Streams of Living Water

Did you know that although it was written in the pre-nuclear age, there is a weapon of mass destruction in the Bible? A weapon we don’t have to send UN experts to find – a weapon which each of us has? James 3:1-12 tells us that never mind Iraq, each one of us has a WMD – our tongues. The tongue is a dangerous and evil member of our bodies and if we want to be like Christ, we need to control it.
It may be hard for you to see how Chapter 3 follows on from what went before in Chapter 2 about faith and works. The links is fairly straightforward if we go back to 1:26-27 where James is talking about what it means to live out our faith in Christ. It means to care for the needy - that is what James talks about in Chapter 2 – good works on behalf of the needy; and it means to control our tongues, and that is what James is talking about in Chapter 3:1 to 4:12. So we are still in the area of living out our faith in Christ – showing that we are His and living consistent Christian lives. And in particular, remember, in the context of ‘faith without works is dead’, that words are works. Words do thing, they achieve things – and so the man or woman of God, if he or she is to live out his or her faith consistently must combine good works with good words. Read the rest of this entry »