Joan Boney ... apostle/prophet
Recently, in reading James 1, I was stricken by the number of instructions to live by in this one chapter.
- Continue in patience: 4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
- If you are being tempted, pray for wisdom: 5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
- The rich man will be as the grass that rises only to be withered by the heat of the day: 11 For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth
the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion
of it perisheth:so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
- All good things are from God ... wisdom, understanding, talent, good ideas ... 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down
from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning.
- Salvation is of God and not of our own works ... 18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
- Danger of wrath ... 20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
- Be careful how you receive the Word of God ... 21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness,
and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your
souls.
- Don't just hear the word / do the word ... 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
- Those who look carefully at the Bible, and do the Word, and continue to do the Word, are the blessed of the Lord ... 25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth
therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this
man shall be blessed in his deed.
- If you can't control your own tongue, your religion is in vain ... 26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his
tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
- To "visit" (judge) the widows and fatherless in their affliction, while they are afflicted, is very important. To call on them, to help them when help is needed, and to do it in a timely way, is critical and without doing this our religious is defiled and impure ... 27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
- And it is critical to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. To fail to do this causes our religion to be defiled and impure. Therefore we must take care to renew our minds to the word of God when impure concepts come before us, such as TV ads and TV programs and carriers of unrighteous ways come to bring their wisdom which is contrary to God. We must diligently uproot their ideas by scripture, by hearing truth from the Holy Spirit, and by choosing truth ... thus we ... keep himself
unspotted from the world. (verse 27)