Faith Works

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Like I said, it is good to be back with my church home and to see, honestly, a lot of people that we love a lot. I think for us, we've lived here for three years now, and now it's just like, man, when we come back here, this is like home, and this is our family and friends, and vacation was good, and it was really rejuvenating, and it's, I mean, honestly, it's good for us to rest. Like, we were made to rest, let me tell you, okay? If you were thinking that, like, the American dream is to work, work, work, and, you know, so that you have all this stuff, I mean, man, we got it wrong. We need to be able to rest and abide in God, and it was really good to be able to do that. I got to officiate some of my first weddings. That was really cool. I got to even officiate at the church. I first started ministering in North Carolina to a couple that was in my youth group way back in the day, and now I'm like, man, I'm getting old, you know? It's happening, and I got to do that, and I got to see my beloved Chicago Cubs play, and you know that's important to me and everything, and to be able to see family and friends, but honestly, the best thing about vacation was I got to be able to sleep, let's be honest, so it was good, so it is good to be back here with you all today. If you can open up your Bibles to James chapter 2, that is where we are going to be as we continue our series, How Grace Changes Everything, and like I said, I was on vacation. John's going to be gone for a couple weeks, and he's resting up and everything, and so that's good that he's going to be doing that, but we're going to continue on as a church with what we're doing and what we're learning, and so I'm going to ask you to be there. Open up your Bibles to James 2, starting with verse 14, but before we begin, it is my prayer and my petition that as we walk through this scripture, which can be very difficult to really comprehend and understand, and maybe after you read this too, you're just going like, man, I'm all jacked up, and you know, like I got to work on this, work on that, and the most important thing that I want you to be able to walk away with today is that you are going to be able to delight in the Lord, that you are going to be able to delight in Him, knowing that you belong to Him, that your identity is in Him, that no matter what, where you've been, or how many times you've done it, that you are still loved and you are still forgiven, and because of that, you receive grace, and because of that grace, we are saved through our faith, and that is the most important thing that I will have to say. It is the thing that we will continue to preach as a church, and if we stop preaching this, then there's something wrong about us, okay? So that we may delight in Him, no matter what. I was surrounded with a lot of friends when I was on vacation, and I came across this one friend, and honestly, it was a very difficult conversation, and he knows what I do, and he's a good friend, but his ideas are very different than mine, and you're going to find that in the world. There's going to be people that think differently about what life is all about, what God is all about, and he still could not understand that we can delight in the Lord, that He is taking care of everything, and even for us, as we are sitting in these chairs, sitting in these pews, sometimes it's very hard and very difficult to be able to grasp that. So I want you to be able to know that. I want you to be able to believe that, that you are fully forgiven in Christ Jesus, no matter what. So when you look at this, and when you see this, and you're just like, well, I don't know if this really can best describe me, because I'm a very messy, goofy, ignorant person that just doesn't have it figured out, and which none of us do, okay, and I want you to know that, that even though we work through something difficult like this, that you are forgiven, you are loved, and that is what my prayer is for us today. That is what I want us to be able to walk out of this today, knowing that even with your imperfections, you are loved. You are loved, no matter what. So James chapter 2, we're going to be starting with verse 14, and I want to be able to cover these three things. Now remember, our series is how grace changes everything, all right? So when you read the book of James, again, it sounds very legalistic, all right? It sounds like very rule-following type of religious types of way in order to earn eternal No, that's not the case, okay? Because when we look at the book of James, that when the people were receiving this letter, they knew everything about grace, they knew everything about the forgiveness through Christ Jesus, but here, James is challenging people to take a little bit step further in their faith. They're saying, you know, if you really believe thi...