Where do wars and fights come
from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your
members?
You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You
fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. (James 4: 1, 2)
The layman’s definition of insanity is doing the
same thing over and over and expecting a different result. But, that’s only half of the crazy.
The crazier half is not realizing that the reason
you fail is because of the things you continue to do over and over.
James, the brother of the Lord, wrote a plea to the
early church. In the A. T. Graves
paraphrased version James said: “Where da’ crap do you think all this drama
comes from? Don’t you see that you’re
the source of all your confusion? You
want stuff, and the way you try to get it is the very reason why you don’t have
it. But you keep trying to get it the
same way.”
James goes on to point out that some of the stuff
they want is stuff they shouldn’t have---- but that’s a topic for another post.
If your life is a continuing cycle of 4 months of
ballin’ followed by 2 months of bankruptcy and begging------ where da’ crap do you think your bankruptcy comes from? It’s not because of haters, or the
government, or your baby’s daddy/ mama ‘nem.
It’s because as soon as you get a little money, you spend it foolishly. Stop the foolishness (STOP not pause and
restart) and the cycle of desperation will magically go away.
If you keep falling in and out of toxic, dead-end,
destructive relationships------ who da’ crap do you think keeps bringing these
people into your life? The neighborhood
doesn’t go out with them. Your “haters”
don’t give them your number and home address. And all men/ all women aren’t like that-----
or you wouldn’t have so many couples to envy.
Baby, it’s you. If you stop selecting
your romantic interests based on the worst possible set of standards then you
wouldn’t keep ending up with the worst possible kinds of people.
If your church is in continual decline-----
who? Who in crap do you think is killing
the ministry? The gates of Hell can’t
prevail against the church, but the Hell on the inside will kill it like
cancer. Stop blaming the media, the
bishops, the big church up the road, and the devil. It is the wars and fights we perpetuate among
ourselves that kill churches. It is our
own desires for power and control no matter what the cost to the young, the
weak, and the spiritually vulnerable.
We fail because we keep doing the things that cause
failure and we not only expect a different result, we haven’t even accepted
that our current results are our fault.
Fortunately, James articulates the solution as well
as the problem.
James 4: 7-12.
·
Submit to God.
·
Resist the devil
·
Draw near to God
·
Cleanse your hands
·
Purify your hearts
·
Lament
·
Mourn
·
Weep
·
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
·
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord
·
Do not speak evil of one another
Do these things instead of what you’ve been doing/
are doing now and these will be your new results:
·
The devil will flee from you.
·
God will draw near to you.
·
The Lord will lift you up.
If you want different, you gotta do different. But first, you have to accept that what you
are still doing is the reason that you are still failing.
Yeah, I know that sucks, but I’m only telling you because
I love you.
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall
Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
If you enjoy our work, please help support our work
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Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116
