Pathways Church Blog

Are you serious?

How many times have you been asked this question in your lifetime? How many different kinds of situations have provoked this question? How many different tonal inflections can you ask this question with?

The situation determines how the question is asked:

I just bought one thousand dollars worth of lottery tickets because I had a dream that I would win…
I knew I was going to marry her on my first date…
Two planes just flew into the Twin Towers…

But there is a different way that this question is asked. When someone stops you dead in your tracks, stares into your eyes and asks the question, “Are you serious?” It’s the kind of question that makes you think about your motives. It asks whether you are willing to sacrifice. It asks how committed you are.

James is going to ask us that question this weekend. If you want to read ahead it’s James 2:14-26.

Are you able to trust others with who you really are? Are you able to trust God with who you really are? What would that look like. This weekend, on Father’s Day, I want to invite you to peek inside two different doors. One represents pleasing God. The other represents trusting God. I think these doors might help us to understand why religious people so often wear masks and perhaps lead us to be a community that removes them.

The thoughts this week will be from ideas I have gleaned from a book that has greatly impacted many in our community. It is called, “TrueFaced” by Thrall, McNicol, and Lynch and I’m throwing this link up here because it is worth your time to read.

I’m going to make a simple observation, ask a simple question and then I’m going to ask for your feedback on our website.

James, the brother of Jesus, feels that the things that we see in the world are not the same things that we should see in the community of the church.

If you were to name two or three things that should be common in the community of the church and are not common in the world around us, what would they be? I’d love to hear your feedback.

I hope that you are enjoying our study through the book of James as much as I am. It has been invigorating for me! This week will be no different. The challenge this week is simply this: are you and I willing to look into the mirror of truth and act on it? Or will we be like the man who looks into the mirror and then walks away and forgets what he looks like? What does this mean? How many of us have distorted mirrors that we see ourselves through? How many of us have trouble accepting the truth about how God sees us?

If Scripture tells us the truth about ourselves, what keeps us from allowing it to shape how we see ourselves? Think about it this week and come prepared on Sunday at 10am to take a peek (or a good long look) into the mirror.