” is not strong enough, our “yes” lacks integrity and our “no” never knew he had it. It is when we are under suspension of a lie that we resort to swearing. We should live in such a way that when people talk about us they will know that our yes/no are always what they say they are. A lie covered in swears is still a lie, the truth needs no one to swear for it, for it stands alone, unmoved. Truth, this is what non-believers often complain about Christians, the lack of truth, that we fail to be true to our religion as it finds itself filled with hypocrisy.

The fear of what others might think of our truth often makes us hide it, and in our despair we swear by all that is good that we are honest Christians. The truth is I struggle with pride, I struggle with being lonely, with my dad breaking his promise, I struggle when I think about my ex-girlfriend, I hate that I can’t go one day without seeing something or somewhere that reminds me of her, I struggle with depression, I struggle when I compare my walk with others, I struggle when I’m afraid to be honest because of what others might think, that they won’t see honesty and yes my sin. I struggle in fully trusting the Lord in every area of my life. I struggle in letting God be my joy. I struggle in so many things, do you? ...or do we deny these things when we should say 'yes' i struggle with this/that, or we say 'no', all out of fear of what people might think.

The truth is that Honesty requires vulnerability, and maybe it seems unfair that the unbeliever can stand from afar and ask that of us; but those in God’s family need that from us as we need it from them, being vulnerable, being honest with each other should be a natural thing; it is not! because we are so busy hiding our truths that we don’t have time to show grace and love and are afraid others wont show us, oh but we swear that we show grace and God’s love.

The Lord will send His faithful love by day; His song will be with me in the night—a prayer to the God of my life.
Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God. —Psalm 42:8,11

-Stephen

See, we count as blessed those who have endured. You have heard of Job’s endurance and have seen the outcome from the Lord. The Lord is very compassionate and merciful. - James 5:11

I always had a hard time with people who attribute only the good things in their life to God, when anything good happens it is because God allowed that, and they praise Him for it. Praise is not heard from them when bad things happen, because somehow in this interpretation God is only in control of ‘good things’ happening, He appears to have no control over bad things? …this sounds like Prosperity based Christianity. “I was in a car accident and survived, God was watching over me!” what about the people in the other car who did not survive? Did God forget about them? He has the whole world in His hands, but some Souls slip out?

Can we honestly say that we could be happy to endure trials, pain and suffering the way Job did? To embrace these ‘bad things’ and not blame God for them? Do we count it joy to suffer for Christ? The Sunday school answer is –Yes! All this changes when our lives face a trial, be it physical, financial, spiritual or something so big that it seems powerful enough to weaken our faith. Sometimes the hardest trial is to watch a loved one live their own trial out and we find ourselves helpless. If our hope is that we will receive a blessing like Job did, our hope is in the reward when it should be in Jesus. Sometimes it takes the Christian a long time to understand that Christ is worth our devotion, even when things are ‘not fair’. Have we forgotten that He did not deserve to die for our sins? Have we forgotten what we as sinners deserve?

Job lost his health, his children, and during all this Job did not sin, and did not blame God for any of this, Job is a great example of patience and endurance for God. We hear of this man’s story and how in the end God blessed Him, so naturally as we face our trials we hope for the Job outcome. What if the Lord’s outcome for us is not an earthly blessing? I’m trying to get us to realize that maybe the outcome for the Lord will not be an earthly one and yes one we receive only in heaven, for Job it was earthly one, maybe for us it wont be. Job had no way of knowing that his blessing would be an earthly one, what if he told the Lord –I will only be faithful if my reward is double what I had and I receive it on earth! That is not obedience nor devotion, that is a contract.

What about John the Baptist? His last days where in a prison and he was beheaded. His outcome was nothing like Job. When we read about all the Martyrs in Christian history we are humbled by their faith in the Lord, and we overlook that they did not have a Job outcome because we are in awe of their faith while being tortured for such faith. The reward is Jesus, do we know that? I am blown away that we while on earth are able to commune together with other believers, we are able to read His word, praise His name, worship Him in song and in life. If we only had five minutes to live would we spend them worshiping the Lord? How often we take these things I listed for granted? While other places in the world have entire churches sharing one bible, ours gather dust and we leave Sunday church with our list of complaints about worship songs, the pastor, or our bad parking spot. Can we honestly say that we are willing to suffer for God even if our outcome is not like Job’s? The church has preached the Job outcome when it should be preaching the gospel that is Jesus. I have lived so much of my Christian walk wanting the Job outcome when I should be wanting Jesus.

There is a great danger when we forget what we as sinners deserve, because that means we have forgotten the price Jesus paid for our salvation. Embracing the Lord’s end is done by embracing Jesus, whatever He has for us, be it fair or unfair in our selfish human eyes is a plus, everything after that movement we received Jesus as our Lord and Savior is a plus.

When we wake up tomorrow, wherever we find ourselves, in whatever situation we are in, economically blessed by God or not, even in those places that it seems that heaven forgot about us; how can our hearts not rejoice that God has allowed us to breathe one more breath, how can our Soul not smile that we are alive and can praise His name! That because of Jesus our prayers can reach eternity, because of Jesus we are free, alive, adopted by heaven and we could care less if our outcome is Job’s or not, our outcome is Jesus, we are in need of nothing more.

My heart is simply overwhelmed by the mention of His name, and I am embarrassed that so much of my walk with the Lord has been based on the Job Outcome when it should have been based on Jesus.
Jesus loves your heart.
-Stephen