Eyes on the Prize.

Practical Christianity:
Eyes on the prize

MAT 5:8
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”.

Pure means 100% something.
That and no other.
No mixture. Complete.

For the pure in heart, how they live matches what they claim to believe.

Rom 8: 2
For the law [governing power] of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus …

…has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

God’s solution to double-mindedness is to place the Spirit inside us and enable us to walk or live according to the Spirit.

Practical Christianity:
Growing in Life’s Trials

JAM 1:1-4

KNOW something
CONSIDER something
LET something happen

The testing of your faith produces endurance.

ASK GOD for wisdom concerning this!

Endurance. The ability to remain under pressure. To hold your ground.

The joy is the certainty of a better you (& y’all!) tomorrow!

The word of God speaks to us as individuals, as a group, & as both.

verses 1-4 are in the plural. But starting in verse 5 James switches to the singular.

JAM 1:2-8

Verse 3 is particularly insightful, since we have a plural “your” with a singular “faith”.

EPH 1:22-23

When it comes to faith being tested and matured , there is a sense in which we are all in this together.

EPH 4:11-13

Know
Then Consider
Then let

To “consider” means to reckon it so. It means to decide that something is so, to count it as such.

hegeomai
"to lead the way"; hence, "to lead before the mind, account"

It is an act of faith.
 We are to look at a disaster with the eyes of faith something which natural eye cannot see!

2CO 4:16-18

It doesn’t look like joy, this trial, but with the eyes of faith we declare it so anyway.