Fixate PHX

by Fixate Phoenix

Christianity Spirituality Religion

James: Outcomes of a Rooted Life

JAMES 5:7-20 3 OUTCOMES OF ROOTED RHYTHMS THAT COME FROM JAMES FINAL VERSES 1- There is an increased measure of compassion, mercy, and blessing for the unwavering and patient person. The most common test we see over and over in scripture is that of patience; God’s timing vs ours. God's heart of blessing in the Bible is more often than not shown to those who have weathered the tests, stayed faithful, and remained planted in him in all seasons. Lordship comes down to control, and the sooner we can release it, and trust it, the sooner the roots found in a life of righteousness will get to work producing a life that knows and walks in the mercy, compassion, and blessing of God. 2- The prayer of a truly righteous person should accomplish much. Your prayers should put you out on the ledge of life, trusting that it is he who keeps you above the waves. Accomplishing much in prayer is when you are standing for neighbors, standing in love, standing for justice... and producing HEALING in this world. Prayer is the canvas that God paints his will and personhood upon, so if you're not praying… he's not painting. In time what we most discover about prayer is it is not what they accomplish externally, as much as what they accomplish internally, that starts to knit in the calling he has for our lives. Your prayers have healing and revelation to accomplish... Do you believe that? 3- When we accept Jesus into our heart, our lives start bending toward finding the lost, and telling them they can be found. Our kingdom-character is bankrupt if we cannot remember the last time we tried to bring our light into someone's darkness through being a healing presence, and revelation of God’s love. We are the mission of God on this earth outside of these doors, that says we don’t have to accept a life of death, and that sin does not have the final say. The enemy wants you to stop trying, so you can start spiritually dying. You're a messenger as long as you have breath inside you. How are you with strays?

James: Pleasure and/or Peace

James 3:16-4:10 3 ways to know if our pursuit of pleasure is costing us our peace 1- The opposite of jealousy and selfish ambition is peacefulness. You can assess your own selfishness/jealousy and that of those around you by the peace they carry and bring to the environments they enter. Peace is a product of dependance on the prince of peace, rhythmically and in discipline communing with him. Time with the prince of peace in his word and spirit helps us sow peace, then reap peace, and become.. peaceful. 2- We must assess the motives within asking for pleasures.. Many times we are asking for something to complete us that was only intended to complement us. If your search for completion is by what was only intended to complement, don't be upset when God tests the heart and motive, through trials and timing. A peace in him will multiply the pleasure you experience if you can learn and lean into him deeper… and you might find the pleasure you seek might actually be replaced by the peace he brings. 3- Beware the attack of duplicity and double mindedness. God will allow you to go through tests in order to purify the heart's motives. Don’t run from them. The test of duplicity is to think that you are allowed a heavenly mind and way of being, and also a dark side that no one knows about, stemming from an unrenewed mind. If you choose the work of renovation, you will know personally the power you carry to restore, and in restoring your own world, you might find he uses you to restore this world.

James: Tripped breakers and corroded power lines

James 3:1-12 3 tips on cleaning corrosion and resetting the breakers on how you speak A TONGUE THAT LACKS CONTROL IS A LIFE THAT LACKS CONTROL. The words we speak are not a product of spiritual maturity as much as it is the evidence that you are spiritually mature. Winning the battle of the words you speak directly influences all the battles you are fighting and will fight. Don’t be mad there isn't any power present in your life if you have allowed the main avenue of power transfer to be corroded. A life in the light or in the darkness just comes down to how often you speak light and how often you speak darkness. IT WILL ALWAYS BE YOUR CHOICE WHAT FIRE COMES FORTH FROM YOUR WORDS. THE FIRES OF HEAVEN OR THE FIRES OF HELL. IF YOUR WORDS ARE ONLY CRITICAL, DESTRUCTIVE, FULL OF GOSSIP, SLANDER, COMPLAINTS, WORRY, OR DIVISIVE IT IS YOUR JOB TO TAME THE TONGUE BEFORE THE FIRE DESTROYS THE GOOD WORK PLACED INSIDE OF YOU AND THE GOOD NEWS YOU ARE MADE TO LIVE IN. SOME OF US WANT ‘MORE FIRE’ FROM GOD BUT OUR MOUTH DESTROYS ANYTHING GOOD HE EVER TRIES TO GIVE US. What is said about you, is usually what people have heard said through you. I challenge you right now to take inventory of how often your words are blessing and how often your words are cursing. Speaking the truth doesn’t give you a free pass on transmitting words of death. Corrosion slowly takes the power away, until one day you have none. There is no coincidence to man’s need for fresh water for survival; both physically and spiritually. Don’t let your spring become so polluted that no one values what you say anymore.

James: Upping the ante and toll booths

James 2:14-26 3 thoughts on understanding the relationship between faith and works The mission field is your business field. Your daily Work, works, and witness say more about who you serve than your christian activities involvement. Faith and Works is about the lifestyle you live and the lives it touches of those around you. Faith and Works feel dead and dormant when they have not woven a level of calling into your career. Inviting God into your daily work, may do more for your “works” then you ever imagined. YOUR “DOING” CAN BE THE GREAT ERASER, EQUALIZER, AND ENERGIZER OF FULFILLMENT IN CHRIST. Your faith gets you access to God, your works develop the proximity to God. Faith becomes perfected when works become regularly enacted. Some of us all our questions, concerns, fears, and paralysis would dissipate if we just thought less, and did a little more. Paralysis is frozen inactivity. If you're active, you never feel frozen. F YOU WANT WORK THAT HAS WORTH, IT USUALLY INVOLVES A COST THAT WILL SEEM EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO PAY. WHEN WE WILL NOT PAY THE COST OF CONSISTENT AND COSTLY “DOING” OUR SPIRITS WITHER BECAUSE OUR WORKS BECOME DORMANT AND THEN DEAD. THE CROWN HAS A COST REQUIRED TO WEAR IT. Rhythmically dying to self through our doing is way easier than never doing anything in faith and then God taking you through an unforseen test to see if our heart and motives are pure. Paying tolls of doing help us pass the tests within our being.

James: The last thing we want to do, that may be the most important thing we ever do

James 2:1-133 important lessons that we can only learn from what we have labeled as less than. THE EXTENT OF YOUR LOVE TO THE LEAST, SHOWS THE DEPTHS OF WHO YOU FOLLOW THE MOST. The test of who you are when no one is looking usually comes down to your love for those who can give nothing in return. The god we serve usually uses the ones we don’t think we can learn from, to teach us most. A saint with dirty hands, is one whose heart is full. There is no such thing as a personal relationship with Christ that does not require personal care for our neighbors. The poor have just as much a right to the riches of faith as us. Partiality on appearance and superiority must be repented of. If you make your decisions of those who are allowed access to your time and resource by the outward appearance, you will atrophy the spiritual muscles needed for the marathon of following jesus. The neighbor you're called to love is the people God places in your direct path, everyday. I'm convinced that the level of judgment we feel today as followers of Christ comes from a mercy dispensing deficiency in our personal walk. If mercy triumphs over judgment then the invitation is whenever we feel the judgment of man, or even the judgment and blame we cast upon ourselves, we look for ways to apply mercy to our fellow man, preferably the downcast and downtrodden. You might be surprised when you give mercy and grace to someone less fortunate, what it does for your fortunes and your future. Mercy triumphs over judgment, if you practice it, you may find out first hand.

James: The geometry of Godliness

James: A look under the hood

James 1:13-203 TUNEUPS TO OUR FAITHS FOUNDATION AND LONGEVITY1- YOU MUST LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TESTS OF GOD AND THE TEMPTATIONS WITHIN MAN'S NATURE. God’s test typically reveals, reorients, and re-routes us onto the path he has for us. Temptation of man centers on unholy/unhealthy desire, and if we will give into these desires, how many times we give in until it becomes normalized, and then the fruit of destruction from that normalization and God trying to restore what was sinful to being viewed as sin once again. Temptations and tests feel the same, but are very different. 2- WHAT YOU PASSIONATELY DESIRE MUST BE PASSIONATELY DESIGNED WITHIN HIM.. Desire produced apart from him produces a slow death, carried away and enticed by the illusion of something good, rather than your father who wants to give you both GOOD AND PERFECT things from above. Your secret desires are what God sees, the question is are you aware of them and the influence they have on everything you do.. 3- THE ANGER YOU ALLOW IN YOUR HEART WILL TAKE UP THE SPACE CREATED FOR LOVE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS IF YOU LET IT. Anger is not just an impulsive outburst; it is bitterness, rage, unforgiveness, resentment, cynicism, vengeance, and the wanting to get even. If you can't be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, there may be something under the hood that needs to be taken care of… before it wrecks the worth of the entire work of righteousness you were intended to be.

James: The call and the promise of endurance and perseverance

James 1:2-12HOW WE TRAIN TO LAST The goal of maturity is to become perfect and complete, lacking nothing. The pathway to maturity comes through testing that produces endurance, then allowing this endurance to have a full effect. The terrain in which maturity is built through is facing trials and figuring out how to maintain and count it all joy. Maturity is embracing this cycle for its beauty and not its cost. We must embrace God’s tests as much as God’s gifts, and personal doubts as well as our personal beliefs in order to fully understand the person we have been created to become. Your walk with Jesus will directly address the whole of you as a person, and will be longer than you think, and cost more than you believe you can pay. When we seek first the kingdom and righteousness it’s not just that ‘all things’ are added, rather we find out that the ‘all things’ we sought at the start don’t even come close to knowing him. God’s homework is heart work. We endure from love, for love and by love. The crown of life is not just for someone who endures, rather it comes from the love we have for the one we endured for. We don't endure for blessings, we endure to get closer to the blesser, and trust that he handles when, where, and how to give us the crown. Perseverance without HIS approval is completely pointless.

James: Wait, what am I again?

This week we begin our study through the book of James.James 1:1Reminder of the Bond Servant: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE IN WILLINGLY PAYING THE COST OF BEING A SERVANT OF GOD; AND GOING THROUGH UNFORESEEN DIFFICULTIES. IF LIFE IS DIFFICULT IT DOESN'T MEAN WE FORGET AND THEN WALK AWAY FROM THE COMMITMENT WE MADE, RATHER WE MUST ALWAYS REMEMBER THE COMMITMENT HE MADE TO US. WE PIN OUR EARS TO THE DOOR, HE PINNED HIS LIFE TO THE CROSS. IS BEING A SLAVE OF GOD MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE FREEDOM OF MAN? You cannot be both the owner and the bond servant. Don’t get mad at God if he tries to remind you through difficult circumstances who is the master and who is the servant. In your pursuit of freedom from all constraints don’t be surprised at some point if you're eating an apple that has larger consequences than you ever imagined. COMMITTED SERVICE IS GREATER THAN INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS. THERE IS POWER IN THE PICTURE. OUTSIDE OF THE MASTER WE HAVE NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, OUTSIDE OF THE WORK OF THE KINGDOM WE HAVE NO OTHER EXISTENCE, OUTSIDE OF THE WORK OF GOD WE HAVE NO OTHER REASON OF BEING, AND THAT FROM THIS PLACE WE LIVE. A PINNED EAR IS A PRUNED HEART. WE ARE CALLED TO A LIFE OF A SERVANT, ON BEHALF OF OUR MESSIAH, JESUS. YOUR SERVICE SHOULD HAVE SOME SCARS, HIS DID.

One Year: Eyes that see above it all

2 Kings 6:8-23HOW TO TRAIN YOUR EYES TO SEE ABOVE IT ALL1- YOUR VISION TEST COMES DOWN TO ONE QUESTION; DO YOU SEE GOD AS THE SOLE SOURCE OF YOUR SALVATION? IF NOT HE WILL ALLOW YOU TO CONTINUE TO USE YOUR STRENGTH IN WAYS THAT FAIL.. IN HOPES YOU COME TO THE REALIZATION YOU MUST RUN TOWARDS THE ONE WHO WILL NEVER FAIL YOU..2- PEOPLE CAN GET YOU CLOSE; BUT YOUR HABITS GET YOUR CLOSEST. YOUR ABILITY TO HEAR WILL DIRECTLY INFLUENCE YOUR ABILITY TO SEE. SO TAKE OWNERSHIP OF HABITS OF HEARING, SO YOU WILL BE ABLE TO WALK INTO SEASONS OF SEEING. 3- IF YOU’RE MORE AWARE OF WHAT'S AROUND THAN WHAT'S ABOVE I CHALLENGE YOU TO PLACE YOURSELF IN ENVIRONMENTS THAT FORCE YOUR EYES UPWARD, GET AROUND PEOPLE WHO FORCE YOUR EYES UPWARD, READ THE BIBLE AND BOOKS THAT FORCE YOUR EYES UPWARD, SING SONGS THAT FORCE YOUR EYES UPWARD, AND DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIE THAT YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE ABOVE IT ALL… TO LIVE ABOVE IT ALL, IS WHERE WE ALL WERE CREATED TO BELONG.

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