Change We Can Believe In

Actions Speak Louder: the Book of James
Week 1: Introduction and Overview

You probably recognized the title of this blog as the 2008 campaign slogan of Barack Obama.  In reality, however, it's a principle that we find continuously throughout the book of James, this idea that real change in thought and words results in real change in our actions.  In fact, to James, faith without works is....dead.  

Yesterday in WNL, we jumped into our fall 2014 series Actions Speak Louder: the Book of James.  For twelve weeks, we'll dive into James verse by verse and pull out theology that we can apply to our lives.  I'm pretty excited.  This first week we just covered some background and I gave the students an overview of the book's main principles.  Next week, we'll hit the ground running.  If you like, you can take a look at the sermon schedule and my first week's outline here.

Just a few minutes ago, I posted the following paragraph to the blog that the students read (the one on the app):

• Contemporary Christians:
• Focus on thoughts and words instead of actions.
• Use grace as an excuse to remain complacent and unfruitful.
• End up being way less fruitful than they have the potential to be.  

So - that's pretty much us, right?  We love to talk the talk, but not walk the talk, as we used to say back on the day.  Sad, right? Think about all that potential that never really gets realized.  It kind of reminds me of presidential elections every four years.  These candidates spend MILLIONS of bucks convincing America that they are the men for the job.  They even have these awesome slogans.  Obama's 2008 campaign slogan was "Yes We Can" and "Change We Can Believe In".  George Bush's 2004 campaign slogan was "A Safer World and a More Hopeful America".  Clinton's 1996 slogan was "Building a Bridge to the 21st Century".  Heck, by the time these guys finish giving speeches and making promises, and everyone's cheering, we've all bought into the hype, convinced that great days are coming.  Then, bang - life.  I feel like that's how we can be as Christians.  We get emotional and excited about the potential of our faith (and we should), make a bunch of promises to God and each other (meh), then, bang - return to the same old life with no lasting change (tragic).  So what do we do?

My primary goal for this series is to show our students that the decision to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior isn't merely something that stays in your head.  No, it descends into the heart, then the hands and feet.  In other words, faith without works is dead.  The proof of what we believe is confirmed by the change that happens in us!  So here are some questions that will help you get dialogue started with your kiddos:

• How do you think modern Christians do when it comes to actually practicing their faith?
• Do you think that we as a family do a good job of living out what we believe?  Give some examples for why or why not?
• What can we do to become better at letting our belief evolve into action?

I hope that you have a great weekend!

sray