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Lesson Summary:

James encourages the believers to endure trials, seek God’s wisdom, focus on the eternal and heavenly and live in the glorious light of God.

Focus Passage: James 1:1-18

Outline and Lesson Goal

Principles and Applications

I. Endure Trials with Joy (1:1-4)

Principle: A Joyful Response to Trials will Help You Grow as You are Conformed to the Image of Christ.
Application: How are your trials affecting your spiritual growth? Is there increasing joy or increasing bitterness in your life?
Scripture Reference

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.
Hebrews 2:10 (NASB)

II. Ask for Wisdom (1:5-8)

Principle: A Timely Request for God’s Wisdom Will Help You Meet the Challenges You Face Every Day.
Application: What challenge today requires that you ask God for His wisdom?
Scripture Reference

²⁰ Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding?
²³ “God understands its way, And He knows its place.
Job 28:20, 23 (NASB)

III. Focus on Heaven (1:9-11)

Principle: A Heavenly Focus will Help Keep Your Earthly Life in the Proper Perspective.
Application: What does the evidence in your life say about your primary focus?
Scripture Reference

¹⁷ For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
¹⁸ while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NASB)

IV. Live in God’s Light (1:12-18)

Principle: Living in God’s Light will Help us Overcome Temptation Every Day.
Application: What needs to change today so you are living in all the goodness of the Father of lights?
Scripture Reference

⁶If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;

⁷but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
I John 1:6-7 (NASB)