Words by James

You desire but do not have,
so you kill.
You covet but cannot get what you want,
so you quarrel and fight. 
You do not have
because you do not ask God.
When you ask,
you do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives,
that you may spend what you get
on your pleasures.

Resist the devil,
and he will flee from you.
Come near to God
and He will come near to you.

There is only one Lawgiver and Judge,
the one who is able to save and destroy.
But you--
who are you to judge your neighbor?

You who say,
“Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city,
spend a year there,
carry on business and make money,”
you do not even know what will happen
tomorrow.

What is your life?
You are a mist
that appears
for a little while
and then
vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say,
“If it is the Lord’s will,
we will live and do this or that.”

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.
If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,”
but does nothing about their physical needs, 
what good is it?
In the same way, faith by itself, 
if it is not accompanied by action, 
is dead.

When you ask, you must believe and not doubt,
because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea,
blown and tossed by the wind.
That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
Such a person is double-minded
and unstable
in all they do.

Be quick to listen,
slow to speak and slow to become angry,
because human anger
does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Those who consider themselves religious
and yet
do not keep a tight rein on their tongues
deceive themselves, and their religion

is worthless.

Anyone who listens to the word
but does not do what it says is like
someone who looks at his face in a mirror,
and, after looking at himself, goes away
and immediately forgets what he looks like.

Do not merely listen to the word,
and so deceive yourselves.

Do what it says.

- Words by James

Cover Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash